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Forbes
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Alistair Petrie Talks The Joy Of Games And Playing Star Wars Unlimited
Alistair Petrie attends an event celebrating the latest Star Wars Unlimited card set Legends of the ... More Force. Many people get into games they love to play. But few people get to be a card in the game they are playing. When I asked Alistair Petrie, who played Imperial General Draven in Star Wars: Rogue One and Andor about his favorite card in Star Wars: Unlimited, he gave me, perhaps, the most obvious answer. 'When the team sort of said, oh, you're a card in the game,' said Petrie, 'that was well, obviously, I need to play that as fast as possible. Thankfully, they had several in front of me, which they were very sweet to allow me to sign for people, which was great,' Petrie got a chance to learn and play Star Wars Unlimited as part of the game's rollout of its latest expansion, Legends of the Force. This expansion introduces several Jedi, Sith and other masters of the mystical power in the Star Wars universe. Several cards have the Force trait which expands into the new mechanic for the set. Certain cards within the set, such as bases, give the player a Force token when they are played or used. The player can spend the Force token to activate powerful special abilities on Jedi Masters and Sith Lord. It's very challenging to resist saying 'use the Force' in the tone of Obi-Wan Kenobi whenever it happens during a game. The General Draven card appeared in the Jump to Lightspeed set. Appearing in the game is just another fascinating aspect of being a part of the Star Wars franchise. It also takes the actor back to when he was young and how playing games brought his family together. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder 'My father was in the military,' said Petrie, '[So my] formative years were spent in the Middle East in Saudi Arabia, where my father was a pilot. Access to television was pretty minimal. If there were movies to be watched. It was sort of old school VHS or Betamax, which was sort of fairly hard to get hold of. You know, the great sort of global world of streaming in which we now live wasn't really accessible. It was just my mother and father and me. Evenings were spent effectively playing all the traditional simple board games, which was sort of all I knew in a sense. I didn't feel I was sort of missing out on some great world of a screen life that other people had. As a result, there [were] a lot of board games that we played and friends would come over and we would play.' That early exposure to games stayed with Petrie throughout his life. It helped him make friends and build his community as an actor. Then, in the early 90s, he got a chance to play the forefather of collectable card games, Magic: The Gathering. 'When I was first in Los Angeles in about 1992 and my closest friend who I was living with had his brother-in-law and he had a friend and basically these people used to gather at the house and they would play Magic,' said Petrie. 'I knew nothing about Magic. I'd heard of it, but it felt incredible. Sid, my great mate, played it as well as Dungeons and Dragons in his school days. I was sort of always intimidated by them because I thought I didn't know where to start. I didn't know how to kind of join a game. I didn't know where to access almost a beginner's group, really. But the appeal was always there. Due to the gorgeous generosity of my closest friend, when this gathering arrived on Thursday evening at this house in Los Angeles I went along. They were so brilliantly patient with me and no question was too stupid. So I started to play, started to play magic and it felt very complicated, but equally they made it very accessible. And the thing that really struck me, like all board games, you have two, four, however many six people gathering around the table and playing and talking. Being part of something sort of collective that felt sort of inclusive, competitively, inclusive, if that makes sense. There was something, forgive the pun, inherently magic about that. It's so beautifully focused and people gather together for this one specific purpose. It's not about winning or losing, it's about, it's about the process of playing. I think there's something rather wonderful in that.' The cinematic nature of the game appealed to me most when I first started playing it. Like most of the sets, Legends of the Force draws across the many time periods and different media of Star Wars, from the films to the shows to the books and everything in between. It allows for all sorts of unexpected combinations, like Darth Maul facing off against Kylo Ren. 'What sort of pulls you,' said Petrie, '[is] you're playing Star Wars Unlimited and there it is in front of you. But every other kind of legacy is sort of surrounding you like some kind of other visual effect. Your head is in that cloud while you play it. So it kind of comes to life. If you break it down to its constituent parts, it's a map on a table anyway that you can play it pretty much anywhere because it's so portable. That's the other glorious thing about it. You roll it up. Couple of boxes in your bag, you're done. You can take it. You can go anywhere with it. The epicness suddenly just unfolds before you as you literally just pop it on a crate.' Later this month, the first ever Star Wars Unlimited Galactic Championship will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Venetian Resort. In addition to a tournament drawing the best players from around the world the event will feature experiences for players and Star Wars fans alike. They'll be opportunities for trading, trying out new games and even photo ops with some of the most famous ships in the galaxy. Star Wars Unlimited: Legends of the Force is available from Fantasy Flight Games, through online retailers and Friendly Local Gaming Stores. This interview has been edited for clarity.
Geek Tyrant
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Rian Johnson Defends Snoke's Death and the Direction of STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI — GeekTyrant
Few scenes in Star Wars have stirred as much debate as the moment Kylo Ren slices Supreme Leader Snoke in half during The Last Jedi . The mysterious big bad introduced in The Force Awakens , rumored to be Darth Plagueis or some other ancient Sith mastermind, was built up with ominous weight, only to be suddenly and shockingly killed off halfway through Episode VIII . Now, writer-director Rian Johnson is revisiting that controversial choice and doubling down on why it was the right move. In a new profile with Rolling Stone, Johnson addressed not only the backlash surrounding Snoke's death, but also the misconception that he made The Last Jedi in isolation, with no coordination with J.J. Abrams. Johnson said: 'We communicated. We met and I spent days with him and was able to get into his head and all the choices he had made. That having been said, I communicated and I went and made the movie. And he was in the middle of Force Awakens. 'Ultimately, I feel like the choices in it, none of them were born out of an intent to 'undo' anything. They were all borne out of the opposite intent of, how do I take this story that J.J. wrote, that I really loved, and these characters he created that I really loved, and take them to the next step?' For Johnson, the goal wasn't to shock for the sake of it or to wipe Abrams' work clean. He says he took Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy's request seriously when she asked him to craft the Empire Strikes Back of the sequel trilogy. 'Kathy [Kennedy] said, 'We're looking at someone to do the Empire of this series.' I took that assignment very seriously. Maybe more seriously than someone would have liked. 'I guess to me that didn't mean making something that just had nods to Empire — that meant trying to genuinely do what Empire did.' So when it came time to deal with Snoke, Johnson saw an opportunity, not to remove a villain, but to elevate another one. 'That was, in reading J.J.'s script [for Force Awakens], and watching the dailies, and seeing the power of Adam Driver's character. The interrogation scene in the first movie, between Rey and Kylo, was so incredibly powerful. 'Seeing this complicated villain that's been created, I was just so compelled by that. This is all a matter of perspective and phrasing, but to me, I didn't easily dispense with Snoke.' Instead, Johnson says he used Snoke's death as a deliberate turning point to push Kylo Ren into full villain mode. 'I took great pains to use him in the most dramatically impactful way, which was to then take Kylo's character to the next level and set him up as well as I possibly could. 'I guess it all comes down to your point of view. I thought, 'This is such a compelling and complicated villain. This is who it makes sense going forward to build around.'' Of course, Abrams later pivoted back to the old school by bringing back Emperor Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker , revealing that Snoke was merely a puppet of the Sith Lord all along. Rey was also retconned as Palpatine's granddaughter, backtracking the idea that she was 'nobody,' another creative decision that divided fans. Still, love it or hate it, Johnson's vision for the middle chapter wasn't about playing it safe or satisfying every theory. It was about shifting power, challenging expectations, and, for better or worse, surprising the audience.
Time of India
07-07-2025
- Science
- Time of India
The Sith of Silicon Valley: Ziz LaSota's AI cult left six dead – who is she?
Once upon a time in the cold expanse of Alaska, a homeschooled child stared at the aurora borealis and wondered if the world was real. Years later, that same child – taller than most men, cloaked in black, calling herself Ziz – would terrify Silicon Valley's Rationalists, faking her own death, wielding a samurai sword, and leaving six bodies in her wake. This is the tale of Ziz LaSota, the transgender AI doomsday cultist who believed humanity would perish under artificial intelligence – unless she saved it first. Born under northern lights, reborn in the shadow of AI Ziz LaSota's early life was unremarkable: eldest of three, father a university instructor, homeschooled through lonely Alaskan winters. But teenage depression twisted her mind inward. Puberty felt like death. She wrote that she was 'horrified at being overwritten by a new self.' Logic became her religion. LessWrong and the Rationalist forums her sacred texts. At the University of Alaska, she read of 'x-risk' – existential risk – and decided AI was the harbinger of humanity's doom. She dropped out of graduate school and arrived in the Bay Area in 2016, ready to 'save the world.' But Silicon Valley is a cruel temple for prophets. She was just another zealot in a city full of them. The Sith emerges She became Ziz: more than six feet tall, blond curls tumbling past her black cape, declaring her faith in the Sith – the dark side order of Star Wars. She called Rationalists 'master Jedi.' The community tolerated her eccentricities. After all, they believed AI could destroy us all. Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, Sam Bankman-Fried – they had all passed through the Rationalist forge. But Ziz took it further. Her blog listed categories of people to be 'airlocked.' She advocated radical veganism, sleep deprivation rituals, and violent moral tests. She recruited a cadre of mostly transgender and nonbinary tech aspirants from Google, Oracle, NASA – they called themselves the Zizians. To them, Ziz was the messiah AI safety had awaited. From cult to killing field The timeline of blood is as absurd as it is tragic. 2019: Zizians don Guy Fawkes masks and robes to disrupt a Rationalist event in California. No guns were found, but SWAT stormed the venue. Arrests followed. Their chanting was described by police as 'speaking in tongues.' 2020: In Vallejo, California, landlord Curtis Lind was stabbed with knives and a samurai sword after demanding unpaid rent. He shot two Zizians in self-defence. One died. Ziz faked her death by falling off a boat, her obituary running in Alaska newspapers. 2023: The parents of Michelle Zajko, a close Zizian, were found shot dead in Pennsylvania. Bullets matched Zajko's gun, but evidence fell short. Ziz was arrested with them in a hotel, bailed out, and disappeared again. 2025: Lind was stabbed to death before he could testify against the group. Days later, in Vermont, two Zizians fired at Border Patrol agents. One agent and one Zizian died in the shootout. The philosophy that eats itself Rationalism always prided itself on logic untainted by emotion. But Ziz turned logic into madness. Roko's Basilisk, the infamous AI thought experiment predicting torture for those who don't create AI, haunted her. She believed any attempt to stop AI would condemn her to eternal torture by future malevolent superintelligences. Her solution: don't back down, escalate, airlock the doubters. Eliezer Yudkowsky, the Rationalist guru who warned of AI extinction, called Ziz's descent 'sad,' writing that weirdness attracted weirder people, some of whom turned out to be 'genuinely crazy and in a contagious way among the susceptible.' The Rationalist reckoning Today, Ziz sits in a Maryland jail, awaiting trial on gun, drug, and obstruction charges. She is not accused of wielding the murder weapons herself, but prosecutors say she orchestrated the violence. The Rationalist community is left with a bitter aftertaste. Was Ziz simply an unwell woman who found justification in AI apocalypse theory, or did Rationalism's own doomsday fetish birth her? Zvi Mowshowitz, a Rationalist blogger, asked if Ziz would have simply created another cult if AI philosophy hadn't ensnared her. 'The odds are, like, 55 percent,' he guessed. But perhaps the final lesson is simpler, as one Rationalist writer put it: even if the world is ending in five years, you cannot live like it is. That way lies madness, murder, and a black-caped prophetess clutching a samurai sword under flickering fluorescent lights.
Business Upturn
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Upturn
Star Wars: The Acolyte Season 2: Release date speculation, cast and plot details – Everything we know so far
By Aman Shukla Published on June 13, 2025, 17:30 IST Last updated June 13, 2025, 10:59 IST The Star Wars universe continues to expand with The Acolyte , a mystery-thriller set in the High Republic era, roughly 100 years before Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace . After a polarizing first season that premiered on Disney+ on June 4, 2024, fans are eager to learn about the prospects of The Acolyte Season 2. From release date speculation to cast updates and potential plot details, here's everything we know so far about the future of this bold Star Wars series. The Acolyte Season 2 Release Date Speculation Since The Acolyte Season 2 has not been confirmed, no official release date exists. However, based on the production timeline of Season 1, we can speculate. Filming for Season 1 began in October 2022 and wrapped in June 2023, taking eight months, with a release in June 2024. If Season 2 were greenlit in 2025, production could start in late 2025 or early 2026, potentially leading to a release in late 2026 or early 2027. This aligns with the typical two-year production cycle for high-budget Disney+ series like Andor . The Acolyte Season 2 Cast: Who Could Return? The first season of The Acolyte featured a diverse and talented ensemble, but its high body count left several key characters dead, limiting the returning cast. If Season 2 happens, the following actors and characters are likely to return based on the Season 1 finale: Amandla Stenberg as Osha and Mae: The twin sisters, whose arcs diverged dramatically in Season 1, are central to the story. Osha's turn to the Dark Side and Mae's memory wipe set up intriguing possibilities for their future. Manny Jacinto as Qimir/The Stranger: Revealed as a Sith Lord, Qimir became a fan-favorite, with his seductive and complex portrayal earning widespread praise. Jacinto hinted at exploring more of his character's connection to Darth Plagueis in a potential Season 2. Rebecca Henderson as Vernestra Rwoh: The Jedi Knight, a fan-favorite from High Republic novels, is poised to pursue Osha and Qimir, potentially using Mae to track them. New characters could be introduced to flesh out the Sith's 'Wild West' era or other High Republic factions, as Headland expressed interest in exploring Sith-adjacent groups and the Rule of Two. The Acolyte Season 2 Plot: What Could Happen Next? The Acolyte Season 1 ended on a cliffhanger, setting up several storylines for a potential second season. The series, described as ' Frozen meets Kill Bill ,' explored the rise of dark-side powers during the High Republic's final days, focusing on morally ambiguous characters and a fresh perspective on the Jedi and Sith. Here are the key plot points teased for Season 2: Osha and Qimir's Dark Side Journey: After Osha's turn to the Dark Side and her alliance with Qimir/The Stranger, Season 2 could explore their training to challenge the Jedi. Their dynamic, described as a Force dyad, may delve into the creation of life and the Sith's early machinations. Darth Plagueis and the Sith's Rise: The Season 1 finale introduced a mysterious Sith figure, likely Darth Plagueis, Palpatine's master. Season 2 could expand on his role in manipulating midi-chlorians and establishing the Baneite Sith, bridging the gap to The Phantom Menace . Vernestra's Pursuit and Jedi Corruption: Vernestra's decision to cover up Sol's actions suggests a corrupt Jedi Order. Season 2 might explore her efforts to track Osha and Qimir, using Mae, whose memories were wiped, as a tool. This could further challenge the perception of the Jedi as infallible. Ahmedabad Plane Crash Aman Shukla is a post-graduate in mass communication . A media enthusiast who has a strong hold on communication ,content writing and copy writing. Aman is currently working as journalist at
Hypebeast
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hypebeast
Nike Air Max Plus TN Crosses to the Dark Side in Bold New "Darth Vader" Colorway
Name:Nike Air Max Plus TN 'Darth Vader'Colorway:Black/RedSKU:IM4868-010MSRP:$180 USDRelease Date:June 13, 2025Where to Buy:Nike Nike has unveiled a bold reimagining of the iconicAir Max Plus TN, cloaked in black and crimson — fit for an aspiring Sith Lord. Channeling the essence ofDarth Vader, the shoe features a dramatic gradient from black to red across the mesh toe box and toungue, while black laces weave into the bright red eyelets creating a striking contrast. Sleek, glossy accents slash across the otherwise matte silhouette, reminiscent of Darth Maul's Zabrak markings and battle-worn tattoos. A true homage to the dark side — but even villains need comfort. Equipped with Nike's signature Tuned Air (TN) technology, the shoe offers air-cushioned support and rock-solid stability, perfect for everything from an intergalactic duel to a casual stroll through the galaxy.
