cinema

Backrooms come to the cinema

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A pixelated image, yellow carpet and fluorescent lighting. That was enough for the internet to build, in just five years, the most terrifying collective horror mythology in recent years. Now A24 wants to bring it to the big screen and, although the trailer looks great, the question is whether Hollywood can contain something that, by definition, has no form. Origins of backrooms. On May 12, 2019, an anonymous user posted a thread on /x/, the paranormal-themed board on 4chanwith a simple request: share images that “felt strange.” Among the responses appeared a photograph without context or signaturea room with immense yellowish carpet, walls of the same color, and everything illuminated with a ghostly fluorescent light. No people, no windows, hellishly mundane. And yet it was ridiculously disturbing. The next day, another user added a description under the photo. He said that if you “clip out of reality in the wrong areas” you will end up trapped in the Backrooms, a non-space that spans nearly a billion square miles of empty rooms. The original post received four responses, but this repost combined with the image triggered the phenomenon. Pay attention to detail: the term “noclip” describes, in video games, the glitch in which a character passes through a solid wall and falls into the geometric void behind the map. Real architecture becomes a membrane. The monster is space itself. The myth grows. In a few days there were already stories exploring the myth. In just one month, it had been created a wiki explaining the lore that didn’t stop growing. It wasn’t even clear where the photograph came from, it had no metadata, but ended up being tracked even a blog archived on the Wayback Machine. It was a photograph of a HobbyTown USA store (specializing in radio-controlled cars) in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, taken around 2002 to announce the renovation of its facilities. Pure abysses of extreme mundanity. That dissonance between the banality of the origin and the symbolic load is what turned the myth into a giant. He lore. Infinite and unfathomable, but broadly speaking, as the Backrooms wiki explains: they are divided into levelsdifferentiated environments with their own rules. Level 0 is the original room from the first post. Level 1 scales to a larger industrial architecture. Level 2 introduces darkened maintenance tunnels where there is the feeling of being watched. Entities soon appeared: the Smilers, who live in darkness; the Facelings, humanoids that populate most levels with a complete absence of facial features; the Hounds, with four limbs, disproportionate jaws and no intelligence… Origin in creepypasta. Backrooms have their roots in the creepypasta genre that has its possible origin in the blog of Ted the Caverpublished in 2001, where a man documented his exploration of a cave with increasingly disturbing results. Until the entries simply stopped appearing. Documentary realism, narrative ambiguity and lack of a defined ending were the keys that gave rise to creations such as Slender Man, created by Eric Knudson in a manipulated image contest on the Something Awful forum. Slender Man he was a tall, faceless figure stalking children in the margins of seemingly normal photographs. On the same 4Chan /x/ board, internal norms and rules appeared that gave a bit of order to its history, but the creepypastaas a genre, had become a monster with infinite heads: stories without ending, without rules, almost without development, that only sought sordid, vaguely familiar terror, with dreamlike overtones and without moral justification. ‘American Journalism’ would describe the phenomenon in 2002 of the “largest collaborative writing project in history.” Unexplainable fear. The backrooms are a sophisticated version without the need for characters or monsters (although the community would end up creating them, as we have seen) of many stories. creepypasta. Its secret is that it is based on recognizable spaces (offices, shopping centers, meeting rooms, hallways) devoid of their usual context. Researchers Alexander Diel and Michael Lewis described it as “the uncanny valley of physical spaces”. Jump to audiovisual. The turning point starred Kane Parsons, known on YouTube as Kane Pixels. Parsons was 16 years old when he published his short film ‘The Backrooms (Found Footage)’ in 2022: nine minutes shot in first person with a VHS filter, in which a cameraman accidentally crosses the threshold of Level 0 and is followed by an entity that does not look good. From there it would come a series which exceeds 197 million views. Parsons created a universe of his own (the fictional Async research institute, experiments with dimensional portals in the 1980s, government involvement) that sometimes contradicted the mythology of 4chan. The community ended up adopting part of its history. Video game connection. In August 2022, three years after the founding post on 4chan and several months after Kane Parsons’ video, ‘Escape the Backrooms’ landed on Steam proposing a cooperative adventure for four players, and which was embraced by the players: It has 91% positive reviews and a peak of 48,879 simultaneous players. And there’s more: ‘The Backrooms 1998’ takes the concept to the first-person perspective with a VHS filter, with the story of a teenager who films his friends skating and accidentally falls to Level 0. The backrooms are in tune with one of the most stimulating horror video game fevers of recent years: the lo-fi horror or PS1 aesthetic. There are very active communities like Haunted PS1which functions as an incubator for the subgenre through development competitions, annual builds, and a network of developers who exchange techniques to reproduce the visual texture of the 1990s in modern engines such as Unity or Godot. In this context, Backrooms fit naturally and intuitively. And now, to the movies. one year later of Kane Parsons’ first video, indie production company A24 won the bid for the film adaptation rights to the series. With an estimated budget of 10 million dollars and a premiere scheduled for May 29, 2026, it has already shown its first trailer, as disturbing as can be expected. It will tell us the story of a … Read more

The director of Sirat criticizes commercial cinema. But meanwhile, four out of ten directors film once a decade

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Oliver Laxe’s statements comparing commercial cinema to “bimbo bread”, especially pointing out the contradiction of making films for Netflix. have generated an unexpected controversy in the Spanish audiovisual sector, relativizing the extraordinary career of ‘Sirat’. The film not only got five statuettes at the European Film Awardsbut it has also received eleven Goya nominations and two Oscar nominations. The debate arises at a significant moment: a study by the European Audiovisual Observatory reveals that four out of every ten European directors and screenwriters who released a feature film in 2015 did not sign another one during the following ten years. A complicated metaphor. Oliver Laxe conceded an interview with The World in which offered his diagnosis on the crisis of youth attendance at the theaters: “It is our fault and our responsibility that young people do not go to the cinemas. They have been given fodder, bimbo bread and their palates are accustomed to sugar and processed foods.” The food metaphor did not stop there. Laxe went on to argue that when these viewers are offered “a rye bread or a pure cereal,” the palate is not prepared, although he insisted that “the sensitivity is there.” The filmmaker, whose film has exceeded three million euros at the Spanish box office and has attracted precisely a young audience, closed his reasoning with a resounding statement: “Having very political proclamations, but then making a movie with Netflix seems like a pure contradiction to me that nullifies your speech.” The accounts don’t work out. The answer did not take long to materialize. Jota Linares, a filmmaker from Cádiz who has often filmed for Netflix, replied in the SER questioning Laxe’s analysis. Linares challenged the simplification of the problem: “I will tell you what allows me to continue maintaining political ideas and express them freely despite having directed series and films for Netflix: my social class.” And he added: “I assure you that, due to my social class, I would be incapable of supporting myself by making only auteur films spaced over time for about two or three years. It doesn’t work out for me, although I see that it does for you.” Finally, he concluded that “you don’t hack the system from within with a six million euro movie with thirty publicists working at your feet. No, dear Oliver. That’s being at the top of the mainstream.” ‘Sirat’s’ money. The contrast between both positions reveals broader tensions in the sector. Laxe speaks from a relatively privileged position, since his film had the financial backing of Movistar Plus+ and is now enjoying an international campaign that has taken him to the Oscars. Linares, for his part, represents a silent majority of filmmakers who fight to get each new opportunity. Precariousness as a backdrop. The debate takes on a more urgent dimension when confronted with the data that published El País based on the study of the European Audiovisual Observatory. The research, which analyzes the careers of 38,762 professionals, covering some 30,000 projects, provides revealing figures: 40% of those who released a feature film in theaters during 2015 did not sign another film again in the entire subsequent decade. At the same time, more than half of the films released each year are debut films. The report’s conclusions leave no room for doubt: there is “an impressive turnover and great precariousness.” Cinema versus television. The document also shows a growing separation between film and television. Only 11% of directors and scriptwriters worked in both formats between 2015 and 2024, dismantling the idea of ​​fluid transfer between screens. On television and platforms, 85% of screenwriters and 91% of directors active in 2015 continued working later, compared to the 60% that disappear from theatrical cinema. “The majority survive poorly. Those who endure have family financial support behind them,” explained director Cristina Andreu in 2021. Little seems to have changed since then. Structural contradiction. Can the industry demand “rye bread”, as Laxe says he does, when the system expels 40% of its creators after a film? Is it fair to hold the public responsible for having a palate “accustomed to processed” in an ecosystem where professional continuity is more the exception than the norm? Laxe himself acknowledges that ‘Sirat’ was considered “a suicide” during the search for financing. If even an ultimately successful project faced that initial diagnosis, what happens to proposals from filmmakers without a safety net? The tension between the discourse of cinematic quality and the precarious reality of European production raises uncomfortable questions about who can afford to cultivate discerning palates. When, furthermore, the system itself does not guarantee anything. In Xataka | Many agree that ‘Stranger Things 5’ lowers the quality of the series. But that doesn’t change Netflix’s ambitious plans.

Spotify killed the record and the industry pivoted to concerts. Netflix killed cinema and the industry was left with a “space crisis”

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Never in history have we seen so many movies: the streaming It allows us to see several a week but, nevertheless, the movie theaters are empty. Literally emptier than ever in decades. We consume audiovisual content en masse, but not where we historically enjoyed it. Meanwhile, concerts have become the leisure alternative par excellence. Why do we pay hundreds of euros to go to a stadium with 50,000 other people, but not fifteen to see a blockbuster on the big screen? The answer lies in how we value physical space in the experience economy. Some figures. Let’s look at some box office figures: the summer of 2025, traditionally the most lucrative season in the industry, has been the most disastrous since 1981 adjusted for inflation. There is no dream of returning to pre-COVID figures: in October 2025 in the US, only 445 million dollars were raised, less than half of last October before the pandemicwhich exceeded one billion. The average viewer attended only 2.31 times to theaters in 2024, a drop of 33% compared to the 3.5 annual visits in 2019. In Spain, theThe 2025 data is equally dark: The total box office falls by 14% (almost 30 million less), and Spanish cinema itself declines by 2.5-3%. The author of this last study, Pau Brunet, expressly says that “the Hollywood fantasy is crumbling.” And the erosion is constant: Spain had more than 105 million viewers in 2019, which represents a loss of a third of its volume in five years: we are now at 71 million. Windows that don’t perform. The problem is so multifactorial that it is ridiculous to focus only on the drop in the box office to explain it. For example, we have the collapse of display windows: The pre-pandemic standard was 90-120 days in theaters, three or four weeks later in digital sales and then home formats and streaming. After the pandemic, these windows were reduced by more than 60%, and although they now vary depending on the studio, Universal and Warner leave a 45-day window for their most sought-after productions (it can be reduced to 17 days), with the exception of Disney, which operates them for 60 days. In any case, the rest of the windows have been shortened or disappeared, and it is common to watch a movie in streaming just a month and a half after its release in theaters. It is one of the main reasons why people have left the theaters: even blockbusters like ‘Wicked’ can be seen streaming just 40 days after their release in theaters. Even China. A few years ago, China was the market that seemed destined to save Hollywood accountsbut experienced its own collapse in 2024: the box office fell 23% to 42.5 billion yen ($5.8 billion), returning to figures from a decade ago. Attendance fell by more than 200 million viewers compared to ten years ago. One of the main reasons is the degradation of the theatrical experience: cinemas without air conditioning and without customer service staff beyond the bar, a characteristic that has been spreading to theaters around the world for years. The crisis has been going on for a long time. In reality, this fall does not have its roots in the streaming not even in the pandemic. The attendance of the American public had been falling since the sixtiesgoing from one visit per person every two or three months to just twice a year before the pandemic. The real price of admission (adjusted for inflation) has remained stable since the 1980s, but consumers have decided that they no longer want to go to theaters. The problem, as this Bain & Company study states The thing is that, for decades, the industry has placed all the emphasis of its production on pure content, but the films have ended up arriving home in a few weeks. Meanwhile, music has come to understand something fundamental: the value is not in the recorded content, but in the unique, unrepeatable event. The triumph of music. He Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour It closed in December 2024 after 149 concerts in 51 cities, ggenerating gross revenues of 2,077 million dollars. That is, more than the annual film box office receipts of entire countries (compare with the pyrrhic 71 million box office receipts in Spain in 2024). AND We’re not just talking about the concerts.: The average expense per attendee ranged between $1,300 and $1,500, including transportation, accommodation, merchandising and dinners. More than fans, they are tourists generating systemic economic impact. “Swiftonomics“has ceased to be a metaphor and has become a real analytical category in government economic reports. Beyond Taylor. Swift is not an anomaly. The global live music market generated $28.1 billion in 2023 and projections place it at $79.7 billion by 2030. That growth is equivalent to tripling the size of the market in seven years, while cinema struggles to recover the levels of a decade ago. What does live music have that cinema has lost? The term “funflation“: Consumers prioritize spending on memorable experiences even during periods of high inflation Festivals have capitalized on this logic: They sell identity, belonging and experiences that are impossible to replicate at home. Just the opposite of cinema: a film is exactly identical all over the world and once seen, the incentive to repeat it in theaters is minimal, especially knowing that it will be in streaming in 45 days. Reinvention is required. The cinema crisis is not a death sentence, but it is a demand for reinvention. Because the physical space of entertainment is not dying, it is being reformulated. The path that the music industry has followed by completely pivoting its business model with the disappearance of physical formats is the one that cinema has to follow. At the moment, theaters have not gotten the premium experiences right (sophisticated restoration, more comfortable rooms, improvements in image and sound quality), but that is because they still do not differentiate themselves enough from the domestic experience. Cinema needs its own Taylor … Read more

James Cameron has always played heads or tails with his films. Cinema has returned him a fortune of 1.1 billion

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Imagine shooting movies that cost hundreds of millions, dive into the impossible and play it all on one card: that the public likes them. James Cameron has done it for four decades and that bet on heads or tails in each film has helped him enter a select club: that of the billionaires list Forbes. At 71 years old, the director of titles such as Titanic and Avatar has achieved an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion, thanks to a balance between box office revenue, profit-sharing agreements and the exploitation of licenses for his most profitable franchises. Some hard beginnings. Cameron’s path was neither immediate nor easy. Before becoming a successful name in Hollywood, he worked as a truck driver and production assistant with modest salaries. His first feature film as a director, ‘Piranha II: The Vampires of the Sea’ in 1982. A creative setback that hardly brought him any income, but it helped him gain a foothold behind the cameras. The real turning point in his career came with ‘Terminator‘ in 1984. The filmmaker claimed that he had dreamed the apocalyptic story during a feverish night and, to ensure creative control, he sold his script for one dollar, a bet that resulted in a “low-budget” film ($6.4 million), but which represented a return of $78 million at the box office and the definitive boost for his career as a director. There is no easy movie: everything is heads or tails. Camerón risked his salary to carry out the project the way he wanted, and he came out of that adventure very well. That triumph led him to continue risking immediate benefits in exchange for control and participation in future income. In ‘Risky lies’the director went overboard with the production budget, becoming the first film to exceed $100 million. To avoid ceding creative control, Cameron renegotiated his agreement with FOX, allowing the studio to recoup its investment by ceding part of its profits to him. Finally, it was not necessary since the film grossed $378 million worldwide. Another example of this dynamic was ‘Titanic. When the budget exceeded $200 million, Cameron voluntarily gave up his salary as director and producer. The studio, resigned to rising costs, prepared for a financial debacle. However, the result was a success that grossed more than $1.8 billion at the box office and more than $800 million in VHS sales, making Cameron one of the highest-paid filmmakers of his generation after receiving a percentage of the profits. Avatar and his great gold mine. However, despite having a track record full of titles that are already part of the history of cinema, its real gold mine It’s the saga ‘Avatar‘. The first film, released in 2009, grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide and generated more than $350 million directly for Cameron from its box office rights, physical sales and licensing fees. Your producer, Lightstorm Entertainmenthas contributed to his fortune with parallel income derived from the saga through theme parks, merchandising and technological agreements. The sequel’Avatar: The Sense of Water’ It totaled more than 2.3 billion at the box office, with Cameron obtaining around 250 million dollars for its box office and production rights. Just a few days before the premiere of the third installment with ‘Avatar: Fire and Ashes’Forbes already takes its box office success for granted and estimates that Cameron could add at least $200 million more to his pre-tax assets if the film meets commercial expectations, as it did. the second installment of the saga. A legacy that goes beyond money. Throughout his career, Cameron has been known for both his perfectionism and his willingness to give up short-term benefits in order to maintain creative control or improve the end result. That approach has led him to technological and business projects outside of cinema: from immersion in digital effects with ‘Terminator’, to underwater exploration after ‘Titanic’ and the environmental activism at the end of the first installment of ‘Avatar’. Cameron doesn’t usually talk about wealth. In a recent interview with Puck, the director said that “I wish I were a billionaire.” According to Forbes, his salaries as a director, participation in the profits of his productions, income from theme park and toy licenses and the value of his production company, raise James Cameron’s fortune to over $1.1 billion. At least until the premiere of his new installment of ‘Avatar’. In Xataka | The “100 billion dollar club” has added a new member: for the first time, the new member is a woman Image | The Walt Disney Company, Flickr (SMPTE)

The bloodiest scene in the history of cinema left its protagonist in shock. 50 years later we know it was real

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Stephen King told that, for him, his Carrie It was like a pig taken to the slaughterhouse, and the blood of the animal reinforced the metaphor anticipating the massacre that would follow. Hence when the novel became a film, the most recognizable scene was the most visceral, organic and unpleasant of all. A gore moment that became celluloid history. The blood that changed terror. The Legend of Carrie (the movie) is born at the moment when a thick mixture of corn syrup and red food coloring falls on actress Sissy Spacek, a moment that has transcended horror cinema itself to become a cultural icon. The construction of the scene (the coronation interrupted by the explosion of humiliation and fury) concentrates the essence of a film that turned the artificial into something emotionally real. He Karo syrupheir to decades of cinematic experimentation with fake blood, here acquired an unexpected meaning by becoming the visual and psychological trigger for Carrie White’s transformation. Anniversary. Now that 50 years have passed since the original film, Spacek has remembered that that substance “warm as a blanket” in the first seconds soon became an exhausting, sticky and repetitive experience, forcing her even to sleep with the bloody suit so as not to have to reproduce the makeup application. But precisely that physical surrender, with its almost immobile and tragic presence under the weight of the thick liquid, is what granted to the plane that kind of mythical quality: the border between artifice and emotion is erased, leaving only the fixed gaze of a broken teenager who feels, for the first time, that the whole world is laughing at her. The infernal filming of a scene. The Independent said It’s been a few years since the prom sequence required almost surgical precision. Although the rest of the scene required more than thirty takes, the exact moment of the blood spill could only be filmed once or twice due to the impossibility of cleaning and recomposing the set. Spacek even accepted that it was her own husband who operated the cube mechanism to ensure that the fall was perfect, knowing that her interpretation would depend on how she received that hit of red viscosity. The fake blood was a physical enemy but also a dramatic element on which the story completely depended: its texture, shine, the way it adhered to the actress’s body and soaked her dress, everything contributed to giving the impression that something irreversible had happened. In fact, many of the scenes we saw ended up being very real: a stage that ended up accidentally burning, a team evacuated while the director I asked to keep rolling and injuries such as the perforation of an actress’ eardrum during the attack of the launched hose telekinetically by Carrie. What should have been millimeter choreography became an almost ritual experience, in which fire, destruction and general chaos seemed to respond to the internal logic of the film itself. The unexpected myth. Despite initial doubts, the rejection of critics who considered it a sensationalist spectacle and the fact that even the name of Stephen King appeared poorly written In the first previews, Carrie ended up transforming into a phenomenon. Its mix of operatic stylization, black humor, adolescent cruelty and symbolic violence connected with a much wider audience than expected, inaugurating a type of youth horror cinema that is still alive several generations later. For King, a small-town teacher who had thrown away the first pages to the garbage can before being rescued by his wife, the film marked the beginning of a hyperbolic race. For director Brian De Palma, it was the definitive consolidation of his baroque style, obsessed with the gaze, visual manipulation and expressive excess. A unique role. Of course, for Sissy Spacek, work meant an Oscar nomination and lasting recognition for a performance that combined absolute vulnerability and unleashed rage. On a personal note, I would say that none of the later remakesreinterpretations and adaptations managed to capture that mixture of innocence, evil and contained tragedy that the original became its hallmark. The validity of a story. The truth is that with the passing of the decades, Carrie has not lost strength. Quite the contrary, its contemporary reading resonates in a world where school violence, public humiliation and the feeling of youth isolation are part of the collective imagination. the movie speaks of the ritualized cruelty of adolescence, of vulnerability to changes in the body and of a universal feeling of maladjustment that Spacek described a few days ago on CNN like that “wounded teenager that we all have inside.” The combination of emotional realism and the tone of a dark story, almost biblical in some passages, turns the story into more than just an exercise in terror. The presence of a fanatic mother, the brutality of her classmates, and Carrie’s own inability to understand what is happening to her allow the story to oscillate between melodrama, religious parable, and Greek tragedy. The visual references, the use of color and the stylization of the final climax consolidate an imaginary that continues to define how psychological horror is filmed. in adolescence. The weight of artifice. Five decades later, Spacek’s memory of filming it’s contradictory: the physical hardness of the process, the exhaustion of wearing hardened layers of corn syrup, the extreme discomfort of the long days and, at the same time, the privilege of having worked on a project where each member of the team was dedicated to something that they did not know would transcend. That mix of technical suffering and unfiltered creativity explains why the blood scene has become an immutable symbol of horror cinema. What began as a practical necessity (creating cheap, realistic, and manageable gore) ended up leaving an indelible mark on how emotional violence is portrayed on screen. Perhaps for this reason, Carrie remains a most accurate study in fragility, repressed rage and the devastating power of humiliation, but also as a demonstration that even a sticky, artificial substance can, in … Read more

If a film created by AI will convince us to go to the cinema

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The AI ​​begins to seize Hollywood. Although there prefer not to say it in voice too high. And who is willing to achieve this is Openai, whose generative model will be used to create an animated film that will be called ‘Critterz’ and will be released in 2026. ‘Critterz’. In OpenAi They have yielded Both his tools and his computer resources to achieve something that had to arrive sooner rather than later: an animation feature created almost entirely with AI. ‘Critterz’ is a film that deals with how some creatures of the forest end up living an adventure when a strange disturbs its village. Premiere in Cannes in 2026. The film is the work of Chad Nelson, creative of OpenAi, who began to outline the characters three years ago while trying to create an animation short with Dall-E. The short, by the way, is available on the Openai channel on YouTube. This expert will work with producers in London (Vertigo Films) and Los Angeles (Native Foreign, specializing in combining AI with traditional production tools) in a film that hopes to be released at the Cannes Festival in May 2026. With everything it is faster … James Richardson, co -founder of Vertigo Films, stood out In The Wall Street Journal As the team is trying to complete the film in nine months, when normally a production of this type usually takes three years. … and cheap. In addition, the ‘Critterz’ budget is 30 million dollars, much less than animation films usually cost. Production teams, yes, plan to hire human bending for the voices of the characters, and also want to hire artists to draw the sketches that then use with OpenAi tools such as GPT-5 and their models of generative image generative. How long and money do Pixar cost? Pixar employees themselves They explained How one of his films takes about four years to complete. The first two focus on specifying both the story and the characters, and the other two to cheer and render the film. The budget of the setback ‘ was Of 175 million dollars, and subsequent productions have also been around 200 million dollars. A delicate project. Although companies such as Disney or Netflix have been experiencing with the use of AI in different phases of production, the film industry walks on swampy terrain. This technology and their threat to the workers caused the strike that He had the entire segment in check and in which they were victorious. How to avoid problems. The script has been written by the scriptwriters of ‘Paddington in Peru‘, and the selection of the voices of the characters is already being carried out. The project is funded by the Matrix of Vertigo, Federation Studios, which has already devised a way to avoid possible problems with industry workers. Thus, a compensation model has been developed that allows the nearly 30 people who are working in ‘Critterz’ to have a participation in the benefits. A risky bet. Although for years the possibility that anyone can make a film – animated or not – with AI tools, this production aims to be the clear demonstration of that option has been profiled. To succeed, however, you will need to convince the audience of two things. The first, which is good enough to pay for her in theaters. The second, more importantly, that human beings accept that machines make films. In Xataka | The greatest fear was that AI took our work. The reality is that they are replacing those who are learning to work

We believed that the “road of yellow tiles” was a private cinema. Until some divers descended to the depths

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The idea of the yellow tile road was born with the novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (1900), where a golden path is described that leads to the Emerald city and symbolizes the trip to personal fulfillment and discovery. In the famous adaptation to the 1939 cinema, that path became a visual icon thanks to the pioneering use of Technicolor: the bright yellow contrasted with the intense green of the city and the blue sky, marking the passage of Dorothy from Kansas’s gray routine to a fantasy world. It turns out that in marine depths we had Another way of tile. A geological finding. History dates back to 2022. During the Luʻuaaahikikekumu expeditiona scientific team aboard E/V Nautilus shipwhile exploring the chain of old submarine volcanoes of Liliʻuokalani Ridge, he ran into Rocking formation that remembered the mythical “road of yellow tiles” of the cinema. The curious structure, located at the top of the submarine nootka, within the National Marino Monument Papahānaumokuākeait turned out to be an example of ancient volcanic geology: rock fragments generated by high -energy eruptions, known as hyaloclastitethat have fractured uniformly due to repeated cycles of heating and cooling by successive eruptions. This pattern, similar to the cracked of the surface of a Brownie, has conferred the rock an appearance of perfectly aligned cobblestone. Origins and characteristics. Hialoclastite is formed when hot magma comes into contact with water, fragmenting into vitreous particles and accumulating in the seabed. Over time, these deposits are compacted and cemented, and, in cases like this, exposed to thermal changes that They produce rectilinear fissures. The found sector showed a stretch of “baked scab” dry to touch, An optical effect that surprised the team and generated jokes on the “road to the Atlantis.” The inspection with the nautilus robotic arm allowed to collect samples from Ferromanganésic scabs (rich in iron and manganese oxides) that covered the background, a resource of scientific and industrial interest. Importance of the mission. That was the First systematic exploration Of these submarine mountains, whose main objective is to understand the mysterious discontinuity that presents its alignment in the ocean bed. The finding of “road” joined other unique observations of the expedition, such as the filming of a strange agency nicknamed Headless Chickn Monsterstrengthening the idea that the area houses poorly documented biological and geological phenomena. Beyond the visual anecdote, the identification and study of these formations provides key information about the Submarine eruptive processes and the tectonic evolution of the region, opening the door to new discoveries in one of the most remote and protected areas of the planet. Scientific context. He find It was also framed in an international effort to map and understand the underwater structures that make up the hidden geography of the oceans. The formation of the “path” in Nootka Seamount Not only illustrates how volcanic activity can generate visually striking patterns, but also offers clues about the systems behavior submarine magmatic and its interaction with water in High energy environments. Plus: These studies are essential to improve underwater volcanism models, evaluate potential mineral resources and understand how these geological habitats influence deep marine biodiversity, a field in which each expedition reveals more unknowns than certainties. Image | E/V Nautilus In Xataka | We know more than Mars than the seabed. An expert helps us to understand why it is still an enigma and what mysteries keep In Xataka | The Atlantic has a ‘lost city’ with the key to life on other planets. Now is in danger

Nolan is rolling ‘the Odyssey’ in the Western Sahara. A good part of Spanish cinema has been thrown over

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In the absence of One year for the premiere and having seen Only an official image From what it holds, the next of Christopher Nolan is already raising some controversy, although this time the reasons are completely extracinematographic. The filming of the film in the city of Dajla, in Morocco, already He aroused certain protests a few weeks ago, and these are now increasing with A statement signed by a large number of Spanish artists They ask for transparency with the reasons to have chosen that place. All against Nolan. Directors such as Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Benito Zambrano, Fernando Colomo and Icíar Bollaín and actors such as Javier BardemJuan Diego Botto, Carolina Yuste, Javier Gutiérrez, Nathalie Poza, Carlos Bardem, Guillermo Toledo, Alberto San Juan, Melanie Olivares or Luis Tosar have joined the aforementioned prior manifesto of the Sahara International Film Festival (Fisahara) against the recording of the film in this area of the African continent. The manifesto asks the producers of the film to “break their silence on why they chose the city of Dajla, occupied by Morocco, in the Western Sahara, as a place of filming of the movie scenes.” Without consent. The manifesto explains the reason for the protest: to film “without the consent of the Saharawi people. The only consent he received came from the occupant force: Morocco.” The problem, according to the festival, is that “Nolan (…) may have contributed without knowing it to the repression of the people of the Western Sahara, helping to normalize the brutal occupation of Morocco.” And he continues: “Morocco has turned Dajla into a tourist center, as Netanyahu intends to do with Gaza, a place to practice kitesurf, cultural events (…), conferences, renewable energy projects used to make the occupation green, etc.” The background of the conflict. The Western Sahara conflict It originates in 1975when Spain left its colonies, delivering the territory to Morocco and Mauritania instead of celebrating the self -determination referendum promised to the Saharawi people. Morocco launched the “Green march“That same 1975, an invasion of 350,000 civilians accompanied by military forces that occupied the Western Sahara, causing the Saharawi population to run massively into the desert and subsequently to the refugee fields of Tinduf, in Algeria. During this escape, Moroccan aviation systematically bombarded civilians refugees with napalm and white phosphorus in Camps like Um-Draigawhere they died between 2,000 and 3,000 Saharawis. 170,000 Saharawis They have lived as refugees for almost 50 yearswhile the Polisario Front continues to claim the independence of the territory and the right to self -determination recognized by the United Nations, in a conflict that resumed militarily in 2020 after 29 years of high fire. A laundering operation. The Moroccan government has been immersed in an intense international image washing strategy in relation to the Western Sahara, focused on the normalization of the occupation, the Economic and tourist promotion of the territoryand diplomatic and media manipulation. That is precisely what is attributed to Nolan from the statement that may be helping to be done, consciously or not. Much discussed lately it has been the Mass Influencers Invitationjournalists trips and content creators of European countries to promote the occupied city of Dajla. Nolan’s key role. Reda Benjelloun, from the Moroccan Cinematographic Center, told the local environment Stockings24 That the production of ‘the Odyssey’ has a vital importance for the city, since it is the first major Hollywood production that does so. In a radically opposite position is the Ministry of Culture of the Polisario Front, the Saharawi nationalist group that seeks self -determination, and which issued a release in which he affirmed that “this act constitutes a dangerous form of cultural normalization with the occupation, and an unusual exploitation of art and cinema to bleach the image of a colonial situation that is still imposed by force” In Xataka | Morocco has given Israel 34,000 km² of the Atlantic for gas exploitation. The problem: they are waters in conflict with Spain

This Sony sound bar is ideal for riding your own home cinema

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When watching television, a sound bar can significantly improve the experience. If you have been looking for a time for your living room and wanted a compact model, this Sony HT-S2000 It is a good purchase option and more that is now on offer. In Amazon, you can take it almost with a 40% discount, for 306.31 euros. Sony HT-S2000 TV sound bar * Some price may have changed from the last review A super compact sound bar and now very lowered Signed by Sony, this sound bar is 3.1 channels and its compact size makes it ideal even for small rooms. It stands out for bringing the subwoofer integrated, with which to enjoy deep serious and is compatible with technologies Dolby Atmos and DTS: x. Offers one 350 W power and 3D dimensional sound. In addition, it has a technology that limits distortion, so that you enjoy a quality sound. If you have one TV Sony Bravia, in addition, you can control it from the Smart TV menu itself. Finally, it can be noted that configuring it is very simple. You can connect it by Bluetooth And also through cable HDMI and following the steps that appear in the Home Entertainment Connect app. Other devices that can help you to ride your own home cinema 30000 lumens projector (official Netflix & Dolby Audio) * Some price may have changed from the last review Amazon Fire TV Cube (last generation) * Some price may have changed from the last review Some of the links of this article are affiliated and can report a benefit to Xataka. In case of non -availability, offers may vary. Images | Sony In Xataka | Best Bluetooth speakers. Which to buy and 10 recommended models In Xataka | Best televisions in quality price. Which to buy and seven recommended 4K 4K

‘The fantastic 4 is the most disappointing superheroes saga in the history of cinema. And the first criticisms are not optimistic

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‘The fantastic four: first steps’ is more than An essential film for Marvel: After some box office failures and a doubtful future, the company is at a point where the success or failure of this new installment of its superhero adventures can mark many future decisions. The previous trajectory of Marvel’s first family in cinemas does not give much hope, so this summer will be for Disney as essential as It is being for Warner. A delicate moment. Why do we say that Marvel is at a key point? They have had a 2024 of Impasse: They just released a movie, ‘Deadpool and Wolverine’that although it was a Great box office successdoes not easily fit into the continuity of the house, that is, it does not “guarantee” future successes, as the “you will continue” of the first phases did. In 2025, Marvel has stumbled upon two films that have worked halfway at the box office, ‘Captain America: Brave New World‘ and ‘Thunderbolts‘And, in part, they frustrate the future of the house (its most emblematic hero, new avengers …) At this point, the success of’ The Fantastic 4 is vital for the company. What comes next. The fantastic four supposes many things, and we do not speak only of a welcome and healthy turn in the aesthetics and the tone that the MCUy asked from the moment it premiered ‘Endey me‘. It also opens doors to the future, to the next Avengers and, of course, to the hopeful ‘Doomsday‘with which The Russo return to Disney. It has already been leaked that ‘the fantastic 4’ includes direct references to that future in which Marvel is putting all his wait, so he will also serve to test the real interest of the public, beyond Soponcios in the Comic-Con. What came before. The fact is that the previous history of the fantastic 4 in cinema feeds, in part, the expectation. As much as they are the groups of key heroes of the House of Ideas (well above the Avengers), they have not had luck in the past, for both reasons. Roger Corman produced An absolutely disastrous version that it was not released in cinemas and whose intrahistory is much more interesting than the film itself. At the beginning of the century two films arrived (one of them also adapting the arrival of Galactus to Earth) that were not bad but were something generic and forgettable, and whose only legacy seems to have been the chance of Qiue Chris Evans, future captain America, gave life to human torch. Finally, in 2015 we had another version, also with very interesting details, also with fateful results and that has again A more stimulating intrahistory than the film itself. And what is looking like. The film reaches the screens today, but we can access the first impressions of the press: it has a very positive 89% in Rotten Tomatoes and a somewhat more discreet 65 in Metacritic. They are, to begin with, scores much higher than those of the previous films of the characters, which suspended in all cases on both platforms (some of them as abysmal as the 2015 version, which has 9% in Rotten Tomatoes, being the Marvel film with the lowest score in history). Thus, In Variety They say that the film says it is “just what is needed to recover the public that suffers superhero exhaustion.” In Screen Rant They claim that Marvel Vuyelve “to the basics: a solid superhero film, with a lot of heart, but with little spectacular.” And Empirethat “with an exemplary cast and a brilliant new alternative universe to enjoy, this is the best movie of the fantastic four so far. And if that standard seems too low, then it is also the best Marvel movie in years.” With nuances. There are, however, some clouds on the horizon. ‘Thunderbolts’, despite its disappointing box office, has a comparable score in Rotten Tomatoes (89%), and surpasses it in Metacritic with a 68. In fact, ‘the fantastic 4’ does not even enter into The best valued Marvel Top 10 In Rotten Tomatoes, which only includes films above 90%. Data that, without a doubt, have nothing to do with their performance at the box office, but they give away what can be the Marvel Achilles heel: we may not be facing an infallible film. For example, Our Espinof companions They claimed that “throughout the second act the film becomes a Space Opera Moral that slows down the thrilling rhythm of the beginning “and put the character of Estela Silver, which” has a tiny character arc and a sudden evolution that cuts the film dry. “Despite everything, the general impression on the film was positive and” reminds us why we fell in love with Marvel. “The only way to dissipate these doubts will be attending the rooms. Header | Disney In Xataka | Marvel chronological order. The definitive guide to see all the UCM films and series

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