Emma Stefansky

Carrie Fisher’s death was a monumental tragedy not just for her fans, but for her whole Star Wars family, who all had a hard time managing the loss of someone so vibrant. Plus, the question lingered about the final episode: Fisher’s work on The Last Jedi had been completed before she died, but what about Episode 9? From the looks of it, General Leia’s character may be recast, which is for the best, because apparently Leia has a pretty huge role in the final movie.

Amazon has just announced their upcoming June slate, and subscribers will be getting quite a few treats next month. Two highly anticipated (and very good) Amazon Original movies are joining the site: Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson, a film that, if you’re not already, will make you fall in love with Adam Driver, and Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar winner The Salesman. If you missed either of these when they hit theaters during awards season, now you have all the time in the world to enjoy them.

Paramount has been doing some release date reshuffling, and, oddly enough, they’ve moved another one of this year”s movies up a couple days. Now, Transformers: The Last Knight will open in theaters Wednesday, June 21, instead of that Friday, June 23. Interesting.

The Guardians of the Galaxy movies throw a bit of a wrench into what has so far been a pretty linear cinematic franchise. It’s understood that all of the MCU movies, except for the ones that are period productions and as such are set in the past, are set in the year in which they come out. Iron Man was set in 2008, The Avengers is set in 2012, and so on. But the Guardians of the Galaxy movies are a little different. Guardians 1 takes place in the Earth-year 2014 (although you’d never know it, given the extraterrestrial setting and retro feel), but Guardians Vol. 2 is set only a few months after the first one, so, still in 2014. That sets them a teeny bit apart from the rest of the movies, as, by Infinity War, the Avengers have been cruising through to the year 2018. But it appears that the Guardians will finally be catching up, as James Gunn revealed Vol. 3 will take place after Avengers 4.

Back in 2015, Activision created Activision Blizzard Studios, which was in charge of coming up with ideas for how to turn their “vast library of intellectual property” into films and TV shows. It’s an ambitious undertaking, given the vast amount of video game content they have at their disposal, and now, after almost two years, a team of writers has planned out a Call of Duty cinematic universe.

Logan works on many levels, mostly as a swan song for Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. We’ve known for ages that this would be his last run playing the character, and Logan gives him an appropriately melancholy, moving send-off. But, had Marvel and 20th Century Fox been able to reach some kind of deal before Jackman made the decision not to sign on for another movie after this one, his Wolverine might have stuck around.

Test screening metrics don’t always accurately predict the quality of a movie — Batman v. Superman reportedly got a standing ovation during its test screening, which wasn’t exactly indicative of audiences’ reactions once the movie premiered. But Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 has accomplished an even bigger feat: a coveted perfect 100 score after testing audiences, the highest of any Marvel movie to date.

Alien: Covenant will be the sixth Alien film released since Ridley Scott’s original 1979 movie (or eighth, if you count both Alien vs. Predator movies), and as such is the continuation of one of the longest-running franchises in film history. James Cameron, director of Aliens, recently spoke about his feelings on the series and revealed that he thinks it may have gone too far, although he does clarify that he’s down for whatever Ridley Scott wants to do.

Film and technology have always been closely linked, but these days they’re beginning to influence each other in ways we can’t even foresee. Take Kristen Stewart’s first directorial effort Come Swim, for instance, which will be premiering at the Sundance Film Festival: Stewart, her producer, and an engineer teamed up to use her movie to author a research paper about artificial intelligence. Why not?

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is coming out in a week(!), and as the last in a five-movie franchise, it’s the culmination of 15 years of zombies and Hives and Alices and Umbrella Corporations that we’ve grown up with. If you need a bit of a refresher before heading into the last installment — and it’s usually a good idea, since these movies tend to pick up pretty soon after the previous one left off — it can seem like a daunting prospect. That is, unless you have Milla Jovovich herself to recap the whole series for you in record time.