Nerd News

OpenAI says its new voice mode can speak and listen at the same time, a key ability for live translation.

Paradigm, the VC firm founded in 2018 to back crypto startups, raised a $1.2 billion Fund III.

⚡ Quick Take

• New Scooby Doo x Transformers collaboration creates two characters.
• Every character from the show is represented with four interchangeable heads, and Scooby as “Automutt.”
• The Transformers company is still doing extremely well with exclusive figures coming out in collaboration with other media.

The Mystery Machine has a new look. Hasbro’s Transformers x Scooby Doo collaboration has created “Mysterious Prime” (totally sick name), a Mystery Machine transforming toy, and “Automutt,” his faithful companion.

Hasbro

The fully extended van is 6 inches tall and has interchangeable heads resembling Transformers versions of Fred, Daphne, Velma, and Shaggy. To accessorize, he even comes with two ascot color options, which is adorable. Additionally, he can hold an included camera and flashlight. Hilariously, Scooby transforms into a compact box of Scooby Snacks.

The Scooby Automutt is oddly reminiscent of the 1980s and 1990s McDonald’s Changeables series of Happy Meal toys. Little creatures, compacted into food items.

And the set’s price? That’ll be $57.99.

Gulp. But if you’re a collector, this price shouldn’t faze you, with the recent Stranger Things figure also costing almost $60. Rare figures can go for pretty steep prices online after their run.

This is one of many recent Transformers collaborations. The company has been making exclusive, limited-edition figures based on everything, from their ongoing NFL series and Stranger Things, to a hilarious 2023 collab with Canon. Other than toys, the most recent Transformers project to hit the screen was an animated prequel, Transformers One in 2024. Before that was a live-action film, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. The 1980s franchise is proving to have extremely high sticking power, indeed. And, Scooby-Doo is coming to Netflix with a live-action series as well as an upcoming anime, so that franchise is also still quite popular.

So, if you’re a big fan of both Scooby-Doo and Transformers, I’d run to grab your Mysterious Prime figure before it goes to online resale.

The post Hasbro’s TRANSFORMERS x SCOOBY DOO Figure Is Bizarrely Cool appeared first on Nerdist.

The round, led by Radical Ventures, values the two-year old startup at $1 billion.

The cyberattack targeting a U.S. insurance giant is the largest known breach of driver's license numbers so far in 2026.

⚡ Quick Take

• The latest Evil Dead movie, Evil Dead Burn, has plenty of brutality for gore hounds, but otherwise misses the mark entirely. Read our review.

For decades in the horror community, there was Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy, and there was everything else. While franchises spat out installment after installment, Raimi’s gruesome, punishing, blackly comedic splatter fests remained (more or less) perfect. When it became clear Raimi wasn’t going to make a fourth one himself, it opened the door for new directors. 2013 saw Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead remake and 2023 brought us Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise, the first in what is to be a new trilogy. The second installment, Evil Dead Burn, from French director Sébastien Vanicek, is here now. While it tries to be Evil Dead, it’s really just everything else.

New Line Cinema

Nobody besides Sam Raimi is Sam Raimi, and I like that Vanicek—like Alvarez and Cronin before him—attempts something different within the framework of the series. Are there deadites? Do they inflict grievous bodily harm on themselves and others? Will we see power tools? Great! But you still need the basic elements of good drama. Alvarez used the premise to touch on addiction and detox; Cronin made it all about stunted adulthood and taking responsibility. Evil Dead Burn gestures toward something deeper, but never spends near the amount of time it needs to resonate. And the characters? Maybe the thinnest and least likeable you’ll ever meet.

The movie follows Alice (Souhelia Yacoub), whose husband Will (George Pullar), with whom she has a bit of a fractious relationship, dies early in the movie. We then cut to the funeral attended only by Will’s family. That includes: Mother Susan (Tandi Wright), father Edgar (Erroll Shand), brother Joseph (Hunter Doohan), grandma Polly (Maude Davey) who suffers from dementia, and Joseph’s girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan). It’s a tense event (to put it mildly) and even more tense is the lunch afterward at the family’s now-dilapidated summer home.

New Line Cinema

Joseph has uncovered some of Susan’s father’s papers in the attic. He was some kind of occultist in a secret society, and he found a sacred relic. The reel-to-reel tapes Joseph plays (because of course he does) in Evil Dead Burn awaken the demonic entities that descend on the family and make things generally unpleasant. Or, I guess, more unpleasant.

My biggest issue with the movie is that we don’t know anything about these people. The amount of time between when we meet the family and when deadite shit starts happening is so brief in Evil Dead Burn, we barely get our footing. The movie keeps throwing these jump-cut-laden flashbacks to Will and Alice’s unhappy marriage while Will’s family berates her for wanting to move on with her life. (Sidebar: I couldn’t tell you if the funeral is happening a week after Will’s death or six months.) Joseph is a writer, I guess, and his girlfriend Thya is…a woman…? And Will’s parents, holy crap. Their whole reason for existing seems to be “we hate our son’s aloof French widow because she’s aloof and French.”

New Line Cinema

The closest we get to a character with any sort of past is, ironically, Grandma Polly. She’ll occasionally say things in her dementia confusion that allude to what life was like before. But if you think an Evil Dead movie is going to treat a grandma with dignity, you need to go back to thinking school. No one is safe in this movie, not even the dog we barely see. It almost feels like all of these people are in completely separate movies, and it’s just nobody told them.

I’m definitely not going to argue that Ash Williams and his friends in the first Evil Dead were supremely deep characters. However, we got to spend a decent amount of time with them just hanging out. We also had Bruce Campbell’s increasingly unhinged performances, not to mention Raimi’s demented Warner Bros. cartoon direction to get us by. Here, we have some decent gore sequences, and one or two single-take action scenes that feel somewhat different. And Evil Dead Burn is certainly a brutally violent movie, but it is not in a fun way. For all the stomach-churning elements of the earlier movies, they all had fun, gave us some gallows laughter.

New Line Cinema

Evil Dead Burn wants to give the story gravitas with themes of familial trauma and spousal abuse. That is way, way too heavy a subject to tackle if the filmmakers had no desire to actually contend with it. The moments that veer toward comedic feel so strange amid all of that. The movie is just at odds with itself. It may have been a bad Mummy movie, but Lee Cronin’s movie from earlier this year feels more tonally consistent with an Evil Dead movie than this does.

And not to pile on, but if you feel like sticking around past the credits, you’ll see the most confusing and forced tease for another movie I’ve perhaps ever seen. It truly baffles me.

The Evil Dead series has a very high bar for quality in my opinion, and Evil Dead Burn is comfortably the worst. I’ve seen all the movies three or more times apiece; I can’t see myself ever watching this one again.

⭐ (2 of 5)

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.

The post EVIL DEAD BURN Is a Gore-Soaked Disappointment (Review) appeared first on Nerdist.

⚡ Quick Take

• Supergirl leaned away from its source material in ways that led to its downfall, especially with its approach to heartbreak and death.

From the day the first trailer for Supergirl released, it should’ve been clear that comic fans were in for disappointment. The visual dissonance from the film’s source material—Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King with illustrations by Bilquis Evely—was quite clear in a not-good way. How one could look at that book’s art, with its kaleidoscope explosion of colors so beautiful it brings tears to your eyes, and instead choose the aesthetic of the Christopher Walken beer commercial is beyond my understanding.

That’s a bit mean, I know. But after you’ve seen something look the way that Project Hail Mary did, it’s even harder not to be frustrated with why such an approach couldn’t have even been somewhat attempted here. 

RELATED ARTICLE

SUPERGIRL Doesn’t Quite Fly High Enough (Review)

Aesthetics aside, the dichotomy between the book and film adaptation is even more frustrating. There are plenty of Marvel flicks—or, really, blockbusters in general these days—that look like wet cement. But they still have plenty of attributes that can at least partially atone for it. And while there’s plenty of narrative issues with the film, there is none that is quite as perplexing as the ending. Supergirl (played admirably by Milly Alcock, for what it’s worth) triumphantly stabs the villain, Krem of the Yellow Hills, through the chest with a big ole sword. 

I’m not saying this decision to change in the movie is bad because of some teletubby, cumbaya, and corporate-incentivized idea that “Superheroes Should Never Kill.” There are plenty of characters, particularly men, that have done their fair share of murderous ventures with tremendous popularity and acclaim. Nor am I doing a bad faith reading that killing means “we’re no better than the bad guys,” as it strips context from a given situation in order to appear morally superior.

DC Studios

My issue is that in execution, Supergirl killing Krem was mistaking edginess for boldness. Some fault is due to how she’s portrayed as a jaded, curmudgeon alcoholic in contrast with the more worn down, quietly heartbroken heroine in the graphic novel. It’s as if the filmmakers only read the first chapter in Woman of Tomorrow in which she gets absolutely plastered for her 21st birthday. They seemed to take that and make it 80% of her character rather than a simple, humorous subversive opening premise. She’s frustrated with the universe, but not an unimpeachable liaison of judgement, which feels appropriate for someone of near godlike abilities and a culture that went kablooey. 

Tom King/Bilquis Evely/DC Comics

She’s here to guide us, which is why the book saw her lying about Krypto’s health when she was actually there to watch over Ruthye, the young secondary protagonist, as she goes on her dangerous path of vengeance. Instead, Supergirl speedruns all the character-building necessary for the killing of Krem to feel more earned. Therefore, the decision comes off incredibly cheap rather than a profound contribution to a debate on moral ethics. 

It’s glaring in comparison to something like X-Men 97, in which Rogue attempts to kill Bolivar Trask, the creator of the Sentinel machines that just committed a genocide on the mutant nation of Genosha. You actually feel her anger there, because the mutants tried to play ball. They did everything by the rules. They trusted that society could slowly get better—that people could get better.

Even this movie’s predecessor Superman has an underlying theme of initial compassion that turns into a kill after the genocidal Boravian dictator doesn’t heeds Superman’s warning. Of course, he’s later smashed onto the ground thanks to Hawk Girl. The killing wasn’t necessarily approved, but it certainly wasn’t condemned, given the context, either.

And that’s the route that Supergirl could’ve taken if it actually wanted to do something interesting. In the final panels in Woman of Tomorrow, a now-elderly Ruthye meets again with Krem. His life is spared after, in a twist, Ruthye’s pleading with Supergirl to not do so. And this is after being confined to the Phantom Zone for at least 300 years. There was something about these panels, the shadowy silhouettes, the rising sun in the background, that gave me a sense of ambiguity. 

Tom King/Bilquis Evely/DC Comics

Ruthye bonks Krem in the head, but you can still see a bit of movement from him afterward, implying he was still alive. But my initial reaction is what I think could’ve been done here. These questions behind the morality of killing are complicated, so why not channel the spirit of the comic’s beautiful final shot? Why not actually do something we truly haven’t seen from one of these comic book movies before? But instead, we got what we got.

Now, I worry about what kind of quandary this sets up for the character going forward. After she’s killed in such an unambiguous way, what’s to stop her in future movies from doing the same or the potential hypocrisy for evil that she does choose to spare? 

It’s why I envision, and at this point have established as my own headcanon, that Supergirl ended with Ruthye hitting Krem from a far enough view that his fate is left up to the audience. You can’t quite praise it, but you certainly can’t condemn it. It’s about wearing heartbreak with humility—and a refrain from judging our peers—of not knowing the answer.

The post SUPERGIRL Did Not Do Heartbreak Nor Bold Decisions Well appeared first on Nerdist.

There are a lot of fast-growing AI startups, but some are growing even faster, they say.

Vermilion Cliffs Ventures announced Wednesday the close of a $25 million Fund II.

⚡ Quick Take

• Disney’s live-action Moana is much better than its trailers, bu

I did not exactly find the trailers for Disney’s live-action Moana encouraging. Something felt off about the whole thing. There was way too much green screen, Dwayne Johnson’s wig just didn’t look right, and it seemed like essentially a shot-for-shot remake of a beloved film that isn’t even that old. Well, all of those things ended up being true. And yet, to my great surprise, this live-action version of Moana isn’t bad. It’s actually pretty decent. The movie’s biggest problem is that, like most live-action remakes, it can’t really justify its own existence. Dive into our full review of the live-action Moana movie.

If you’ve seen the original Moana cartoon movie, you know everything, almost exact-beat-for-exact-beat that happens in the live-action version (that I love). The only real difference comes in the mixed bag opening act. It features arguably the most beautiful sequences from the movie (we’ll come back to that), but feels twice as long as the original. (It’s about one-third longer.) The opening section is really delightful at first, but by the time Moana finally sets out on her adventure, I was long at past my “get to the fireworks factory” point.

Once Moana takes to the sea, though, the movie’s pace picks up considerably. Any changes after that come almost entirely via the dialogue and a few lyrics, but those are mostly small. There are no major differences anywhere. Viewers who haven’t seen the original in a long time won’t even notice them. I have seen it recently, though, and I liked almost all of the new touches. The additions and alterations to a few lyrics, lines, and quick shots all fit within the story. More importantly, they were almost always good and didn’t interfere with the film’s bullet-proof plot, themes, and emotional core.

Disney

Those things are also true of the film’s titular star, Catherine Lagaʻaia. I bought her as Moana the second she joined the story. Lagaʻaia is charming, vulnerable, and determined. The only “issue” with her performance has nothing to do with her. It’s just weird to think “that’s Moana,” but then hear a different voice singing Moana’s songs. Considering everything going on around the characters in the live-action movie is basically exactly the same as the original version of Moana, it is a little jarring, but again, not Laga’aia’s fault. It’s just something a fan who loves any animated musical will have to deal with when a movie gets remade in live-action.

Obviously, that issue doesn’t exist in quite the same way with Maui, since Dwayne Johnson plays the demigod once again. Only, he doesn’t play him exactly the same way. Maui’s broad strokes—brash, funny, proud, sort-of-mean—are all still there, but Johnson makes a really smart choice with his performance. Rather than play up Maui’s cartoonish nature, Johnson plays up the character’s human side. He centers his performance around Maui’s sad background rather than his bigger-than-life ego. In the Moana trailer, this made his performance seem strangely muted, but it makes sense in the movie. That slight change in perspective completely works in a live-action film. As a cartoon, Johnson plays Maui bigger and with a lot more energy. In live-action Moana form, he plays him more human.

Disney

This more vulnerable, broken Maui is really smart, really effective, and really pays off. When he tells Moana the truth about his past and his parents’ rejection of him, it lands a much bigger emotional punch. It’s maybe my favorite scene in the film.

The wig? Not my favorite! It’s not quite as bad as it looks in the Moana movie trailers, and eventually I (sort of) got used to it, but it never looks great aside from when Maui’s hair gets wet. Then it strangely looks fantastic. The best thing I can say about the wig is that it didn’t ruin the movie for me. Nor did Johnson probably being too old for the role. Maui is an ageless demigod. Even after a thousand years stranded on an island, that’s easy enough to pull off in animation. But human actors get old, even Dwayne Johnson.

Disney

What occasionally ruined the film for me were sequences so obviously filmed on green screen that it was all I could think about. The live-action Moana movie is visually among the most inconsistent movies I’ve ever seen. There are moments clearly filmed on location in Hawaii that look absolutely gorgeous. They are among the biggest justification for making the film. Then there are shots that I think were filmed on location that somehow look like green screen, which is very weird. And some green-screen sequences do look really good, which makes it even stranger how unpleasant the bad green-screen moments are.

The good news is that the film’s special effects are really excellent. The CGI, including Te Fiti, Hei Hei*, the conscious water, Tamatoa, and a super fun and playful “You’re Welcome” sequence, all look great. The good VFX helps cover up some of the other visual issues.

*The “live-action” Hei Hei really is excellent, but he doesn’t look like a real chicken. He’s a recreation of the cartoon version. As is Tamatoa, who could not be more identical to his cartoon counterpart. I understand why this happened, but I still think it’s weird that live-action movies don’t make their animal characters look real.

The biggest problem the live-action Moana movie has is exactly what plagued the very good live-action How To Train Your Dragon, which was also basically an exact remake. Both films work because they don’t change what worked before. They don’t screw up a winning formula and tell a great story with compelling characters we already know and love. But that’s also why neither ever makes a great case for why they should exist.

Like with How To Train Your Dragon remake, the live-action Moana is essentially a faithful cover of a classic song. It’s good for all the reasons the original song is good. But it’s not better because it’s not trying to be better. And because it’s not even trying to be different, it’s impossible for the live-action Moana to be great on its own. It both succeeds and doesn’t because it is, intentionally, an inferior version.

Is being a “good cover” enough to justify a big-budget remake of a beloved movie that isn’t even that old? Probably not, but there are worse ways to spend a night at the movies. That’s certainly what I was expecting from the live-action Moana.

⭐ (3.5 of 5)

Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He will wear the Maui wig if Disney sends it to him. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.

The post Live-Action MOANA Is a Good Remake and That’s All It’s Trying to Be (Review) appeared first on Nerdist.

⚡ Quick Take

• Critical Role finally released the trailer for Age of Umbra: Sallowlands and things are dark and deeply creepy in the Halcyon Domain.

Critters, get ready for a dark and deeply creepy new miniseries! After many months of teasers and tidbits of information, Critical Role finally released the trailer for Age of Umbra: Sallowlands. In that clip, we get to meet some pretty cool adventurers whom Matt Mercer will guide through this Daggerheart story.

We will traverse through this story with Sister, Dillwyn and her companion Badger, Caguama, Alphonse, and Mercy, played by Critical Role co-founder Laura Bailey, Jennifer English, Abubakar Salim, Vico Ortiz, and Zachery Renauldo, respectively. These survivors will parse through the dangerous Halcyon Domain, which is now devoid of joy and crumbling. But, there’s rumors of “gargantuan metropolis appearing out of nowhere.” 

Critical Role

This glimmer of hope keeps them moving forward, even as they encounter formidable adversaries and difficult choices. The trailer for Age of Umbra: Sallowlands teases some possible light in the midst of darkness, and we will see just how much is shed when it debuts on July 9.  

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For more information, head over to Critical Role’s website and prepare for this journey.

The post Critical Role’s AGE OF UMBRA: SALLOWLANDS Trailer Is Creepy appeared first on Nerdist.

Apple has signed a $30 billion+ multiyear deal with Broadcom to design and produce more than 15 billion U.S.-made custom wireless connectivity chips for Apple products. 

⚡ Quick Take

• M3GAN spinoff SOULM8TE will head straight to digital platforms on August 1, and that makes sense after seeing its trailer.

M3GAN’s lovebot counterpart will not get her chance to shine on the big screen. Last year, Universal dropped SOULM8TE, a spinoff film, from its theatrical slate. The erotic thriller is about a man who gets an AI droid to cope with the loss of his wife. He attempts to fashion a sentient partner but instead ends up with a deadly soulmate. Sounds familiar? It probably does if you’ve seen Companion. Now, SOULM8TE will head straight to digital platforms versus theaters on August 1, and we have a trailer for this film. 

Things go exactly how you’d imagine they would in this clip. We meet a lonely man named David who starts to use his techie brain to tweak a humanoid bot. Why? Because he finds the interactions and expressions of it to be “limited.” Well, after he tweaks this pretty droid, she starts to become obsessed with him, saying she loves him and watching him in his sleep. Predictably, an actual woman comes into a grieving David’s life (hello Victoria Neuman from The Boys!) and his new soulmate is not happy at all.

Universal Pictures

She starts to get violent and deadly with anyone whom she feels stands in her way of having David all to herself. After watching the SOULM8TE trailer, it makes sense why they decided to bring this film to streaming. This feels wholly ridiculous and like a film you should watch at home with a good snack and beverage. It would be hard for this type of film to compete against major blockbuster releases, too.

SOULM8TE will be available to watch through your preferred at home platform on August 1.

The post M3GAN Spinoff SOULM8TE’s Trailer Confirms Why It’s Going to Digital appeared first on Nerdist.

Build a new kind of rocket engine, and the world will beat a path to your door.

Blue Origin is raising $10 billion at a $130 billion pre-money valuation from Coatue Asset Management, Bezos himself and other big-name investors, the New York Times reported.

With funding from tennis star and angel investor Venus Williams, the French app WeWard says that it increases walking time by almost 25%.

Kevin Weil's new role at Stoke Space suggests reusable rockets are the next hot thing in Silicon Valley.

ZML, a hot French AI startup endorsed by Turing Award winner Yann LeCun, has now released ZML/LLMD, software that could make running AI less costly.

AI chip maker SambaNova has raised at an $11B valuation months after Intel was rumored to be trying to buy it for about $1.6 billion.

⚡ Quick Take

• Cable and Apocalypse operate as two side of the same tragic coin in X-Men ’97 season two, which has always been their destinies.

For decades, Cable and Apocalypse have represented opposite ends of the X-Men universe. Cable is the battle-worn soldier who travels through time trying to prevent the world’s darkest futures. Apocalypse is the immortal mutant who believes those futures are inevitable because only the strongest deserve to survive. One fights for hope, while the other preaches survival, and neither one ever really compromises.

On the surface, they couldn’t be more different. But X-Men ’97 season two reveals something more interesting: Cable and Apocalypse aren’t just enemies. They’re reflections of each other, two men shaped by loss, raised by war, and burdened with futures that no one else can fully understand. The real difference is what they choose to do with that trauma.

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The Marvel Comics History of X-MEN ’97’s X-Force

That idea has always been part of X-Men history, but X-Men ’97 shapes it in a way few adaptations have attempted. While Cable fights to protect the future, the series turns backward to explore Apocalypse’s origins, tracing how En Sabah Nur became one of Marvel’s most enduring villains. The result is a story told across the past, present, and future, asking whether destiny is something we inherit or something we create, and it gets especially interesting in the past, where Magneto and Professor X try to pull En Sabah Nur away from the path that will eventually define him in season 2. 

Two Mutants, Two Origins, One Shared Destiny

Understanding why Cable and Apocalypse work so well in X-Men ’97 starts with their origins. Both are shaped by tragedy, violence, and timelines that never allowed them a normal life.

Cable first appeared in The New Mutants #87 (1990), created by Louise Simonson and Rob Liefeld. Introduced as a hardened soldier from the future, he was later revealed to be Nathan Christopher Summers—the son of Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor (a clone of Jean Grey). Infected with the Techno-Organic Virus as an infant, he is sent into a dystopian future ruled by Apocalypse and raised in a war without end. Across The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, X-Men: The Animated Series, and even Deadpool 2, one idea stays consistent: Cable is a man built by a future that was already broken.

That future isn’t the only timeline shaped by Apocalypse’s ideology. In the Age of Apocalypse storyline—the landmark 1995 Marvel event—Apocalypse actually wins, and the result isn’t evolution or order, but a world defined entirely by survival, control, and constant conflict. It’s a version of reality where his philosophy stops being theory and becomes law. And what makes it more unsettling is how directly Cable’s mission runs counter to it: he isn’t just trying to stop Apocalypse in general; he’s trying to prevent that kind of future from ever becoming the standard outcome.

Disney+

Apocalypse’s origin runs in the opposite direction but lands in the same emotional place. First appearing in X-Factor #5 (1986), En Sabah Nur is later redefined in Rise of Apocalypse as a child born into ancient Egypt, abandoned and enslaved because of his appearance. He grows up in a world where power is survival and mercy is a liability. Torture, oppression, and systemic violence shape his worldview until compassion becomes something he cannot afford.

This is where X-Men ’97 adds its strongest layer. It doesn’t just reintroduce Apocalypse as a cosmic threat; it shows the man before the myth. By grounding him in slavery and trauma, the series reframes his ideology not as pure evil, but as something learned through survival. To him, “survival of the fittest” isn’t philosophy—it’s experience.

That’s what makes the contrast with Cable land harder. Both men are shaped by worlds defined by violence. Both lose their childhoods and parents. Both spend their lives trying to reshape the future. But Cable refuses to let pain define his humanity, while Apocalypse allows pain to redefine what humanity should be.

There’s also a subtle tension in their connection that the comics have explored for years. Apocalypse doesn’t just destroy timelines—he shapes them. Cable isn’t just a soldier from the future; he’s a product of that shaping. If survival of the fittest is Apocalypse’s creed, then Cable becomes something almost uncomfortable: proof that his philosophy can produce its own equal. Not unlike a mirror dynamic, their relationship starts to feel less like hero versus villain and more like two opposing ideologies that can’t exist without acknowledging each other.

The series doesn’t soften the physical toll of those ideologies either, often rooting their conflict in brutal, personal stakes. Both Cable and Apocalypse operate in worlds where violence is not abstract—it’s constant, immediate, and defining.

X-Men ’97 Uses Time as Its Greatest Storytelling Weapon Marvel Television

The series builds this contrast by splitting its narrative across timelines. Cable anchors the future, Apocalypse defines the past, and the X-Men exist in the present, caught between two competing visions of tomorrow.

The past shows how people become monsters. The future shows what happens if those monsters win. The present is the only place where anything can still be changed.

Professor X and Magneto have long represented ideological conflict in the X-Men, but Cable and Apocalypse push that idea further because they’re directly connected through time itself. Both have seen humanity at its worst. Both understand suffering in a way most characters never could. But only Cable believes that suffering should end. Apocalypse believes it should continue until only the strongest remain. That difference makes their conflict deeper than a hero-versus-villain. It becomes a disagreement about what pain is for.

Trauma Doesn’t Define a Hero, Choice Does Marvel Television

Every major X-Men story eventually returns to the same question: are we defined by what happens to us, or by what we choose afterward?

Cable spends his life trying to save a future that hasn’t happened yet. Apocalypse believes that future must be tested, broken, refined, and rebuilt through strength. Neither escapes tragedy, but only one refuses to let it become identity.

That’s why Cable embodies the core of the X-Men. Like Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, and Jubilee, he understands that suffering is inevitable, but compassion is a choice. It must be chosen again and again, even when history gives every excuse to abandon it.

Apocalypse makes the opposite choice. He mistakes survival for purpose, strength for morality, and evolution for justice. And that’s what X-Men: Apocalypse hinted at, even when it leaned more toward visual scale than character depth. It showed a man trying to reshape the world by destroying it first, but X-Men ’97 finally slows that idea down enough to ask why.

With more of the season still unfolding, the X-Men’s path toward confronting Apocalypse is only beginning. X-Men ’97 is now streaming on Disney+.

The post Cable and Apocalypse Are Two Sides of the Same Coin in X-MEN ’97 appeared first on Nerdist.