Author: Jay Serafino

Marvel’s resident Hero for Hire, Luke Cage, is ready to go solo when his very own Netflix series debuts on September 30. While this will be many people’s first taste of Cage, the character has actually been around for more than 40 years, and his impact stretches well beyond the streets of Harlem. From his debut as one of Marvel’s only minority comic book characters, to his obscure connection to a Hollywood star, here are five facts you need to know about Luke Cage.

1. YOU CAN THANK BLAXPLOITATION MOVIES FOR HIS CREATION.

In the early 1970s, Marvel saw that pop culture was changing as more ethnic diversity found its way into TV and film. To make sure it didn’t fall behind, the publisher made an effort to introduce more African American superheroes into its books, and for inspiration the company had to look no further than the film movement that defined the early parts of the decade: blaxploitation.

Over-the-top, anti-establishment films like Shaft and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song featured black characters in urban settings that audiences could actually recognize. The unique tone and gloriously violent flair of these movies attracted audiences of all races, so it was only a matter of time before the comic book industry got its own black hero to root for. To capitalize on this movement, writer Archie Goodwin and artists John Romita Sr. and George Tuska created Luke Cage, who made his debut in his very own series Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #1 in 1972. The book was also Marvel’s first solo title starring an African American hero; the Black Panther’s creation preceded Cage’s, but he didn’t receive a solo book until he starred in Jungle Action in 1973 and his own self-titled book in 1977. 

Set in Harlem, Cage uses his superhuman strength and bulletproof skin—which he gained in an experiment—to protect the people of his old neighborhood, as long as they could afford his services (he was a hero for hire after all). Over the decades, Cage shed his ’70s blaxploitation schtick and transformed into a full-fledged part of the Marvel Universe, eventually becoming an Avenger and TV star.

2. HE WAS PAIRED UP WITH IRON FIST BECAUSE THEY WERE BOTH UNPOPULAR.

Today, Luke Cage and Iron Fist may be one of the most popular duos in comics, but the only reason these two characters were ever paired up to begin with was because, well, no one really bought their books. Iron Fist’s solo comic book title was canceled in 1977 due to low sales, but Marvel didn’t want to give up on the character so easily. So that same year, Fist was teamed up with Cage, whose own comic wasn’t exactly a cash cow for the publisher.

Together, the duo saw a renaissance, as Cage’s solo comic book title was renamed Power Man and Iron Fist starting with issue #50 and sales went up. Separately, Fist and Cage weren’t moneymakers for the House of Ideas, but together, their team-up book lasted nearly another decade, ending with #125 in 1986.

3. HE PUT THE “CAGE” IN NICOLAS CAGE.

Nicolas Cage is a notorious comic book junkie—he has owned some of the most expensive issues in the world, he’s a regular sight at comic conventions, and he even played a superhero in the Ghost Rider movies. Comic books are also his namesake.

Nicolas Cage was born Nicolas Coppola, part of the famous Coppola film family that includes director Francis Ford Coppola. To avoid the murkiness of nepotism in Hollywood, though, he decided to change his name to Nicolas Cage, getting his inspiration from Marvel’s Luke Cage, one of his favorite comic characters.

4. HIS SIGNATURE CATCHPHRASE WAS A QUESTIONABLE ATTEMPT AT AUTHENTICITY.

Luke Cage’s creator, Archie Goodwin, wanted the African American roots and street slang of the character to feel authentic, especially in the wake of a successful movie like Shaft. Well, the Marvel comics don’t use the type of real-world profanity used in blaxploitation films, so Goodwin had to be creative, while still retaining that “authentic” feel of the streets. His solution became Cage’s oft-mocked catchphrase, “Sweet Christmas!”

As the Cage character evolved, the catchphrase was dropped, especially as he was put into more serious books that didn’t rely on his exploitative ’70s roots. Though that won’t stop Luke Cage star Mike Colter from saying it a few times in the new show. 

5. QUENTIN TARANTINO WANTED TO MAKE A LUKE CAGE MOVIE IN THE 1990S.

Quentin Tarantino isn’t the type of director to adapt someone else’s story too often, but he almost made an exception in the 1990s, when he entertained the thought of bringing Luke Cage to the big screen. Cage is apparently a favorite of Tarantino’s from his childhood, and after 1992’s Reservoir Dogs the director briefly thought about going to Marvel with his idea for the character. But during an interview with Nerdist, Tarantino said it was actually his comic book fan friends that turned him off the idea:

“In the case of Luke Cage, it was my comic geek friends that almost talked me out of it, because I thought Larry Fishburne back in the day would’ve been a great Luke Cage, and they were talking about Wesley Snipes. And I could see them both, but it was like ‘I think Fish would be better.’ And they go ‘Yeah … he could work out and everything, but he doesn’t have the bod that Wesley Snipes has, and Luke Cage needs to have the bod.’

“And I literally was so turned off that that would be their both starting and ending point, that it literally put it in my head that, if I do a comic book movie, it should be an original character. It should be something I create rather than try to fit in.”

Though the idea of a Tarantino-directed Luke Cage movie is intriguing, film fans can’t argue with the project that he actually decided to go with next: 1994’s Pulp Fiction.

If you’ve ever parked yourself in front of the TV to watch Looney Tunes, The Ren & Stimpy Show, or countless other cartoons, the music of Raymond Scott should be instantly recognizable, even if you’ve never heard of the man himself. The musical mind behind countless Wile E. Coyote chase scenes (unwittingly) gave cartoons their signature sound, but his real passion was invention—especially when it came to the burgeoning world of electronic music.

Scott was born Harry Warnow in Brooklyn, New York in 1908, and was said to be composing his own music by 1924 in the “audio laboratory” he built as a kid. After graduating from New York’s Institute of Musical Art in 1931 (now known as Juilliard), he got a job as a pianist for the CBS Radio orchestra, which was conducted by his brother, Mark. To avoid charges of nepotism, he changed his name to Raymond Scott (which he picked from a Manhattan phone book) and began his career in earnest, establishing a studio, Universal Recording Company, Inc., and a music publishing company, Circle Music, Inc. in 1935.

 

In 1936, Scott formed the Raymond Scott Quintette (which actually had six members, including the father of film composer John Williams) and his unique musical voice began to appear. Scott’s style was a wholly different take on the music of the time—the manic energy and violent rhythms perfectly suited his weariness with modern swing and jazz, and his pieces regularly featured bizarre titles such as “Square Dance for Eight Egyptian Mummies,” “Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals,” and “Harlem Hillbilly.”

Scott’s deconstruction of modern swing music made him something of an eccentric curiosity, but when Warner Bros. bought the rights to his music publishing company in 1942 and began pairing it with their Looney Tunes shorts, he forever became a part of pop culture:

 

Even though Scott never actually wrote music for these cartoons (and may never have even seen them), the pairing was a natural one. Warner’s music director Carl Stalling thought so, too, because he used Scott’s tunes in about 120 Looney Tunes shorts over the next 20 years, with the most popular piece being Scott’s “Powerhouse.”

The deal with Warner Bros. (along with numerous commercial jingles) gave Scott the flexibility to work toward his ultimate goal: invention. In the years after the Warner Bros. purchase, he renewed his focus in the nascent field of electronic music, receiving patents on a number of different instruments, including a sound-effects machine named the Karloff, an early electronic keyboard known as the Clavivox, and his now-legendary attempt at artificial intelligence, the Electronium.

Despite his wild sound, Scott was known for his expectation of perfection from his musicians during practice and a disdain for improvisation. This machine-like attitude toward his musicians helped him make strides in the electronic revolution, as he built an armory of instruments that were less about emotion and more about precision.

Scott spent more than 20 years working on the Electronium, which was conceived as an “Instantaneous Composing Performance Machine” that would compose music while performing it—dubbed by some as “Beethoven in a box.” As advanced as this machine was at the time, Scott’s vision of music’s future ultimately entered the realm of the metaphysical:

“Perhaps within the next hundred years, science will perfect a process of thought transference from composer to listener. The composer will sit alone on the concert stage and merely ‘think’ his idealized conception of his music. Instead of recordings of actual music sound, recordings will carry the brainwaves of the composer directly to the mind of the listener.”

Scott’s later career was marked with all manner of electronic experimentation, including a strange yet pioneering album of synthesized lullabies recorded in 1963 called Soothing Sounds for Baby—a three-volume forerunner to the minimalist movement, composed with his Electronium. His array of unique instruments, musical trinkets, and an inimitable sound led to a number of collaborations with a young Jim Henson, who brought Scott on board in the mid-1960s to provide the music for some of the creator’s early—very non-Muppet-y—films:

 

However, as Scott’s inventions and experiments became more and more idiosyncratic, his music began to move away from profitability. No longer writing music for commercials or mainstream projects, his later work very rarely saw the light of day, as he spent most of his time tinkering away on the Electronium and other projects—living as a recluse, according to some accounts. Scott reportedly sunk close to a million dollars into the development of the Electronium, but despite the investment—and interest from Motown, where he worked as Director of Electronic Music Research and Development in the ’70s—it never became the commercial wonder he imagined, nor was it ever actually completed.

When speaking about Scott’s unconventional mind, electronic music icon (and one of Scott’s occasional collaborators) Bob Moog said:

“He had so much imagination, and so much intuition—this funny intuition that some people have—that he could sort of fish around and get something to work, and do exactly what he wanted it to do. Obviously not everybody could do this. It took a huge amount of money, and a huge amount of imagination. And an impressive amount of craziness too!”

Scott died in 1994, but since then his music has seen something of a rediscovery, at least in certain corners of the industry. To this day, you can still hear “Powerhouse” and other pieces in your favorite cartoons, and Scott’s legacy as a trailblazing figure of electronic music is taking shape as a new generation has come along to add a modern flair to his work. Though people might not have been able to wrap their minds around his inventions and eccentricities at the time, his vision of the future of electronic music no longer sounds so far-fetched.

No matter how much potential a movie might have, sometimes a studio just doesn’t get it right the first time. Whether it’s a matter of the wrong script, weak actors, or subpar directing, sometimes the same story needs to be told a few times on the big screen before it’s done justice. Some of the most popular movies of all times have been preceded by earlier versions of the same story—most of which acted like rough drafts for the eventual masterpiece. Check out earlier versions of six iconic films.

1. THE WIZARD OF OZ (1925)

Not only wasn’t 1939’s The Wizard of Oz the first adaptation of Frank L. Baum’s classic children’s book, it actually wasn’t even close. Before Judy Garland slipped on those ruby red slippers, there were numerous attempts to bring the land of Oz to live-action as both shorts and full-length films.

The most fully realized of these early attempts is 1925’s The Wizard of Oz, starring Dorothy Dwan as (appropriately) Dorothy, writer and comedian Larry Semon as the Scarecrow (and the film’s director), and a young Oliver Hardy as the Tin Man—this movie would premiere just a few years before the formation of the Laurel and Hardy tandem. Despite a screenplay co-written by Semon and Baum’s son, the movie itself bears little resemblance to the book—the Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion are simply farmhands in disguise, and there’s no Wicked Witch chasing the group down with winged monkeys.

The movie itself centers on the royal squabbling in Oz, revolving around Dorothy’s destiny as princess and the inevitable conflict against the aptly named Prime Minister Kruel. Instead of wishing to go back to Kansas, Dorothy falls in love with Prince Kynd of Oz, who beat out a guy dressed in a scarecrow costume to win her affections. The movie was savaged by critics and was a financial disaster—one from which Semon never quite recovered. Before long, he was back on the vaudeville circuit, soon ending up in a sanitarium before his mysterious death at 39.

2. FRANKENSTEIN (1910)

Before Boris Karloff and director James Whale famously gave life to Frankenstein’s monster in 1931, Edison Studios took a crack at the Mary Shelley tale in 1910. In this silent short, Frankenstein’s monster is created through an impressive special effects sequence meant to illustrate how the evil lurking in the mind of its creator literally gave birth to this abomination.

Like the Universal movie decades later, the Edison production isn’t exactly faithful to the source material, though it manages to pull off some genuinely frightening moments—especially given the state of the horror genre in 1910. The movie itself, which has a runtime of less than 20 minutes, was thought lost for years, until it reemerged several decades after its release. Destroying old films to recycle the silver in them was common practice back then, so the fact that this ever saw the light of day again is a feat unto itself.

3. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1946)

Long before Disney turned Beauty and the Beast into the subject of lunch boxes and Halloween costumes the world over, French director Jean Cocteau gave the classic fairytale life for the first time on the big screen. Beauty and the Beast (released as La Belle et la Bête in France) doesn’t feature singing clocks or teapots, but the quirky fantasy elements are still there. There are some sentient candelabras, magical mirrors, enchanted gloves, and of course the Beast himself, whose animalistic look is achieved through some superb makeup.

The ideas in Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast were well ahead of their time and have influenced generations of fantasy filmmakers in the years since its release. There’s fantasy, romance, tragedy, and even some horror—all of the elements you need for a Beauty and the Beast adaptation, and it’s one that any fan of the Mouse House needs to experience.

4. THE MALTESE FALCON (1931)

John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941) is seen as the birth of the film noir movement, but it wasn’t the first attempt at adapting Dashiell Hammett’s pulp crime novel. In 1931, Warner Bros. hired director Roy Del Ruth to bring the novel to life in an era before strict Motion Picture Production Codes sanitized Hammett’s original story.

The movie, like the book, delved into the world of crime, violence, and illicit sex. One of the most controversial parts of the original film dealt with the homosexual relationship between Casper Gutman and Wilmer Cook, which was taken straight from the original novel. Unfortunately for the studio, production codes changed drastically when they tried re-releasing the film a few years later, leading to the film being barred from release.

In order to profit off of Hammett’s popular tale again, the studio decided to simply remake the movie—twice. First as an ill-fated comedy retitled Satan Met A Lady, and later again as The Maltese Falcon, famously starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor. While the end result of this version was toned down considerably from the source material, the stylish production, impeccable acting, and tighter script made the original adaption nothing but a memory. 

5. THE TRAPP FAMILY (1956)

The story of the von Trapp family didn’t first come to theaters with The Sound of Music; instead, it was a West German film titled The Trapp Family that originally brought the family’s exploits into pop culture. Based on Maria von Trapp’s memoir, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, The Trapp Family covers familiar ground: a nun is brought in to care for the family of a wealthy baron, soon turning them into a famous singing group that flees Austria to escape Nazi oppression.

The movie was actually well received by critics and successful enough to spawn a sequel, titled The Trapp Family in America. That title became much more literal as the von Trapp story was soon adapted by Hollywood in 1965 as The Sound of Music, one of the most beloved movies of all time. The film’s musical take on the von Trapp family story—and the fact that it’s not a remake of the original—helped it eclipse The Trapp Family, leaving it a mere footnote in film history.

6. VINYL (1965)

Despite the unfamiliar title, Vinyl is actually a very early adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange, which, of course, was later masterfully filmed by Stanley Kubrick for a 1971 release. There must be something about Burgess’s novel that attracted some of the best artists of the 21st century, because not only did Kubrick give his take on the material, but Vinyl had another genius at the helm: Andy Warhol.

With a cast of novice actors and without the cinematic panache of a Kubrick, Vinyl is more of an experimental oddity than an ideal adaptation of A Clockwork Orange. It’s raw and improvisational as it loosely translated Burgess’s work to the screen. In fact, if you didn’t know it was based on A Clockwork Orange, you’d be hard-pressed to find any shared DNA between the two.

When the Nintendo 64 was released in the U.S. on September 26, 1996, it threw players into a whole new world of gaming. Complete with 3D worlds and 64-bit graphics, this mega console helped turn video gaming into the immersive medium it is today. To celebrate its 20th anniversary in the U.S., check out 10 facts about the Nintendo 64.

1. IT ALMOST HAD A DIFFERENT NAME.

While in development, the Nintendo 64 was codenamed “Project Reality,” but that was obviously never meant for mass consumption. The system did, however, have another name planned for consumers: Ultra 64. That was the working title for the system until the company learned Konami had the word “Ultra” trademarked for its Ultra Games division.

2. ON AVERAGE, GAMES WERE MORE EXPENSIVE THAN THEY ARE TODAY.

$59.99 might sound like a steep price for a game today, but when the N64 was released, titles were actually substantially higher, averaging about $75 a pop when the system first came out. Not only that, but game prices weren’t as consistent as they are now, with some coming in at $59.99 and others (like Killer Instinct Gold) topping out at $79.99—and we’re not even adjusting for inflation.

3. IT LAUNCHED WITH JUST TWO GAMES IN THE U.S.

If you weren’t a fan of the Super Mario Bros. franchise, you were out of luck when the N64 first launched. Outside of Super Mario 64, there was only one other game available when the system first hit shelves: Pilotwings 64. That’s it. Eventual system-sellers like GoldenEye 007, Banjo Kazooie, WCW/nWo Revenge, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time were still a ways off in September 1996. In a bit of digital symmetry, the N64’s launch lineup almost perfectly mirrored that of the Super Nintendo’s, which included Super Mario World, the original Pilotwings, and F-Zero.

4. A PERIPHERAL ALLOWED IT TO GO ONLINE, BUT ONLY IN JAPAN.

Years before online gaming became the norm, Nintendo attempted to bring gamers together with the Nintendo 64DD—a peripheral disc drive that allowed players to interact via the Internet and play games, share creations, and socialize. Unfortunately, due to years of delay, the actual tech behind the 64DD was out of date by the time it became available for purchase, and company support quickly dwindled. It also didn’t help that it was only available in Japan, basically cutting its potential user base into a fraction of its potential.

5. NINTENDO HAD TO SELL MARIO PARTY WITH PROTECTIVE GLOVES.

The Nintendo 64’s controller was oddly shaped and difficult for some gamers to grasp at first, but the implementation of an analog stick is something that systems have been using ever since. However, that stick, despite being a logical leap forward for gaming tech, came back to haunt the company. After receiving complaints about injuries suffered while using the analog stick to play Mario Party, the New York Attorney General came to terms on a settlement with Nintendo to begin selling sports gloves to anyone who bought the title.

What type of injuries could a game controller inflict? Blisters, of course. During portions of the game that required players to move the stick at a rapid pace, people were reporting not only blisters but also puncture wounds, friction burns, and other injuries to the palms of their hands. To avoid an even messier situation, Nintendo agreed to provide worried customers with sports gloves if they called an 800 number. Though the title sold more than 1 million copies, the cost of the gloves bit into the profits for Nintendo; luckily for the company this problem wasn’t widespread, as they had received fewer than 100 complaints from parents over the years.

6. PEOPLE ARE ROUTINELY BEATING SUPER MARIO 64 IN LESS THAN TWO HOURS.

Super Mario 64 was a big deal for Nintendo in 1996: It revolutionized 3D game design and proved that simple mechanics can make the jump to a far more powerful console. The game’s impact was so huge that it’s still being played today—albeit by speed runners looking to get into the record book for the fastest completion time.

By memorizing each section of the game, and exploiting a few glitches here and there, players have found ways to complete Super Mario 64 in under two hours. As of right now, the record for the fastest time collecting all 120 stars in the game is one hour, 40 minutes, and 12 seconds.

7. THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: OCARINA OF TIME WAS ALMOST A FIRST-PERSON GAME.

If you think fans were enraged when The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker gave the franchise a cel-shaded makeover, imagine how they would have reacted if Nintendo went ahead with its early idea of making Ocarina of Time from the first-person perspective. In an interview about the game’s development, designer Yoshiaki Koizumi said creator Shigeru Miyamoto toyed with the idea early on:

“Right. In the beginning, he had the image that you are at first walking around in first-person, and when an enemy appeared, the screen would switch, Link would appear, and the battle would unfold from a side perspective.”

8. THE CARTRIDGES KEPT CERTAIN GAMES FROM SEEING THE LIGHT OF DAY.

Nintendo’s insistence on sticking with cartridges over discs was seen by some as one of the charms of the company, but the reality was that the decision held the system back in countless ways. Simply put, discs on a system like Sony’s PlayStation could hold more data than cartridges, and while discs do require loading times (sometimes lengthy loading times for those who remember), you could pack more high-quality graphics, video, and audio into a game that way.

While Sony could release sprawling, technologically superior games like Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid on two or three discs, the N64 would have had to use numerous cartridges to fit the same game, which was incredibly cost-prohibitive and cumbersome. As the console wars raged on, this relegated the N64 to releasing first-party titles with simpler, more cartoonish graphics, while Sony was able to push the limits further with a range of outside developers.

9. SHIGERU MIYAMOTO WANTED GOLDENEYE 007 TO END WITH EVERYONE SHAKING HANDS.

When you look across the vast library of Nintendo games over the years, there’s one thing that’s (almost) noticeably absent compared to other systems: violence. The company has always held tight as the more “family-friendly” gaming option, with Mario, Luigi, and even Zelda providing fairly bloodless adventures. But one of the Nintendo 64’s most popular games also happened to be one of the most violent: GoldenEye 007.

Despite its popularity, all the guns and killing didn’t exactly thrill Shigeru Miyamoto, who, at one point, suggested after the main mission was over, players should be able to “shake hands with all your enemies in the hospital,” according to an interview with the game’s director, Martin Hollis.

10. SUPER MARIO BROS. 64 IS STILL THE CONSOLE’S BESTSELLING GAME.

This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise: Super Mario 64 is the bestselling game on the Nintendo 64—by a lot. It sold around 11.89 million copies, while Mario Kart 64, the next highest seller, sold around 9.87 million. GoldenEye 007 came in third, with 8.09 million copies sold.

The movie industry has always pushed the limits of technology to create those incredible visual effects we see on the big screen. Specially designed cameras, state-of-the-art computers, and meticulous animatronics are just a few of the tools at the disposal of directors looking to bring their vision to life. But over the years, some of the most iconic effects have been completed using much more modest means, including a little paint, some simple prosthetics, and … a sock? Check out how some of Hollywood’s most memorable special effects shots were created.

1. THE SPEEDER BIKE CHASE // RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983)

The original Star Wars trilogy utilized nearly every trick in the special effects book to realize George Lucas’s vision of a galaxy far, far away. There were detailed models for intergalactic dog fights, stop-motion work for the famous Battle of Hoth, and groundbreaking creature designs for Jabba the Hutt and the other aliens that populated the world. But one of the most difficult sequences to crack was the speeder bike chase from Return of the Jedi.

You would think it was simple: get Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, and some Stormtroopers on prop bikes, put them in front of some fake trees, and get filming. Well, the problem is the speed Lucas wanted was nearly impossible to convey with matte paintings or models—audiences needed to see trees whiz by in order to feel how fast these bikes were moving. 

To achieve this, the team at ILM walked through a disguised path in the woods of Cheatham Grove, California with a Steadicam shooting one frame per second. Projecting that footage back at 24 frames-per-second makes it come out—you guessed it—24 times faster. Special effects guru Dennis Muren, who worked on the shoot, estimated the cameraman was walking 5 mph, so when you replay that 24 times faster, you’re over 100 mph. When that sped-up footage was projected behind Hamill and Fisher on their prop bikes—along with some clever editing, first-person shots, and even a few models—it made for one of the most memorable sequences of the entire trilogy.

2. THE TORNADO // THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)

While a tornado might not sound too daunting for today’s special effects teams, in the 1930s the crew of The Wizard of Oz needed to get creative to bring the movie’s twister to life. Special effects director Arnold Gillespie first tried to film a rubber cone to simulate the tornado, but it was too rigid to be believable. He then took inspiration from the wind socks found at airports and used a cloth muslin sock for the effect. The steel gantry that held the cloth from above the set cost more than the budget for the entire scene, but because of the sock’s pliability, it made for a perfect cyclone. To top off the effect, compressed air hoses shot sand and dirt at, and through, the sock, giving the illusion of giant clumps of earth being kicked up in the storm’s path.

3. NAZI FACE MELTING // RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)

There are a lot of prosthetic heads that have been blown up, mangled, and crushed throughout the grand history of the movie business, but few have been disposed of in more gruesome fashion than the melting face of Nazi Arnold Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark. For the movie’s climax, Steven Spielberg needed Toht’s whole head to melt on-screen in a full gory display, and to do this, a gelatin mold of actor Ronald Lacey’s head had to be made.

The head was created in different colored layers to get flesh, muscle, bone, and blood in there; then the whole contraption was melted using controlled heat. To get the effect just right, the head was melted gradually, but it was shot at less than a frame per second, so it unfolds quickly on screen when it is projected back at standard speed. Think of it as face-melting time-lapse. 

4. THE EXPLODING HEAD // SCANNERS (1981)

Even if you’ve only seen the GIF, chances are you’re familiar with Louis Del Grande’s exploding head from David Cronenberg’s Scanners. For this scene, Cronenberg wanted a prosthetic head to explode without the use of pyrotechnics, since a pyrotechnic explosion would cause a spark or a flash on camera, which wouldn’t make sense since the head was supposed to explode due to telekinesis in the film.  

For the actual head, the crew experimented with plaster and wax models before finally realizing that a gelatin mold of Del Grande’s head, lined with a plaster “skull,” would achieve the desired effect of a real head and skin. The mold was then filled with fake blood, wax bits, and “leftover burgers” to get that gray matter just right.

However, getting the whole thing to explode was another challenge—nothing seemed to work. Well, the best solution is usually the most obvious, and special effects supervisor Gary Zeller decided to get the explosion right the only way he knew how: he sat behind the dummy, turned on all the cameras, and shot the back of the skull with a shotgun. Case closed.

5. WALKING ON THE CEILING // 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

To appreciate the special effects from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, you have to understand where we were as a planet when it premiered in 1968. Not only had we not yet landed on the moon (that would happen the next year); we had never even seen a full picture of Earth from space—that wouldn’t happen until 1972. Yet despite that, Kubrick managed to give audiences a vision of the moon and outer space that’s so authentic, it has actually become the subject of conspiracy theories. And one of the director’s crowning achievements in space photography? Gravity—or the lack thereof.

To realistically simulate life aboard Discovery One, Kubrick paid special attention to the artificial gravity that would have been necessary to help astronauts live comfortably, including how they went about their exercise. In one of the film’s most impressive scenes, audiences observe astronaut Frank Poole jogging in the ship’s rotating centrifuge, seemingly running upside down at points.

The movie is meant to show the ship’s rotation simulating gravity in space, yet to achieve the effect on-screen Kubrick had a mammoth $750,000 set built that would rotate like a Ferris wheel. Actor Gary Lockwood wasn’t actually running at all; he was simply moving in place at the same speed opposite the set’s rotation. Some inventive camera angles were then used to cap off the illusion.

The other, perhaps more impressive, use of this same technique came when a stewardess is seen seemingly walking upside down while taking a tray of food to the cockpit of the Aries. Despite all appearances to the contrary, the actress actually remained upright the entire time—to an audience, though, she looks to be a 21st-century Fred Astaire. This effect, again, implemented a rotating set and camera that moved along with it.

6. THE RIPPLING WATER CUP // JURASSIC PARK (1993)

By this point, any movie buff knows how the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park were achieved—a little bit of animatronics and CGI and voila!—but what about the movie’s most famous non-dino scene: the rippling water cup. It seems simple enough, especially compared to the rest of the movie’s mammoth effects, but it took a little Earth, Wind, and Fire to inspire Spielberg to even do the scene in the first place.

On a drive, the director was listening to the iconic funk group when he noticed his mirrors were shaking along with the bass. He then called effects supervisor Michael Lantieri and told him, “We need to shake the mirror, and then I wanna do something with the water.” To get the rearview mirror to shake took nothing more than a small motor, but the water was a different story. It wasn’t until Lantieri experimented with different notes on a guitar that he finally found the right frequency to get Spielberg’s water trembling with the perfect rings.

Recreating this happy accident on set required a guitar string to be fed underneath the truck where the cup of water was being held. Someone would have to lay under the truck and actually pluck the string to get it just right for the screen. In a movie dependent on bringing prehistoric beasts back to life, it was a few water ripples that proved to be one of the more unique special effects problems to solve.

7. THE CHESTBURSTER // ALIEN (1979)

The creature effects designed for Ridley Scott’s Alien were a cut above what the sci-fi genre had to offer at the time, but the one moment that sticks out most is the infamous chestburster scene. To get the extraterrestrial fetus to burst from John Hurt’s chest cavity just right—and to get a legitimately terrified reaction from the actors along the way—Scott depended on two things: secrecy and a butcher shop.

To simulate a human body, Hurt had to slip underneath a prosthetic body with only his real arms, neck, and head sticking out from beneath a table. Then, the crew filled a fake chest cavity with all manner of animal organs taken from a local butcher shop, along with tiny hoses to spray fake blood when the time was right. This whole time, the rest of the cast was kept in the dark about the scene—the only thing written in the script was “This thing emerges” from Hurt’s character’s chest.

“This thing” happened to be a rabid alien puppet with sharp teeth, spewing blood and entrails all over the other characters when it finally emerged. The stream of blood was so violent that star Veronica Cartwright passed out when she got a face full of the stuff. This technique of pure shock was Scott’s doing, who didn’t want any of the actors to “act” scared. He wanted the real deal.

George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) blew audiences away with over-the-top action scenes, highlighted by some of the most intense vehicular carnage ever committed to the screen. But in a blockbuster landscape dominated by computer-generated special effects, it’s easy to overlook Miller’s dedication to practical stunt work on the film.

In the above video, courtesy of ESPORTS TV, you can see how Miller and his team filmed Fury Road‘s spectacular car wrecks in real life, before using CGI to polish them off. The footage is basically four minutes of twisted metal, pole-vaulting stuntmen and women, and a never-ending supply of chaotic pyrotechnics strewn across the vast sands of what would become a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Don’t be surprised if this leaves you with the urge to revisit Fury Road all over again.

[h/t io9]

Banner images courtesy of YouTube.

Nintendo has always prided itself on being at the forefront of the video game industry, but the company has been notoriously slow to adapt to the mobile gaming market. It took until this past spring for its first app, Miitomo, to debut for iOS and Android, with the slow pace causing unrest among shareholders. Miitomo isn’t even a game—it’s more of a social networking app that made very little impact on users. But now it looks like the company is finally all-in on mobile gaming, as it has officially announced that this December will see the debut of Super Mario Run for iOS. 

The title was announced by legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto during today’s Apple event. As reported by The Verge, Miyamoto showed a demo of the game, which, contrary to the title, isn’t just a clone of the countless infinite run games available on mobile. Instead, the demo showed a player jumping, stomping, and sprinting through a traditional-looking Mario level with graphics similar to the more recent DS titles. 

Since this was one of the big reveals at the Apple event, there is of course some important news for iOS lovers. Super Mario Run will be available exclusively through The App Store before being available on Android. When that happens is a mystery, as Kotaku is reporting that Nintendo only said, “We do intend to release the game on Android devices at some point in the future.”

Kotaku also has footage of the reveal and gameplay from Super Mario Run, which you can watch in the video below: