Welcome to The Collider Pop Culture Review, in which Collider’s weekend editor Vinnie Mancuso wakes up only slightly hungover on a Saturday to rate the week’s biggest stories in film and television on a scale from 1 to 10. (1 is soul-crushingly bad, 10 is mind-blowingly incredible.) This week: Iron Fist has thrown its last baby-strength punch, Aladdin is wearing an undershirt for some reason, we discuss Tilda Swinton's fake penis *and* balls, and more. 

'Iron Fist' Cancelled by Netflix

iron-fist-image
Image via Netflix

Rating: 4, or "Not Enough Chi for 3" 

Oh, Danny Rand. The immortal Iron Fist. Protector of K'Un Lun. Adult Rugrat. Thrower of gentle breeze elbow strikes. And now, the first of Marvel's Defenders to be canceled by Netflix in a highly unprecedented move from the streaming service. Netflix doesn't just cancel shows. Netflix gave Hemlock Grove three seasons. Hemlock Grove is the most ill-advised project Eli Roth has ever been involved in and that man remade Death Wish in the year of our lord 2018.

Of course, we'll never know the real reasons why Iron Fist got the boot. Netflix notoriously keeps their ratings under ungodly levels of secrecy inside a fortress presided over by The Algorithm. Their streaming numbers are locked away in a crypt next to the cast of Sierra Burgess is a Loser. The only way inside is to perform a horrific blood ritual or watch The Kissing Booth all the way through twice. These are all true, accepted facts.

But you have to assume some truly wonky numbers came in for Iron Fist season 2 or this is some Disney-mandated tomfoolery. The last Marvel show to get outright canceled was ABC's dollar-store wig disaster Inhumans, and say what you will about Iron Fist but it was no Inhumans. Inhumans was such an unmitigated disaster I'm pretty sure the actor who played Black Bolt is not legally allowed to speak in real life, either.

But, yes, fair, Iron Fist had issues. It was always that embarrassing sorta-friend of Luke Cage, Daredevil, and Jessica Jones, showing up after half a semester abroad with a henna tattoo he thinks is real for some reason and claiming to have "found himself" on his journey. From the moment the show cast the white-blondest human alive to play a martial arts master—"It's comics accurate!" scream the same people who would light a car on fire if Idris Elba ever got cast as James Bond—Iron Fist was the internet's dunking target. It didn't help that season one was a hot mess or that Finn Jones threw worse kicks than Bran Stark.

But so help me Grodd, the end of season two had me really intrigued. I always thought Iron Fist could be improved by not taking itself so seriously and getting a little wacky. Nothing says "wacky" like dressing Danny Rand like a samurai-cowboy and having him pull out CHI-PISTOLS. Amazing. I was into it. Just when I was intrigued, Netflix pulls the plug.

Luckily, this is comics and nobody is ever gone for good. Danny Rand will be back in some form. I hope he shows up on the big screen in Avengers 4 just long enough for Thanos to boot him into the sun. I want Chris Evans' final line ever as Captain America to be "who the heck was that guy?"

First Look at Live-Action 'Aladdin'

aladdin-live-action-poster-social
Image via Disney

Rating: 5, or "Soaring, tumbling, meh feelings" 

Our first ever look at the live-action Aladdin directed by Guy Ritchie withheld a lot from us. We only got the slimmest of glimpses of Marwan Kenzari as the hot Jafar who fucks. No footage at all of Will Smith as the Genie, presumedly because Ritchie wanted to make sure Will Smith didn't die horrifically in the Grand Canyon before he shot his scenes. Really, all we got were some shots of Agrab, the desert, and the Cave of Wonders that straight up still could have been from an animated movie, and a two-second tease of Mena Massoud as the titular riffraff slash street rat, and reader, I do not buy that.

Actually, Massoud looks fine, except for the abomination of the H&M t-shirt under Aladdin's vest. There are only two stone-cold objective truths in my life, and one is that Aladdin does not wear a shirt under his vest. (The other is that every piece of art in existence should somehow include Carrie Coon, including movies and TV shows that have already aired, but that's a topic for the 30,000-word piece that Collider won't let me publish for several reasons, most of them ethical.)

New 'True Detective' Season 3 Images

true-detective-season-3-image-5
Image via HBO

Rating: 3, or "A Pizzolatto Problems" 

I'm sorry but I just can not get hyped for True Detective season 3, and bless your trusting soul if you can. I have never seen something more revealing in my life than True Detective's second season, which exposed to the whole dang world that the incredible quality of season one was mostly if not all down to Cary Fukunaga and the cast, and a season left entirely up to Nic Pizzolatto was more akin to the world's most depressing game of ad libs played by people on black tar heroin. The best scene of True Detective season two was the one where Colin Farrell did pull-ups on cocaine, and if I wanted to see that I would just, like, go to Colin Farrell's house.

I'm fully aware that Mahershala Ali is a once-in-a-lifetime talent. That man is so effortlessly cool and charismatic that he could read me my own frighteningly accurate obituary and I'd probably respond by awkwardly trying to kiss him. But I'm not sure how much energy I have to watch even him fight against Pizzolatto's mush-mouth dialogue.

And that was before this latest batch of images, which show off the Michelle-Williams-in-Venom-level wigs atop these characters heads. It's hard enough not to laugh at True Detective these days without the undead cat from Pet Semetary sitting on Stephen Dorff's head.

Tilda Swinton Playing an Old Man in 'Suspiria'

tilda-swinton-suspiria-lutz-ebersdorf
Image via Amazon Studios

Rating: 8, or "Put 'Tilda Swinton's Weighty Set of Genitalia' On My Gravestone" 

I have seen Suspiria and I can't tell you anything about it. Not because of spoilers or an embargo or anything, just because I can't quite describe what in the ever-loving fuck I watched. Luca Guadagnino's horror remake is a trip, man, an indescribable one-way ticket to bananas town and the only thing I can say for absolute sure is that knowing Tilda Swinton plays the character Dr. Klemperer under pounds of makeup does not change the story at all. In fact, there is something incredibly delightful about the fact that Guadagnino and Swinton apparently did this strictly for the lols.

That is, unless you, like I, read the NYT story revealing that Swinton was, in fact, wearing a "weighty set of genitalia" to help with her performance, which I can confirm does change the experience of watching the film by roughly 10,000 percent. First, the quote, from makeup artist Mark Coulier:

“She did have us make a penis and balls. She had this nice, weighty set of genitalia so that she could feel it dangling between her legs, and she managed to get it out on set on a couple of occasions.”

Maybe this says more about me than anything, but Tilda Swinton's significantly weight set of fake testicles was the only thing I could think of when Klemperer was on screen. Was the wearing it right then? How weighty is "weighty", you know? Wait, what did he mean by "get it out on set"? 

But yeah, go see Suspiria.

Dwayne Johnson is John Henry

skyscraper-movie-images
Image via Legendary Entertainment, Universal Pictures

Rating: 6, "Remember the Dark Universe?" 

There isn't much to actually report about Dwayne Johnson playing folk legend John Henry for Netflix's John Henry & The Statesmen—and the teaser doesn't offer much either—other than the fact that The Rock doing a Netflix movie was as inevitable as Disney eventually owning a share of our personal thoughts. But! One very interesting tidbit from the film's plot synopsis is that Johnson's character will “an ensemble cast of the most popular figures from folklore and legend from all around the world."

That doesn't sound just like a Dwayne Johnson movie, that sounds like a hopeful Avengers-style franchise-builder in the same category as Universal's Dark Universe (lol) or King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (lolllllll). So, without further ado, here is the undisputed list of which actors should play which folklore figures.

Paul Bunyan - Tom Hardy

Babe the Blue Ox - Tom Hardy (Voice)

Santa Clause - Danny DeVito

The Jersey Devil - Nicolas Cage

Johnny Appleseed - Carrie Coon