Hollywood director James Cameron has once again issued a warning about AI gaining control over weapons systems, pointing to the potential for a “Terminator-style apocalypse.”
Cameron, creator of the Avatar and Terminator franchises, has spoken about the dangers of putting weapons of mass destruction in the hands of AI multiple times in the past. 1984’s The Terminator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cybernetic assassin sent back in time to assassinate the mother of the future savior of mankind, revolves around a post-apocalyptic future caused by a nuclear attack from a hostile artificial intelligence.
Speaking to Rolling Stone about his upcoming adaptation of the new book Ghosts of Hiroshima, Cameron pointed to The Terminator’s fictional future as potentially becoming a reality.
“Look, I mean, I do think there’s still a danger of a Terminator-style apocalypse where you put AI together with weapons systems, even up to the level of nuclear weapon systems, nuclear defense counterstrike, all that stuff,” he said.
“Because the theater of operations is so rapid, the decision windows are so fast, it would take a superintelligence to be able to process it, and maybe we’ll be smart and keep a human in the loop. But humans are fallible, and there have been a lot of mistakes made that have put us right on the brink of international incidents that could have led to nuclear war.
“So I don’t know. I feel like we’re at this cusp in human development where you’ve got the three existential threats: climate and our overall degradation of the natural world, nuclear weapons, and superintelligence. They’re all sort of manifesting and peaking at the same time. Maybe the superintelligence is the answer. I don’t know. I’m not predicting that, but it might be.”
But is a Terminator-style apocalypse actually likely? A Wired article published this week revealed nuclear experts believe mixing AI and nuclear weapons is inevitable.
Elsewhere in the interview, Cameron revealed that “horrific” dreams he suffered that were informed by his knowledge of the environmental effects of the bombs described in Ghosts of Hiroshima, “became The Terminator.”
Cameron continued:
“When I was writing, imagining the story for Terminator 2, a song kept going through my head, which was Sting’s [Russians, where he sings] ‘I hope the Russians love their children, too.’ And my original title for that film was actually The Children’s Crusade. When Sarah sees the children in the playground incinerated, that was the core image for that film, and then she gets incinerated herself. So it was really about mothers, children. She was highly dehumanized at the beginning of that story. She finds her empathy, she breaks through that wall, and so I was dealing with all those themes back then. I can only hope that I’m just maybe a better, more experienced filmmaker now, and I can deal with this subject respectfully and correctly.”
The 70-year-old Terminator creator has called his adaptation an “uncompromising theatrical film” that focuses on the true story of a man who survived both bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.
In an interview with Deadline, where he was asked about Ghosts of Hiroshima’s potential in the context of Oppenheimer’s $1 billion box office and seven-Oscar haul.
“Yeah… it’s interesting what he stayed away from,” Cameron replied, before suggesting Ghosts of Hiroshima may not have the kind of mainstream breakthrough appeal Oppenheimer managed. “Look, I love the filmmaking, but I did feel that it was a bit of a moral cop out.”
Cameron continued: “Because it’s not like Oppenheimer didn’t know the effects. He’s got one brief scene in the film where we see — and I don’t like to criticize another filmmaker’s film — but there’s only one brief moment where he sees some charred bodies in the audience and then the film goes on to show how it deeply moved him. But I felt that it dodged the subject. I don’t know whether the studio or Chris felt that that was a third rail that they didn’t want to touch, but I want to go straight at the third rail. I’m just stupid that way.”
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
This article contains spoilers for Wednesday Season 2… and Season 1, for that matter.
There are a few givens when you’re dealing with the Addams Family. They’re creepy and they’re kooky, of course; they can also be mysterious and spooky. They’re altogether ooky, but through two seasons (or at least a season and a half), Netflix’s Wednesday has failed these basic assignments. While the show is a gargantuan hit for the streamer, it’s one that completely misunderstands the source material, and continues to do so from the cold open of Season 2 onwards.
Created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, the Jenna Ortega star vehicle is based on the Addams Family characters created by cartoonist Charles Addams and initially appearing in The New Yorker starting in 1938. They’ve appeared on TV before, in movies, on stage, and even on pinball machines. The grim, grotesque, and hilarious extended Addams Family are as iconic in their own ways as Spider-Man, Batman, and the rest, recognized the world over in all their black-clad forms.
Other than the physical trappings, however, the characters on Wednesday are mostly unrecognizable to fans of the cartoons and movies thanks to a general softening of the premise to turn it into your run-of-the-mill supernatural school/mystery series. Instead of inhabiting the Addams’ dilapidated mansion, Wednesday (Ortega) is sent to Nevermore Academy, ostensibly Hogwarts for magical monsters with significantly less financial support for transphobic billionaires. There, Wednesday should be less of a weirdo and outcast given that everyone is weirdos and outcasts. But she wears black and white as opposed to the school’s purple and black (still pretty ooky if you ask us), and insists at every turn that she’s a weirdo. She does not, like Riverdale’s Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse), wear a hat, but that’s about the level of weird she is on the show, which is to say, not that weird.
A Family That Slays Together
The main conflict of the series, other than monsters attacking the school for monsters and a general X-Men-esque hatred of the students by the normies in town, is between Wednesday and her mother, Morticia Addams (Catherine Zeta-Jones), seemingly only because Wednesday is grossed out by her mom loving her dad, though it might also be construed as general teen rebellion.
This, by the way, is fine. Part of the point of adaptation is that things are different and not direct reproductions of what’s come before. Gough and Millar are creating a version of the Addams Family that isn’t the 1960s sitcom; this one is built for 2020s streaming, complete with serialized plots and a little thing called character growth. You can’t have a character like Wednesday not grow in some form on a Netflix prestige series in 2025. This Wednesday, however, is so different from her New Yorker beginnings, and in particular from the Wednesday that appeared in the faithfully-adapted, Barry Sonnenfeld-directed Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993), that the show is missing the point entirely.
Ortega’s performance as Wednesday is clearly influenced by Christina Ricci’s deadpan rendition in the Sonnenfeld movies.
“Gomez and Pugsley are enthusiastic,” Addams noted. “Morticia is even in disposition, muted, witty, sometimes deadly. Grandma Frump is foolishly good-natured. Wednesday is her mother's daughter. A closely-knit family, the real head being Morticia – although each of the others is a definite character – except for Grandma, who is easily led. Many of the troubles they have as a family are due to Grandma's fumbling, weak character. The house is a wreck, of course, but this is a house-proud family just the same, and every trap door is in good repair. Money is no problem.”
While Ortega’s performance as Wednesday is clearly influenced by Christina Ricci’s deadpan rendition in the Sonnenfeld movies, there is generally zero enthusiasm to be had from the character, who would rather “nope” out of every situation to work on her novel or play her cello. It’s only through the addition of psychic precognition powers and the, yes, enthusiasm of her roommate Enid (Emma Myers) that Netflix’s Wednesday is compelled to do anything. She certainly barely tortures Pugsley, something they both enjoy in every other iteration of the Addams saga, and without the house, there can be no “proud of the house” plotlines. In fact, given how scattered the Addams Family is in Wednesday, there’s not a lot of love shown between them, either.
That’s the big emotional hole at the center of Wednesday, which it attempts to fill with the ENTIRELY PLATONIC relationship between the EXTREMELY STRAIGHT AND HETEROSEXUAL Wednesday and Enid, who BOTH HAVE MULTIPLE ROMANTIC INTERESTS WHO ARE MEN, OKAY? As for the family, instead of showing how in the midst of being the biggest weirdos in town, enjoying murder and torture and watching things die, the Addams Family still loves each other deeply, we get them bristling as they try to spend time together, far more interested in the legacy of Nevermore Academy than the other Addamses.
The darkly baroque humor of the comics is subsumed in quips and quirks, the hard edges softened for a more modern and presumably teen audience, who frankly can take the darkness and deserves better. But by sanding the edges off the property, Gough and Millar remove what makes the Addams Family unique. They are supposed to be all edge for the outside world, barbs and thorns and spikes; to each other, though, they express nothing but love, not through softness but through those same barbs and thorns and spikes, which they also love. It’s that dichotomy that fuels the laugh-out-loud nature of the best of the Addamses throughout the past 87 years.
Misunderstood Monsters
Interestingly, it’s the same sort of criticism that Addams himself lobbed at the ‘60s sitcom.
“Charles was up-and-down on the television show. He certainly enjoyed what The Addams Family did for his earning power, but he said the characters were ‘half as evil,’” said Addams biographer Linda H. Davis in an interview. “To be honest, he didn’t even really watch it, because on Friday nights he was usually out to dinner or on a date.”
If the characters were half as evil on The Addams Family sitcom, they’re not even a quarter evil on Wednesday; they’re objectively good. Chaotic good, sure, but that’s a 180-degree turn from where they’ve been depicted before.
Take, for example, the cold open of Wednesday Season 2. In it, we catch up with the title character on her summer break, where she’s spent time tracking down a serial killer she was obsessed with in her youth. So far, so true to the Addamses. Even allowing herself to be captured and tied up by the killer (played by Haley Joel Osment) is consistent with Wednesday’s character the way it was set out all those years ago. But what happens next decidedly is not.
Instead of asking for tips from the killer – as we all know, Wednesday loves murder – she gives him up to the cops to face justice. Sure, she shaves a head before she hands him over, but even that’s because he used human hair from his victims to create dolls. It’s not dark, it’s not whimsical, and it’s not weird. It’s exactly the sort of thing you would see any other supernatural avenger do, and it’s the same thing that happens over and over throughout the second season of Wednesday, as the character barely begrudges doing the right thing and helping out her friends.
This misunderstanding gets passed to the other characters as well, most notably Fester (Fred Armisen), who strikes up a romance with a lunch lady halfway through Season 2, Part 1, and then leaves her by telling her that of all the women he’s romanced, she was his favorite. There’s no joke there, no dark turn, just…he really liked her. And while a tango included in Season 2 nods to the razor-hot romance Morticia and Gomez (Luis Guzmán) exhibit in other versions of the Addams Family story, the two are mostly apart.
Full of Woe
What’s particularly disappointing about all this is that Tim Burton, one of the main creatives behind Wednesday, should be a perfect fit for the material. Burton almost single-handedly invented a generation of Hot Topic Goths thanks to Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and more. And while a stop-motion sequence early in Season 2 finds that old Burton peeking through, his signature style is subsumed for the general blandness of the stores in the rest of the mall. Given that Burton was reportedly considered for the Sonnenfeld films, and Sonnenfeld was always considered to be chasing what Burton had, it’s wild that Sonnenfeld clearly got what the Addamses are about in a way that Burton and company have entirely missed. Heck, Burton flirted with a stop-motion version of the Addams Family that never came to be, so he’s clearly been thinking about this for years; instead, we got direction that might just as well be from Anonymous The CW Supernatural Series Director #2.
You will find your people eventually, even if you’re into a little recreational murder and torture.
To get back to the point of adaptation, does all this really matter? Only in that there’s a reason the Addams Family has maintained its cultural impact for almost 90 years; of note, perhaps, to those who similarly think things have gone awry, the original New Yorker cartoons will enter the public domain in 2034. Wednesday presents less of the darkness in the character than that seen in the cartoons and movies, yes. But it also presents a lot less of the familial love and heart that infused prior iterations as well, showing weirdos that it is not just okay to be weird – it’s great, with the underlying message that you will find your people eventually, even if you’re into a little recreational murder and torture. Wednesday instead shows us the opposite – that the outliers need to join with everyone else to be truly happy. That’s neither creepy nor kooky nor mysterious and spooky; it’s just sad.
South Park Season 27 episode Got a Nut aired on Comedy Central last night, and as expected it doubled down on Trump political satire.
This week’s episode was delayed from last week following the high-profile season premiere. Neither Comedy Central nor Parker or Stone have explained the skip, but during their San Diego Comic-Con 2025 panel, which took place the day after the Trump-skewering premiere aired, Parker said they were unsure what the next episode would be, revealing the decision was “super stressful.”
(Parker and Stone create each episode of South Park week by week, which makes for a chaotic production, but topical shows.)
Now episode two is finally here, and we can see South Park is still very much up for its fight with the Trump administration.
Warning! Spoilers for South Park Season 27 Episode 2 ‘Got a Nut’ follow:
Got a Nut featured a satirical parody of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate as a Fantasy Island-inspired setting, and included portrayals of political figures such as Trump himself (again), Vice President JD Vance, and United States Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, weaving in themes of immigration enforcement and real-world controversies.
South Park w/ another Trump episode but got VP JD Vance as Tattoo from Fantasy Island! Im crying 😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/v7Tufgt7lM
At one point Krypto the Superdog, fresh from starring in James Gunn's DCU film Superman, swoops in, but Noem kills the poor pooch (the clip below is very much NSFW).
Ahead of this week’s episode, South Park hit the headlines once again after the official Twitter / X account of the United States Department of Homeland Security posted a still from the episode two trailer to promote the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s website.
The still used was taken from the trailer for this week’s episode, which includes a shot of Mr. Mackey looking nervous in the back of an ICE van. Mr. Mackay loses his job and desperately tries to find a new way to make a living. Encouraged by Trump, Mr. Mackay ends up working for ICE.
“The Left’s hypocrisy truly has no end — for years they have come after South Park for what they labeled as ‘offense’ [sic] content, but suddenly they are praising the show,” Trump White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told Rolling Stone.
“Just like the creators of South Park, the Left has no authentic or original content, which is why their popularity continues to hit record lows. This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention. President Trump has delivered on more promises in just six months than any other president in our country’s history — and no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump’s hot streak.”
The F.C.C. recently approved Skydance’s $8 billion merger with Paramount, which had needed Trump administration approval. Neither Parker nor Stone addressed the merger, which they had criticized for delaying South Park Season 27's release date, during the Comic-Con panel, nor did they respond to the White House's statement.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Battlefield 6 developer DICE has said it’s working on a "substantial" increase in server capacity for the Battlefield 6 Open Beta, after the early access launch was met with huge Steam concurrents and equally huge queues.
At time of this article’s publication, the Battlefield 6 open beta had over 300,000 concurrent players on Steam alone, making it the third most-played game on Valve’s platform behind only Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2. We don’t have concurrent player figures from Sony or Microsoft, so the open beta’s true concurrent figure will be much higher.
But not all those players are actually playing. Those with early access were met with huge queues (we've seen 250,000 in screenshots posted to social media) as the servers hit max capacity. In response, DICE issued a statement to say it was working to improve matters:
“The team is now working on a substantial increase in server capacity, which will reduce your time in the queue,” DICE said. “Thank you for your continued patience as we work to get as many of you into the game as soon as possible.
“We're looking forward to seeing you experience Battlefield 6, and we appreciate your patience!”
That statement followed a message in which DICE explained why it was using queues in the first place.
“We will use queues to protect the player experience but expect this impact to be minimal,” DICE insisted.
“You may encounter this during high peak moments, such as the start of servers going live. The team is working constantly to reduce any queue that takes place.”
Holy sh*t 🤣 More than 270.000 players are waiting in server queue!
The suggestion here is that the open beta is peaking now as the early access kicks off, but the queues will ease. Given the open beta has gone live in early access form ahead of the U.S. waking up, it seems likely the player count will grow in the coming hours, and again when the open beta goes live for all this weekend.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is getting the dinosaur-infested islands from the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies. You'll be able to zoom overhead among pterosaurs, and ferry guests back and forth between Isla Nublar and the mainland.
The add-on, Jurassic World: Archipelago, will launch for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 in around a month's time (the exact date and price is still TBA), with versions for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and Xbox launching soon after.
Developed by Flight Sim add-on maker Orbx Studios, the expansion will add the franchise's original Isla Nublar as well as the five islands of the Cinco Muertes Archipelago seen in subsequent films: Isla Sorna, Isla Matanceros, Isla Muerta, Isla Tacaño, and Isla Pena.
"Set just before the events of the 2015 Jurassic World film from Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment, the islands are captured at a moment when the park is operational but not everything is under control," a blurb for the add-on reads.
"Half a dozen airstrips and twice as many helipads await across the islands – some more familiar than others – but all interesting destinations of their own. For your flights to and from Costa Rica, we have included custom scenery at both Juan Santamaria Airport and Herradura Bay Marina. To accompany your free explorations, structured activities have you transport VIPs, take photographs on a guided tour, and practice your aviator’s skills in challenging locations."
A Hollywood Legend, now for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024🦖
Jurassic World: Archipelago is coming to Microsoft Flight Simulator!
Orbx, in collaboration with Universal Products & Experiences, is excited to reveal Jurassic World: Archipelago, an upcoming add-on for Microsoft… pic.twitter.com/4Vac2WaAwQ
Dinosaur fans will be able to spot the apatosaurus, brachiosaurus, dimorphodon, gallimimus, mosasaurus, pteranodon, stegosaurus, tyrannosaurus rex and velociraptor on the islands themselves, which are also dotted with airstrips and helipads if you want to make a quick getaway.
If you have Flight Simulator 2024 installed, you will be able to buy Jurassic World: Archipelago directly from the in-game marketplace, or on PC via Orbx website. And if you're still playing Flight Simulator 2020, do not worry — there are plans to bring the expansions dinosaurs to Microsoft's older game at some point.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
The Early Access Open Beta phase for Battlefield 6 is in full swing, and after waiting over 40 minutes, I was finally able to play. So, let’s see how the game runs on an NVIDIA RTX 4090 at 4K. I wanted to try the beta with both the NVIDIA RTX 4090 and the NVIDIA RTX … Continue reading Battlefield 6 Open Beta – First Performance Impressions→
If you’re trying to play the Battlefield 6 Open Beta on PC, you might have run into a problem: ‘Secure Boot is not enabled.’
You are not alone. PC gamers hoping to play DICE’s latest now open beta early access is live have no choice but to enable Secure Boot on their PC. And a cursory glance at social media, subreddits and IGN’s own comments suggest some are having trouble with it.
To be clear, EA has published a user guide for how to enable Secure Boot on PC, and promoted that guide across social media. It’s a guide I myself had to use to boot the Battlefield 6 Open Beta. But it certainly requires a degree of confidence, as it involves tinkering with a part of a computer not all PC gamers will be instantly familiar with: the BIOS.
There are things like TPM 2.0 (which must be turned on) to deal with, and you need to make sure your Windows disk is GPT and not MBR (not everyone will know what these are). All this before you can even enable Secure Boot — and then you may not be able to enable it anyway, which then means you need to refer to your manufacturer for guidance (gulp!).
Yes, this won’t be a problem for more experienced PC gamers, but it will be an intimidating process for many others. And if you think this is something isolated to Battlefield 6, you’d be wrong. Just yesterday, Activision announced the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will require the exact same thing: Secure Boot enabled.
So, what’s all this in aid of? Strengthening game security using built-in Windows PC features. It’s no secret that cheating in competitive multiplayer games is a huge problem for publishers. Activision has spent millions trying to reverse the narrative for Call of Duty. EA will be mindful of Battlefield 6 getting overrun at launch. It seems TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot are the new reality for PC gamers.
Here's Activision's explanation, from a blog post published yesterday:
TPM 2.0 (Trusted Platform Module) is an industry-standard, hardware-based security feature built onto CPUs or motherboards that verifies the PC’s boot process has not been tampered with. Secure Boot makes sure a PC can only load trusted software when Windows starts.
When Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 releases later this year, TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot will be required to play on PC. "These hardware-level protections are a key part of our anti-cheat efforts, and we’re asking all players to get compliant now," Activision warned.
Back to Battlefield 6, and the open beta Secure Boot process has certainly caused some people to panic, and others to find themselves with additional problems they didn’t have before. Early indications suggest there’s huge interest in the Battlefield 6 open beta, so it will be interesting to see how this one develops over the course of the weekend.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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