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Devery Jacobs defends Marvel's Native American characters against criticism. The critic responds

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Devery Jacobs defends Marvel's Native American characters against criticism. The critic responds

Native American actor Devery Jacobs spoke out this week against a critic who questioned whether two Indigenous characters should exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe at the same time because they are too similar and “repetitive.” In turn, the critic tried to explain what she meant.

Jacobs, who is Mohawk and also stars in groundbreaking comedy “Reservation Dogs,” has played several Native American characters for Marvel. First she starred as the studio’s first Mohawk hero, Kahhori, in Season 2 of the animated series “What If…?” In Marvel’s latest live-action series, “Echo,” she plays Bonnie, the cousin of its title character, who is an antihero from the Choctaw tribe played by Menominee actor Alaqua Cox.

Recent criticism of “Echo,” which started streaming Tuesday on Disney+, came from YouTube movie critic Grace Randolph, who runs the popular channel Beyond the Trailer. She has long been a critic of the strategies Marvel Studios has used to add diverse characters to its universe. But in statements sent to The Times, Randolph clarified that she meant to add to the conversation around diversity, not detract from it.

During a series of videos reviewing “Echo,” Randolph questioned Marvel’s decision to introduce Jacobs’ character, Kahhori, in late December, less than a month before the launch of Cox’s character, Echo. In a December video she called the two characters “repetitive” because both are of Native American descent and have similar powers. While praising Jacobs’ and Cox’s performances in a separate video on Wednesday, Randolph doubled down on her remarks and said Marvel was “undercutting both these characters” by introducing them so close together.

Earlier this week, when asked about the criticism in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Jacobs dismissed Randolph’s take as a double standard, arguing that white actors would never be asked the same question.

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“Would somebody go up to a white guy and say, ‘This is the one perspective for a white story that is out there’? Would somebody go and say that?” Jacobs told THR. “That’s egregious, that’s insane that anybody would say that.”

She continued: “I don’t even know if it’s justifiable for an answer, but I’ll give one anyway. I think that the story of Kahhori in ‘What If …?’ is astronomically different from that of Maya Lopez in ‘Echo.’”

Jacobs explained that her character Kahhori’s narrative “is talking about colonization and history and features Mohawk cultures and communities — the community that I come from,” and that Echo is more of “an antihero, kind of a villain, who is coming back to her Choctaw Nation and to her family, and it’s really a dark crime noir family drama.”

“And so, they’re both individual stories that absolutely deserve to be told,” she added.

In text messages sent to The Times, Randolph said her words were “twisted” over social media and during the THR interview in a way that “did not convey my positivity for the characters, including [Jacobs’] powerhouse performance.”

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“These stories absolutely deserve to be told, and it’s important to do so,” Randolph said before adding that in her videos, she was “simply having a discussion about how to have the most successful representation in the MCU — which I’d love to see.”

She went on to continue pointing out similarities between Kahhori and Echo, such as a mythical pool of water featured in the first episode of “Echo” and a similar pool in “What If…?” But she acknowledged that “these details pale in comparison to the importance of telling these stories. I very much hope both characters continue.”

In an earlier November video, she decried the “Echo” rollout as a part of Marvel President Kevin Feige’s “misguided attempt to diversify the MCU.” She called it “a good goal” but said Feige went “about it in the worst way possible” and caused “insurmountable harm to the brand.” In another video, she decried recent Marvel releases as being too “female-centric” and said there was a “sameness” to them.

Randolph’s criticism fits within a subculture of comic book, sci-fi and fantasy fans who have scrutinized Hollywood studios’ attempts to diversify fictional worlds that have traditionally featured mostly white lead characters.

Outside the MCU, John Boyega, who is Black, and Kelly Marie Tran, who is Vietnamese American, weathered racist online attacks from fans who were displeased with their casting in recent “Star Wars” films. Moses Ingram faced similar vitriol for her role in “Obi-Wan Kenobi.” For her turn as Disney princess Ariel in “The Little Mermaid” remake, Halle Bailey has received racist hate from fans. “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” got similar backlash for casting actors of color as inhabitants of a typically white Middle-earth.

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Though Randolph’s comments don’t call overtly for exclusion of actors of color, as some members of the “Star Wars” fan base did, Boyega, Tran and now Jacobs all have pointed out how such comments could inadvertently cause a narrowing of opportunities in a Hollywood industry that already undervalues nonwhite leads.

Jacobs also made headlines for her criticisms around diversity and representation in Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed film “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which recounts the murders of the Osage people in the early 1900s by white settlers. While Jacobs praised the performance of Lily Gladstone and other Indigenous actors, she commented in a series of tweets, “If you look proportionally, each of the Osage characters felt painfully underwritten, while the white men were given way more courtesy and depth.”

She further blasted the movie for its portrayal of the murders of Native people, which she decried as not having “honor and dignity,” and said that “showing more murdered Native women on screen, it normalizes the violence committed against us and further dehumanizes our people.”

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Movie Reviews

Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

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Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

I am a sucker for all those straight-to-video slasher movies from the 90’s; there was just a certain point where you knew the acting was terrible, however, it made you fall in love. I can definitely remember scanning the video store sections for all the different horror movies I could. All those movies had laughable names and boom mics accidentally getting in the frame. Trucker seems like a child of all those old dreams, because it is.

Let’s get into the review.

Synopsis

When a group of reckless teens cause an accident swroe to never speak of it.  The father is reescued by a strange man. from the wreckage and nursed back to health by a mysterious old man. When the group agrees to visit the accident scene, they meet their match from a strange masked trucker and all his toys with revenge on his mind.

Roll on 18 Wheleer

Trucker is what you would imagine: a movie about a psychotic trucker chasing you. We have seen it many, many times. What makes the film so different is its homage to bad movies but good ideas. I don’t mean in a negative way. When you think of a slasher movie, it’s not very complicated; as a matter of fact, it takes five minutes to piece the film together. This is so simple and childlike, and I absolutely love it. Trucker gave us something a little different, not too gory, bad CGI fire, I mean, this is all we old schlock horror fans want. Trucker is the type of film that you expect from a Tubi Original, on speed. However, I would take this over any Tubi Original.

I found some parts that were definitely a shout-out to the slasher humor from all those movies. Another good point that made the film shine was the sets. I guess what I can say is the film is everything Joy Ride should have been. While most modern slashers are trying to recreate the 1980s, the film stands out with its love for those unloved 1990’s horror films. While most see Joyride, you are extremely mistaken, my friend; you will enjoy this film much more.

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In The End

In the end, I enjoyed the entire film. At first, I saw it listed as an action thriller; I was pleasantly surprised, and Trucker pulled at my heart strings, enveloping me in its comfort from a long-forgotten time in horror. It’s a nostalgic blast for me, thinking back to that time, my friends, my youth, and finding my new home. Horror fans are split down the middle: from serial-killer clowns (my side) to elevated horror, where an artist paints a forty-thousand-year-old demon that chases them around an upper-class studio apartment. I say that a lot, but it’s the best way to describe some things.

The entire movie had me cheering while all the people I hated suffered dire consequences for their actions. It’s the same old story done in a way that we rabid fans could drool over, and it worked. In all the bad in the world today, and my only hope for the future is the soon-to-end Terrifier franchise. However, the direction was a recipe to succeed with 40+ year old horror fans like me. I see the film as a hope for tomorrow, leading us into a new era.

Trucker is set to release on March 10th, 2026

 

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Review: In ‘American Classic,’ Kevin Kline and Laura Linney deliver a love letter to theater

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Review: In ‘American Classic,’ Kevin Kline and Laura Linney deliver a love letter to theater

The lovely, funny “American Classic,” premiering Sunday on MGM+, is a love letter to theater, community and community theater. Kevin Kline plays Richard Bean, a narcissistic stage actor. He’s famous enough to be opening on Broadway in “King Lear,” but he has to be pushed onstage and is forgetting lines. After he drunkenly assails a hostile New York Times critic — caught on video, of course — he’s suspended from the play, and his agent (Tony Shalhoub) advises him to get out of town and lay low until the heat’s off, as they used to say in the gangster movies.

Learning that his mother (Jane Alexander, acting royalty, in film clips) has died, Richard heads back to his small Pennsylvania hometown, where his family — all actors, like the Barrymores, but no longer acting — owns a once-celebrated theater. To Richard’s horror, it has, for want of income, become a dinner theater, hosting touring productions of “Nunsense” and “Forever Plaid” instead of the great stage works on which he cut his teeth.

Brother Jon (Jon Tenney), running the kitchen at the theater, is married to Kristen (Laura Linney), Richard’s onetime acting partner, who dated him before her marriage; now she’s the mayor. Their teenage daughter, Miranda (Nell Verlaque) — a name from Shakespeare — does want to act and move to New York, as her mother had before her, but is afraid to tell her parents. Richard’s father, Linus (Len Cariou), is suffering from dementia, though not to the point he won’t actively contribute to the action; every day he comes out again as gay.

Across the eight-episode series, things move from the ridiculous to the sublime. Richard’s attempt to stage his mother’s funeral, with her coffin being lowered from the ceiling, while “Also sprach Zarathustra” plays and smoke billows toward the audience, fortunately comes to naught; but he announces at the ceremony that he’ll direct a production of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play “Our Town” at the theater, to “restore the soul of this town.” (His big idea is to ignore Wilder’s stage directions, which ask for no curtain, no set and few props, with a “realistic version,” featuring a working soda fountain, rain effects and a horse.) Fate will have other plans for this, and not to give away what in any case should be obvious, the title of the play will also become its ethos, with a cast of amateurs, including Miranda’s jealous boyfriend, Randall (Ajay Friese), and ordinary people standing in for the ordinary people of Wilder’s Grover’s Corners.

The series has a comfortable, cushiony feeling; it’s the sort of show that could have been made as a film in the 1990s, and in which Kline could have starred as easily in his 40s as in his 70s; it has the same relation to reality as “Dave,” in which he played a good-hearted ordinary Joe who takes the place of a lookalike U.S. president. The town is essentially a sunny place, full of mostly sunny people, to all appearances, a typical comedy hamlet. But we’re told it’s distressed, and Mayor Kristen is in transactional cahoots with developer Connor Boyle (Billy Carter), who wants clearance to build a casino on the site of a landmark hotel. (Much of the plot is driven by money — needing it, trading for it, leaving it, losing it.) He also wants his heavily accented, bombshell Russian girlfriend, Nadia (Elise Kibler), to have a part in “Our Town.”

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As in the great Canadian comedy “Slings & Arrows,” set at a Shakespeare Festival outside of Toronto, themes and moments and speeches from the play being performed are echoed in the lives of the performers, while the viewer experiences the double magic of watching a fine actor playing an actor playing a part. Kline, of course, is himself an American classic, with a long stage and screen career that encompasses classical drama, romantic and musical comedy and cartoon voiceovers; the series makes room for Richard to perform soliloquies from “Hamlet” and “Henry V,” parts Klein has played onstage. He brings out the sweetness latent in Richard. Linney, who played against her sweetheart image in “Ozark,” is happily back on less deadly ground (though she’s tense and drinks a little). Tenney, who was sweet and funny on “The Closer,” and who we don’t see enough of these days, is sweeter and funnier here, and gets to sing. (All the Beans will sing, except for Linus.)

As a comedy, it is often predicable — you know that things will work out, and some major plot points are as good as inevitable — but it’s the good sort of predictability, where you get what you came for, where you hear the words you want to hear, ones you could never have written yourself. “American Classic” is not out to challenge your world view in any way but wants only to confirm your feelings and in doing so amplify them. Shock effects are fine in their place — and to be sure there are major twists in the plot — but there is a certain release when the thing you’re ready to have happen, happens, whether it brings laughter or tears. Either is welcome.

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‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel

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‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel

It’s funny how this film is marketed as the first Scream movie in IMAX, yet it’s their sloppiest work to date. Williamson accomplishes two decent kills. My praise goes to the prosthetic team and gore above anything else. The filmmaking is amateurish, lacking any of the tension build and innovation in set pieces like the Radio Silence or Craven entries. Many slasher sequences consist of terribly spliced editing and incomprehensible camera movement. There was a person at my screening asking if one of the Ghostfaces was killed. I responded, “Yeah, they were shot in the head; you just couldn’t see it because the filmmaking is so damn unintelligible.” 

Really, Spyglass? This is the best you can do to “damage control” your series that was perfectly fine?

I’m getting comments from morons right now telling me that I’m biased for speaking “politically” about this movie. Fuck you! This poorly made, bland, and franchise-worst entry is a byproduct of political cowardice.

The production company was so adamant about silencing their outspoken star, who simply stated that she’s against the killing of Palestinian people by an evil totalitarian regime, that they deliberately fired her, conflating her comments to “anti-semintism,” when, and if you read what she said exactly, it wasn’t. Only to reconstruct the buildup made in her arc and settle on a nonsensical, manufactured, nostalgia-based slop fest to appeal to fans who lack genuine film taste in big 2026. To add insult to injury, this movie actively takes potshots at those predecessors, perhaps out of pettiness that Williamson didn’t pen them or a mean-spirited middle finger to the star the studio fired. Truly, fuck you. Take the Barrera aspect out of this, which is still impossible, and Scream 7 is a lazy, sloppy, ill-conceived, no-vision, enshittification of Scream and a bloody embarrassment to the franchise. It took a real, morally upright actress to make Ghostface’s knife go from metal to plastic. 

FINAL STATEMENT

You either die a Scream or live long enough to see yourself become a Stab.

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