title: Control (video game)

text: Certain areas of the game feature full-motion video sequences. Most of these are of Dr. Casper Darling explaining parts of the Oldest House and Objects of Power within it, with Darling played by Matthew Porretta. Another set of videos are short episodes of a fictional show called "The Threshold Kids", a puppet-based show seemingly aimed at children who may reside within the Oldest House. "The Threshold Kids" was written by narrative lead Anna Megill and produced by senior cinematic designer Mircea Purdea. Poets of the Fall, an alternative rock group that are close friends of Remedy, provided songs for the game, including "Take Control", in-game stated to be by the fictional band "The Old Gods of Asgard", itself an allusion back to "Alan Wake". Remedy used this song as part of the game's "Ashtray Maze", a section where Jesse fights through an ever-changing set of rooms set to the song. Remedy worked with Poets of the Fall so that they could incorporate the song dynamically as the player progressed through sections of the maze.


title: Control (video game)

text: The core game includes Easter eggs referring to "Alan Wake", which shares similar paranormal themes with "Control"; one such Easter egg discusses the aftermath of "Alan Wake" as part of the FBC's case files, which concerned what happened in Bright Falls, the primary location of "Alan Wake", to have been an AWE. A secret area includes a vision of Alan Wake. The past event in the town of Ordinary was alluded to by a backmasking track in the credits sequence of "", with an unknown speaker stating "It will happen again, in another town. A town called Ordinary." Kasurinen said that the inclusion of such references helps to establish a type of continuity between its games, elements to be found and shared by its player community, but not meant to necessarily establish a shared universe between the games. However, Sam Lake later confirmed the existence of a shared universe between "Alan Wake" and "Control" known as the Remedy Connected Universe. This later was cemented with the release of the "AWE" expansion, directly bringing characters and events of "Alan Wake" into "Control".


title: Control (video game)

text: The game's main voice cast was announced at New York Comic Con in 2018, consisting of various actors from Remedy's previous games. Courtney Hope, who played the character Beth Wilder in "Quantum Break", stars as Jesse Faden, while James McCaffrey, known for his roles as the title character of "Max Payne" and Thomas Zane in "Alan Wake", plays the role of Zachariah Trench. Matthew Porretta, who portrayed the titular character of "Alan Wake", is featured in both voice roles and live-action videos as the character of Dr. Casper Darling. Finnish actor Martti Suosalo voices the janitor Ahti. Remedy's Sam Lake said that he had been yearning to add his native Finland to one of their games, and "Control" presented that opportunity to incorporate this. Among these pieces is a Finnish tango which Lake wrote, Petri Alanko composed, and Suosalo sang.


title: Control (video game)

text: The game includes a voice cameo by Hideo Kojima and his English translator Aki Saito; in one side mission, a recording by Dr. Yoshimi Tokui, voiced by Kojima, relates a dream-like experience in Japanese, with the English translation given by Saito.


title: Control (video game)

text: A further challenge in the game's design and implementation involved creating an environment that would encourage the player to explore, get lost in it, and learn by observation. Kasurinen felt they did not want to include a traditional heads-up display for the player, with mission markers or other clutter, and instead have the player use mission descriptions in their log and careful observation of the environment to figure out where to go next. This further led to the decision to only tell player critical information via some means, leaving the player to fill in the missing parts with their own observations and imaginations. They also wanted a fluid environment, where nearly any object in it could be used as part of the player-character's telekinetic powers, so that the game world could be both a weapon to be used by the player, or a weapon against the player-character. To achieve this, Remedy replaced the Havok physics in their in-house game engine with PhysX, and improved their artificial intelligence to enable enemies to take advantage of these changes. "Control" is built using Remedy's proprietary Northlight Engine, which was first used on the company's previous title "Quantum Break".


title: Control (video game)

text: "Control" was one of the first major games to be released after the introduction of graphics cards that support real-time ray-tracing through DirectX Raytracing. It was the first major title with a nearly-full implementation of all available Nvidia RTX features along with support for Nvidia's DLSS for resolution upscaling on supported graphics cards. The game also supports more standard rendering techniques suitable for less powerful graphical hardware.


title: Control (video game)

text: Nvidia heavily promoted "Control" in its campaign alongside its first RTX graphics cards featuring hardware ray-tracing support. The game was bundled with sales of graphics cards supporting the RTX technology. Nvidia created or hosted nine videos, including an exclusive gameplay trailer, to display the game's ray-tracing integration.


title: Control (video game)

text: In May 2017, Remedy announced that they had partnered with 505 Games to publish the game, then codenamed "P7". 505 provided marketing and publishing support and a fund of €7.75 million to assist the game's development, while Remedy retained the intellectual property rights to "Control". In the press release, Remedy revealed that the game will have complex gameplay mechanics and that it will be a "longer term experience" than its previous games. "P7" was being worked on by Remedy alongside two other projects. The game was officially revealed at Sony Interactive Entertainment's E3 2018 press conference.


title: Control (video game)

text: The game was released on 27 August 2019 for Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Epic Games had secured a year-long exclusivity deal for "Control" on the Epic Games Store with Digital Bros, the parent of 505 Games, for ().


title: Control (video game)

text: On 27 August 2020, the first anniversary of the game's release, "Control: Ultimate Edition" was released via Steam, including the base game, both the "Foundation" and "AWE" expansions, and the additional free updates. "Control: Ultimate Edition" launched on the Epic Games Store, GOG.com, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on 10 September 2020, and on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on 2 February 2021. Players who owned the "Ultimate Edition" on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One were able to update their version to the newer consoles for free. 505 Games stated that while they looked to find a free upgrade path that would work for all users but that there was "some form of blocker and those blockers meant that at least one group of players ended up being left out of the upgrade for various reasons." The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions and updates were delayed until early 2021 in an announcement just prior to the consoles' launches in November 2020 to improve the quality of the product. Digital versions were released on 2 February 2021, and retail copies on 2 March 2021. The "Ultimate Edition" was also released for Amazon Luna on January 20, 2022.


title: Control (video game)

text: Cloud gaming-based versions of the game were released for Amazon Luna and Nintendo Switch on 20 October 2020 and 28 October 2020, respectively. It was the first cloud-based game released on the Switch outside of Japan. "Control" was released on Google Stadia in July 2021.


title: Control (video game)

text: Remedy affirmed plans for at least two additional content expansions to "Control", titled "The Foundation" and "AWE", both narratively set after the main game with Jesse taking on her role as the FBC Director. However, at the time of "Control"s launch, the specifics of this content had yet to be determined, according to narrative designer Brooke Maggs, as the team's focus was on addressing performance issues for the console version of the games. "The Foundation" released on 26 March 2020 for PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows and for Xbox One on 25 June 2020. The second expansion "AWE" was released on 27 August 2020, marking the game's first anniversary.


title: Control (video game)

text: Additional smaller, non-narrative content has been released. The first, "Expeditions", was released as a free update on 12 December 2019, and presents standalone missions of various difficulty with power-up items for their character. A free update, to release alongside the "AWE" DLC but available for all players, will increase the number of control points, or "hard" checkpoints in the game where saving the game is possible, including adding ones before boss fights, as well as several "soft" checkpoints where players can restart without having to travel back to a control point should Jesse die. A new "assist mode" will allow for the player to have more control on customizing the game's difficulty, with Remedy intending this to make it possible for novice players to complete the game.


title: Control (video game)

text: In January 2021, "The Art and Making of Control", a companion book about the development of "Control" was published by Future Press.


title: Control (video game)

text: Remedy announced in June 2021 they signed a deal with 505 Games to develop two additional games based on "Control". One will be a direct, "bigger budget" sequel to "Control", while the second is a smaller, four-player co-operative spin-off, codenamed "Condor". Remedy affirmed that the sequel to "Control" would be "Control 2" in November 2022, which had begun development with 505 Games by that time and was planned for release on Windows, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.


title: Control (video game)

text: Jeff Gerstmann of "Giant Bomb" awarded it 5 out of 5 stars and stated it as "a smart and sensational action-adventure." Phil Iwaniuk of "PCGamesN" gave the game a positive review and stated it as "a gripping descent into something between alternate history and fever dream, realized beautifully in audiovisual flair, and lacking just slightly in the combat itself." Sam Loveridge of "GamesRadar+" awarded it 4.5 out of 5 stars and praised its "unique" setting, "TV-like" storytelling, "phenomenal" characters and "downright bonkers" moments, though criticized its short length. James Davenport of "PC Gamer" gave the game a score of 88/100 and praised its "mystery, wonder, and glorious room-destroying combat", though criticized its "thin" protagonist and "abrupt" ending. Jonathon Dornbush of "IGN" gave the game 8.8/10 and praised the "engrossingly weird paranormal world", Jesse's "versatile psychic skills and main weapon", "strong" supporting cast, "well-written" script, though called Jesse's personal story an "afterthought".


title: Control (video game)

text: Peter Brown of "GameSpot" gave the game 8/10 and praised the "gorgeous" art style, "fascinating" sets, "stylish" combat, though criticized the "confusing" map. Dave Tach of "Polygon" and stated, "I can't separate "Control"s deliberate oddities from its beauty or from its characters, and that's what makes it so easy to recommend." Michael Leri of "GameRevolution" gave the game 9/10 and praised the "fast-paced" combat, "intriguing" lore, challenging puzzles, cast, "beautifully constructed & destructible" environments, though criticized its "shaky performance on non-Pro consoles", "overly punishing" boss fights and long checkpoints. Michael Huber of "Easy Allies" gave the game 9/10 and stated it as an "incredible marriage of storytelling, world building, exploration, and combat", praising the "obsessive" attention to detail, ensemble cast and the protagonist.


title: Control (video game)

text: Mike Williams of "USgamer" gave the game 4/5 and stated, "The Oldest House allows Remedy to play with new ideas and variations on traditional gameplay, breaking up the shooting and superhuman powers with games of red light/green light and journeys through Alice in Wonderland-style mazes. The dialog is still odd, and the mission structure can be obtuse at times." Gabe Gurwin of "Digital Trends" gave the game 3.5/5 and praised the gunplay, abilities, cast, presentation and setting, though criticized its story, texture issues, "filler" side missions and "unoriginal" powers. Christian Donlan of "Eurogamer" praised its "giddy" action and "astonishing" art design.


title: Control (video game)

text: "Digital Foundry" and "Polygon" considered "Control" on PC to potentially be a "killer app" for Nvidia's RTX graphics cards, citing it as helping to enhance the game's visual style.


title: Control (video game)

text: The PlayStation 4 version of "Control" was the 13th bestselling retail game during its first week of release in Japan, with 10,336 physical copies being sold. By December 2020, the game had sold over 2 million units across all platforms, and Remedy stated "Control" was their fastest-growing intellectual property since "Max Payne". By August 2021, Remedy stated that over 10 million people had played "Control", accounting for those that played it through Xbox Game Pass and other non-sales routes. By November 2022, the game had sold over three million units.


title: Control (video game)

text: "IGN" chose "Control" as their "Game of the Year", along with other awards including "Best Action-Adventure Game", "Best Video Game Art Direction", and "Best Video Game Story". "Game Informer", "Electronic Gaming Monthly", and GamesRadar+ also awarded "Control" as their "Game of the Year", while "Polygon", "Easy Allies", "USGamer" "Giant Bomb," "GameRevolution", and "GameSpot" listed "Control" among their top 10 games of 2019. "PC Gamer" chose "Control" as "Best Setting" for their Best Games of 2019. "Eurogamer" listed "Control" among its games of the year.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: Quetzalcoatl (, ; Spanish: "Quetzalcóatl" ; (Modern Nahuatl pronunciation), in honorific form: "Quetzalcōātzin") is a deity in Aztec culture and literature whose name comes from the Nahuatl language and means "Precious serpent" or "Quetzal-feathered Serpent". In the 17th century, Ixtlilxóchitl, a descendant of Aztec royalty and historian of the Nahua people, wrote, "Quetzalcoatl, in its literal sense, means 'serpent of precious feathers', but in the allegorical sense, 'wisest of men'."


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: Among the Aztecs, whose beliefs are the best-documented in the historical sources, Quetzalcoatl was related to gods of the wind, of the planet Venus, of the dawn, of merchants and of arts, crafts and knowledge. He was also the patron god of the Aztec priesthood, of learning and knowledge. Quetzalcoatl was one of several important gods in the Aztec pantheon, along with the gods Tlaloc, Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli. Two other gods represented by the planet Venus are Quetzalcoatl's ally Tlaloc (the god of rain), and Quetzalcoatl's twin and psychopomp, Xolotl, the dog-headed soul-guide for the dead.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god of the sun and wind, air, and learning, wears around his neck the "wind breastplate" "ehēcacōzcatl", "the spirally voluted wind jewel" made of a conch shell. This talisman was a conch shell cut at the cross-section and was likely worn as a necklace by religious rulers, as such objects have been discovered in burials in archaeological sites throughout Mesoamerica, and potentially symbolized patterns witnessed in hurricanes, dust devils, seashells, and whirlpools, which were elemental forces that had significance in Aztec mythology. Codex drawings pictured both Quetzalcoatl and Xolotl wearing an "ehēcacōzcatl" around the neck. Additionally, at least one major cache of offerings includes knives and idols adorned with the symbols of more than one god, some of which were adorned with wind jewels. Animals thought to represent Quetzalcoatl include resplendent quetzals, rattlesnakes ("coatl" meaning "serpent" in Nahuatl), crows, and macaws. In his form as Ehecatl he is the wind, and is represented by spider monkeys, ducks, and the wind itself. In his form as the morning star, Venus, he is also depicted as a harpy eagle. In Mazatec legends the astrologer deity Tlahuizcalpanteuctli, who is also represented by Venus, bears a close relationship with Quetzalcoatl.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: The earliest known documentation of the worship of a Feathered Serpent occurs in Teotihuacan in the first century BC or first century AD. That period lies within the Late Preclassic to Early Classic period (400 BC – 600 AD) of Mesoamerican chronology; veneration of the figure appears to have spread throughout Mesoamerica by the Late Classic period (600–900 AD). In the Postclassic period (900–1519 AD), the worship of the feathered-serpent deity centred in the primary Mexican religious center of Cholula. In this period the deity is known to have been named "Quetzalcōhuātl" by his Nahua followers. In the Maya area he was approximately equivalent to Kukulkan and Gukumatz, names that also roughly translate as "feathered serpent" in different Mayan languages. In the era following the 16th-century Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, a number of records conflated Quetzalcoatl with Ce Acatl Topiltzin, a ruler of the mythico-historic city of Tollan. Historians debate to what degree, or whether at all, these narratives about this legendary Toltec ruler describe historical events. Furthermore, early Spanish sources written by clerics tend to identify the god-ruler Quetzalcoatl of these narratives with either Hernán Cortés or Thomas the Apostle—identifications which have also become sources of a diversity of opinions about the nature of Quetzalcoatl.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: In Mesoamerican history many different ethnopolitical groups worshiped a feathered-serpent deity. Evidence of such worship comes from the iconography of different Mesoamerican cultures, in which serpent motifs occur frequently. On the basis of the different symbolic systems used in portrayals of the feathered-serpent deity in different cultures and periods, scholars have interpreted the religious and symbolic meaning of the feathered-serpent deity in Mesoamerican cultures.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: The earliest known iconographic depiction of the deity appears on Stela 19 at the Olmec site of La Venta. Dated to around 900 BC, it depicts a serpent rising up behind a person probably engaged in a shamanic ritual. Although probably not exactly a depiction of the same feathered-serpent deity worshipped in classic and post-classic periods, it shows the continuity of symbolism of feathered snakes in Mesoamerica from the formative period and on, for example in comparison to the Maya Vision Serpent shown below.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: The first culture to use the symbol of a feathered serpent as an important religious and political symbol was that of Teotihuacan. At temples such as the aptly named "Quetzalcoatl temple" in the Ciudadela complex, feathered serpents figure prominently and alternate with a different kind of serpent head. The earliest depictions of the feathered serpent deity were fully zoomorphic, depicting the serpent as an actual snake, but already among the Classic Maya, images of the deity began acquiring human features, such as the beard (see the Borgia codex illustration above) that he was sometimes depicted with.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: In the iconography of the classic period, Maya serpent imagery is also prevalent: a snake often appears as the embodiment of the sky itself, and a vision serpent is a shamanic helper presenting Maya kings with visions of the underworld.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: The archaeological record shows that after the fall of Teotihuacan that marked the beginning of the epi-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology around 600 AD, the cult of the feathered serpent spread to new religious and political centers in central Mexico, centers such as Xochicalco, Cacaxtla and Cholula. Feathered-serpent iconography is prominent at all of these sites. Cholula remained the most important center of worship of Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec/Nahua version of the feathered-serpent deity, in the post-classic period.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: During the epi-classic period, a dramatic spread of feathered serpent iconography is evidenced throughout Mesoamerica, and during this period images begin to figure prominently at sites such as Chichén Itzá, El Tajín, and throughout the Maya area. Colonial documentary sources from the Maya area frequently speak of the arrival of foreigners from the central Mexican plateau, often led by a man whose name translates as "Feathered Serpent". It has been suggested that these stories recall the spread of the feathered-serpent cult in the epi-classic and early post-classic periods.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: Represented as the plumed serpent, Quetzalcoatl was also seen as manifest in the wind, one of the most powerful forces of nature; a text in the Nahuatl language captures this relationship:


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: Quetzalcoatl also became linked with rulership and priestly office; additionally, among the Toltec, the name was used as a military title and its representation as an emblem.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: In the post-classic Nahua civilization of central Mexico (Aztec), the worship of Quetzalcoatl was ubiquitous. Cult worship may have involved the ingestion of hallucinogenic mushrooms (psilocybes), considered sacred. The most important center was Cholula, where the world's largest pyramid was dedicated to Quetzalcoatl-worship. In Aztec culture, depictions of Quetzalcoatl were fully anthropomorphic. Quetzalcoatl was associated with the wind-god Ehecatl and is often depicted with his insignia: a beak-like mask.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: On the basis of the Teotihuacan iconographical depictions of the feathered serpent, archaeologist Karl Taube has argued that the feathered serpent was a symbol of fertility and of internal political structures - contrasting with the War Serpent symbolizing the outwards military expansion of the Teotihuacan empire. Historian Enrique Florescano - also analyzing Teotihuacan iconography - argues that the Feathered Serpent was part of a triad of agricultural deities:


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: The feathered serpent was furthermore connected to the planet Venus because of this planet's importance as a sign of the beginning of the rainy season. To both Teotihuacan and Maya cultures, Venus was in turn also symbolically connected with warfare.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: While not usually feathered, classic Maya serpent iconography seems related to the belief in a sky-, Venus-, creator-, war- and fertility-related serpent deity. In an example from Yaxchilan, the Vision Serpent has the human face of the young maize-god, further suggesting a connection to fertility and vegetational renewal; the Maya Young Maize god was also connected to Venus.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: In Xochicalco, depictions of the feathered serpent accompany the image of a seated, armed ruler and the hieroglyph for the day sign 9 Wind. The date 9 Wind is known to be associated with fertility, Venus and war among the Maya and frequently occurs in relation to Quetzalcoatl in other Mesoamerican cultures.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: On the basis of the iconography of the feathered-serpent deity at sites such as Teotihuacan, Xochicalco, Chichén Itzá, Tula and Tenochtitlan combined with certain ethnohistorical sources, historian David Carrasco has argued that the preeminent function of the feathered-serpent deity throughout Mesoamerican history was as the patron deity of the urban center - a god of culture and civilization.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: To the Aztecs, Quetzalcoatl was, as his name indicates, a feathered serpent. He was a creator deity having contributed essentially to the creation of mankind. He also had anthropomorphic forms, for example in his aspects as Ehecatl the wind god. Among the Aztecs, the name Quetzalcoatl was also a priestly title, as the two most important priests of the Aztec Templo Mayor were called "Quetzalcoatl Tlamacazqui". In the Aztec ritual calendar, different deities were associated with the cycle-of-year names: Quetzalcoatl was tied to the year Ce Acatl (One Reed), which correlates to the year 1519.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: The exact significance and attributes of Quetzalcoatl varied somewhat between civilizations and through history. There are several stories about the birth of Quetzalcoatl. In a version of the myth, Quetzalcoatl was born by a virgin named Chimalman, to whom the god Ometeotl appeared in a dream. In another story, the virgin Chimalman conceived Quetzalcoatl by swallowing an emerald. A third story narrates that Chimalman was hit in the womb by an arrow shot by Mixcoatl and nine months later she gave birth to a child which was called Quetzalcoatl. A fourth story narrates that Quetzalcoatl was born from Coatlicue, who already had four hundred children who formed the stars of the Milky Way.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: According to another version of the myth, Quetzalcoatl is one of the four sons of Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl, the four Tezcatlipocas, each of whom presided over one of the four cardinal directions. Over the West presides the White Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl, the god of light, justice, mercy and wind. Over the South presides the Blue Tezcatlipoca, Huitzilopochtli, the god of war. Over the East presides the Red Tezcatlipoca, Xipe Totec, the god of gold, farming and springtime. And over the North presides the Black Tezcatlipoca, known by no other name than Tezcatlipoca, the god of judgment, night, deceit, sorcery and the Earth. Quetzalcoatl was often considered the god of the morning star, and his twin brother Xolotl was the evening star (Venus). As the morning star, he was known by the title "Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli", meaning "lord of the star of the dawn". He was known as the inventor of books and the calendar, the giver of maize (corn) to mankind, and sometimes as a symbol of death and resurrection. Quetzalcoatl was also the patron of the priests and the title of the twin Aztec high priests. Some legends describe him as opposed to human sacrifice while others describe him practicing it.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: Most Mesoamerican beliefs included cycles of suns. Often our current time was considered the fifth sun, the previous four having been destroyed by flood, fire and the like. Quetzalcoatl went to Mictlan, the underworld, and created fifth-world mankind from the bones of the previous races (with the help of Cihuacoatl), using his own blood, from a wound he inflicted on his earlobes, calves, tongue, and penis, to imbue the bones with new life.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: In the Codex Chimalpopoca, it is said Quetzalcoatl was coerced by Tezcatlipoca into becoming drunk on pulque, cavorting with his older sister, Quetzalpetlatl, a celibate priestess, and neglecting their religious duties. (Many academics conclude this passage implies incest.) The next morning, Quetzalcoatl, feeling shame and regret, had his servants build him a stone chest, adorn him in turquoise, and then, laying in the chest, set himself on fire. His ashes rose into the sky and then his heart followed, becoming the morning star (see Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli).


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: He is also attributed with having brought the cacao plant from a sacred mountain to the Toltec people, teaching the women how to make traditional drinking chocolate.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: Since the sixteenth century, it has been widely held that the Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II initially believed the landing of Hernán Cortés in 1519 to be Quetzalcoatl's return. This view has been questioned by ethno-historians who argue that the Quetzalcoatl-Cortés connection is not found in any document that was created independently of post-Conquest Spanish influence, and that there is little proof of a pre-Hispanic belief in Quetzalcoatl's return. Most documents expounding this theory are of entirely Spanish origin, such as Cortés's letters to Charles V of Spain, in which Cortés goes to great pains to present the naive gullibility of the Aztecs in general as a great aid in the conquest of the Aztec Empire.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: Much of the idea of Cortés being seen as a deity can be traced back to the Florentine Codex written down some 50 years after the conquest. In the Codex's description of the first meeting between Moctezuma and Cortés, the Aztec ruler is described as giving a prepared speech in classical oratorial Nahuatl, a speech which, as described in the codex written by the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún and his Tlatelolcan informants, included such prostrate declarations of divine or near-divine admiration as:


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: Subtleties in, and an imperfect scholarly understanding of, high Nahuatl rhetorical style make the exact intent of these comments tricky to ascertain, but Restall argues that Moctezuma's politely offering his throne to Cortés (if indeed he did ever give the speech as reported) may well have been meant as the exact opposite of what it was taken to mean: politeness in Aztec culture was a way to assert dominance and show superiority. This speech, which has been widely referred to, has been a factor in the widespread belief that Moctezuma was addressing Cortés as the returning god Quetzalcoatl.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: Other parties have also promulgated the idea that the Mesoamericans believed the conquistadors, and in particular Cortés, to be awaited gods: most notably the historians of the Franciscan order such as Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta. Some Franciscans at this time held millennarian beliefs and some of them believed that Cortés' coming to the New World ushered in the final era of evangelization before the coming of the millennium. Franciscans such as Toribio de Benavente "Motolinia" saw elements of Christianity in the pre-Columbian religions and therefore believed that Mesoamerica had been evangelized before, possibly by Thomas the Apostle, who, according to legend, had "gone to preach beyond the Ganges". Franciscans then equated the original Quetzalcoatl with Thomas and imagined that the Indians had long-awaited his return to take part once again in God's kingdom. Historian Matthew Restall concludes that:


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: Some scholarship maintains the view that the Aztec Empire's fall may be attributed in part to the belief in Cortés as the returning Quetzalcoatl, notably in works by David Carrasco (1982), H. B. Nicholson (2001 (1957)) and John Pohl (2016). Carrasco's work was revised in 2000, and the new edition provides a valuable overview of the controversy about Cortes and Quetzalcoatl. However, a majority of Mesoamericanist scholars, such as Matthew Restall (2003, 2018), James Lockhart (1994), Susan D. Gillespie (1989), Camilla Townsend (2003a, 2003b), Louise Burkhart, Michel Graulich and Michael E. Smith (2003), among others, consider the "Quetzalcoatl/Cortés myth" as one of many myths about the Spanish conquest which have risen in the early post-conquest period.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: There is no question that the legend of Quetzalcoatl played a significant role in the colonial period. However, this legend likely has a foundation in events that took place immediately prior to the arrival of the Spaniards. A 2012 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Dallas Museum of Art, "The Children of the Plumed Serpent: the Legacy of Quetzalcoatl in Ancient Mexico", demonstrated the existence of a powerful confederacy of Eastern Nahuas, Mixtecs and Zapotecs, along with the peoples they dominated throughout southern Mexico between 1200 and 1600 (Pohl, Fields, and Lyall 2012, Harvey 2012, Pohl 2003). They maintained a major pilgrimage and commercial center at Cholula, Puebla which the Spaniards compared to both Rome and Mecca because the cult of the god united its constituents through a field of common social, political, and religious values without dominating them militarily. This confederacy engaged in almost seventy-five years of nearly continuous conflict with the Aztec Empire of the Triple Alliance until the arrival of Cortés. Members of this confederacy from Tlaxcala, Puebla, and Oaxaca provided the Spaniards with the army that first reclaimed the city of Cholula from its pro-Aztec ruling faction, and ultimately defeated the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). The Tlaxcalteca, along with other city-states across the Plain of Puebla, then supplied the auxiliary and logistical support for the conquests of Guatemala and West Mexico while Mixtec and Zapotec caciques (Colonial indigenous rulers) gained monopolies in the overland transport of Manila galleon trade through Mexico, and formed highly lucrative relationships with the Dominican order in the new Spanish imperial world economic system that explains so much of the enduring legacy of indigenous life-ways that characterize southern Mexico and explain the popularity of the Quetzalcoatl legends that continued through the colonial period to the present day.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: According to the Book of Mormon, the resurrected Jesus Christ descended from heaven and visited the people of the American continent, shortly after his resurrection. Some followers of the Latter Day Saints movement believe that Quetzalcoatl was historically Jesus Christ, but believe his name and the details of the event were gradually lost over time.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: Quetzalcoatl is not a religious symbol in the Latter-day Saint faith, and is not taught as such, nor is it in their doctrine that Quetzalcoatl is Jesus. However, in 1892 one president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, John Taylor, wrote:


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: Latter-day Saint author Brant Gardner, after investigating the link between Quetzalcoatl and Jesus, concluded that the association amounts to nothing more than folklore. In a 1986 paper for "Sunstone", he noted that during the Spanish Conquest, the Native Americans and the Catholic priests who sympathized with them felt pressure to link Native American beliefs with Christianity, thus making the Native Americans seem more human and less savage. Over time, Quetzalcoatl's appearance, clothing, malevolent nature, and status among the gods were reshaped to fit a more Christian framework.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: Quetzalcoatl was fictionalized in the 1982 film "Q" as a monster that terrorizes New York City. The deity has been featured as a character in the manga and anime series "Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's", "", "" and "Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid" (the latter two depicting Quetzalcoatl as a female dragon deity); the "Megami Tensei" video game franchise; the video games "Fate/Grand Order", "Final Fantasy VIII", "Final Fantasy XV", "Sanitarium", "Smite" (as an alternate costume for his Mayan counterpart, Kukulkan), and "Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine"; as the main antagonist in the "" episode "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth"; and in "The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel" books. Quetzelcoatl also appeared on (Season 3) of the Animal Planet mockumentary "Lost Tapes" in an episode entitled "Q the Serpent God".


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: In 1971 Tony Shearer published a book called "Lord of the Dawn: Quetzalcoatl and the Tree of Life", inspiring New Age followers to visit Chichen Itza at the summer solstice when dragon-shaped shadows are cast by the Kulkulcan pyramid.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: The legend of Quetzalcoatl is spoofed in the Adult Swim CGI series "". In the episode "Damnesia You," Xavier winds up in the Aztec world and is immediately (and unsuccessfully) sacrificed for insulting the Sun God, and during the sacrifice the Aztecs humorously fail to pronounce his name. Later, Xavier and the Aztecs summon Quetzalcoatl in his mortal form and wind up angering him after cutting him open. After a slapstick-style chase scene, Xavier winds up as the Sun God and commits "sacricide" (sacrificial suicide), ending the skit.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: Quetzalcoatl appears in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film "". He appears seated in Omnipotence City of the gods, where all major deities are located, during an announcement from leader of the gods, Zeus.


title: Quetzalcoatl

text: Mexico's flagship airline Aeroméxico has a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner painted in a special Quetzalcoatl livery.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: The Hurt Locker is a 2008 American war thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal. It stars Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Christian Camargo, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, and Guy Pearce. The film follows an Iraq War Explosive Ordnance Disposal team who are targeted by insurgents and shows their psychological reactions to the stress of combat. Boal drew on his experience during embedded access to write the screenplay.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: "The Hurt Locker" premiered at the 2008 Venice International Film Festival before it was released in the United States on June 26, 2009, by Summit Entertainment. The film earned acclaim from critics, who praised Bigelow's directing, Renner's performance, Boal's screenplay, editing, and action sequences. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won six, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. It was the first Best Picture winner to have been directed by a woman. The film grossed $49.2 million worldwide.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: In 2020, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: The Hurt Locker

text: In 2004, Sergeant First Class William James arrives as the new team leader of a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit in the Iraq War. He replaces Staff Sergeant Matthew Thompson, who was killed by an improvised explosive device (IED) in Baghdad. His team includes Sergeant J. T. Sanborn and Specialist Owen Eldridge.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: James is often approached by an Iraqi youth nicknamed "Beckham", attempting to sell DVDs. James challenges him to a game of football and takes a liking to him.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Sanborn and Eldridge consider James's maverick disposal methods and attitude reckless, raising tensions. When they are assigned to destroy explosives, James returns to the detonation site to pick up his gloves. Sanborn openly contemplates killing him by "accidentally" triggering the explosives, making Eldridge uncomfortable. Nothing is done, and tensions continue to increase.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Returning to Camp Victory in their Humvee, the team encounters five armed men in traditional Arab garb and casual attire standing near a Ford Excursion, which has a flat tire. James's team has a tense encounter with their leader, who reveals they are private military contractors and British mercenaries. They have captured two prisoners featured on the most-wanted Iraqi playing cards. The group comes under fire; when the prisoners attempt to escape in the confusion, the leader of the mercenaries shoots them, as they are valuable dead or alive. Enemy snipers kill three of the mercenaries, including their leader. Sanborn and James borrow a gun to dispatch three attackers, while Eldridge kills a fourth.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: During a raid on a warehouse, James discovers a body he believes is Beckham, in which a bomb has been surgically implanted. During the evacuation, Lieutenant Colonel John Cambridge, the camp's psychiatrist and a friend of Eldridge, is killed in an explosion; Eldridge blames himself for his death. James breaks into an Iraqi professor's house, seeking revenge for Beckham, but his search reveals nothing.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Called to a petrol tanker detonation, James decides to hunt for the insurgents responsible, guessing they are still nearby. Sanborn protests, but when James begins a pursuit, he and Eldridge reluctantly follow. After they split up, insurgents capture Eldridge. James and Sanborn rescue him, but one of James' rounds hits Eldridge in the leg. The following morning, James is approached by Beckham, alive and well, whom James ignores and walks by silently. Before being airlifted for surgery, Eldridge angrily blames James for his injury.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: James and Sanborn's unit is called to another mission in their last two days of their rotation. An innocent Iraqi civilian has had a bomb vest strapped to his chest. James tries to cut off the locks to remove the vest, but there are too many of them. He apologizes to the man and then abandons him. Knowing he is about to die the man starts to pray, just as the bomb explodes and kills him. Sanborn is distraught by the man's death. He confesses to James he can no longer cope with the pressure and wants to return home and have a son.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: After Bravo Company's rotation ends, James returns to his ex-wife Connie and their infant son, who still lives with him in his house. However, he is bored by routine civilian life at home. James confesses to his son there is only one thing he knows he loves. He starts another tour of duty, serving with Delta Company, a U.S. Army EOD unit on its 365-day rotation.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: The small-budget film was independently produced and directed by Kathryn Bigelow. The screenplay was written by Mark Boal, a freelance writer who was embedded as a journalist in 2004 with a U.S. Army EOD team in Iraq.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in Italy during 2008. After being shown at the Toronto International Film Festival, it was picked up for distribution in the United States by Summit Entertainment. In May 2009, it was the Closing Night selection for Maryland Film Festival. The film was released in the United States on June 26, 2009 but received a more widespread theatrical release on July 24, 2009.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Since the film was not released in the United States until 2009, it was eligible for the Academy Awards only the following year, where it was nominated for nine Oscars. Although the film had not recovered its budget by the time of the ceremony, it won six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director for Bigelow (the first woman to win this award), and Best Original Screenplay for Boal.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: "The Hurt Locker" is based on accounts of Mark Boal, a freelance journalist who was embedded with an American bomb squad in the war in Iraq for two weeks in 2004. Director Bigelow was familiar with Boal's work before his experiences, having adapted one of his "Playboy" articles as the short-lived television series "The Inside" in 2002. When Boal was embedded with the squad, he accompanied its members 10 to 15 times a day to watch their tasks, and kept in touch with Bigelow via email about his experiences. Boal used his experiences as the basis of a fictional drama based on real events. He said of the film's goal, "The idea is that it's the first movie about the Iraq War that purports to show the experience of the soldiers. We wanted to show the kinds of things that soldiers go through that you can't see on CNN, and I don't mean that in a censorship-conspiracy way. I just mean the news doesn't actually put photographers in with units that are this elite." Bigelow was fascinated with exploring "the psychology behind the type of soldier who volunteers for this particular conflict and then, because of [their] aptitude, is chosen and given the opportunity to go into bomb disarmament and goes "toward" what everybody else is running from."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: While working with Boal in 2005 on the script, originally titled "The Something Jacket," Bigelow began to do some preliminary, rough storyboards to get an idea of the specific location needed. Bomb disarmament protocol requires a containment area. She wanted to make the film as authentic as possible and "put the audience into the Humvee, into a boots-on-the-ground experience."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: For the main characters, Bigelow made a point of casting relatively unknown actors: "it underscored the tension because with the lack of familiarity also comes a sense of unpredictability." Renner's character, Sergeant First Class William James, is a composite character, with qualities based on individuals whom screenwriter Boal knew when embedded with the bomb squad. Bigelow cast Renner based on his work in "Dahmer", a film about Jeffrey Dahmer, the notorious serial killer whose victims were boys. To prepare for the film, Renner spent a week living and training at Fort Irwin, a U.S. military reservation in the Mojave Desert in California. He was taught to use C4 explosives, learned how to render safe improvised explosive devices, and how to wear a bomb suit.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Mackie plays Sergeant J. T. Sanborn. Describing the experience of filming in Jordan in the summer, he said, "It was so desperately hot, and we were so easily agitated. But that movie was like doing a play. We really looked out for each other, and it was a great experience. It made me believe in film."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Several hundred thousand Iraqi refugees live in Jordan. Bigelow cast refugees who had theatrical backgrounds, such as Suhail Dabbach who plays the innocent man used as a suicide bomber at the film's end.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: The film was shot in Jordan, within miles of the Iraqi border, to achieve Bigelow's goal of authenticity. Iraqi refugees were used for extras and the cast worked in the intense heat of the Middle East. The filmmakers had scouted for locations in Morocco, but Bigelow felt its cities did not resemble Baghdad. In addition, she wanted to get as close to the war zone as possible. Some of the locations were less than three miles from the Iraqi border. Bigelow had wanted to film in Iraq, but the production security team could not guarantee their safety from snipers.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Principal photography began in July 2007 in Jordan and Kuwait. Temperatures averaged over the 44 days of shooting. Often four or more camera crews filmed simultaneously, which resulted in nearly 200 hours of footage. The producer Greg Shapiro spoke about security concerns of filming in Jordan, "It was interesting telling people we were going to make the movie in Jordan because the first question everybody asked was about the security situation here."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Bigelow's choice to film in the Kingdom met some resistance. In discussion, she found that her cast and crew shared stereotypes of the region from American culture. "Sadly people in America and Los Angeles have these perceptions", she said. "But once you get off the plane you realize it's like Manhattan without the trees", she continued. As Iraq dominated discourse in America and around the world, Bigelow believed that filmmakers would continue to explore the conflict, making Jordan the natural place to film.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: According to producer Tony Mark, the blood, sweat and heat captured on-camera in the production was mirrored behind the scenes. "It's a tough, tough movie about a tough, tough subject", Mark said in an interview, "There was a palpable tension throughout on the set. It was just like the onscreen story of three guys who fight with each other, but when the time comes to do the work, they come together to get the job done." Renner remembered, "I got food bugs. Then I got food poisoning: lost 15 lbs in three days". In addition to the burden of the heat, the bomb suit he had to wear all day weighed . In a scene in which his character carries a dead Iraqi boy, Renner fell down some stairs and twisted his ankle, which delayed filming because he could not walk. At that point, "people wanted to quit. All the departments were struggling to get their job done, none of them were communicating". A week later, filming resumed.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Tony Mark recalled the armorer David Fencl's finishing a 12-hour day. He found he had to stay up all night to make proper ammunition for a sniper rifle, as the supplies did not clear Jordanian customs in time for the scheduled shoot. Due to import restrictions on military props, the film's special effects artist Richard Stutsman used Chinese fireworks for gunpowder. One day, he was assembling a prop, and the heat and friction caused the fireworks to blow up in his face. Two days later, he returned to work. The film shoot had few of the normal Hollywood perks; nobody on the set got an air-conditioned trailer or a private bathroom. Renner said that great care was taken to ensure the film's authenticity. According to Renner, shooting the film in the Middle East contributed to this. "There were two-by-fours with nails being dropped from two-story buildings that hit me in the helmet, and they were throwing rocks... We got shot at a few times while we were filming", Renner said. "When you see it, you're gonna feel like you've been in war."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: "You can't fake that amount of heat", Mackie says, adding, "When you are on set and all of the extras are Iraqi refugees, it really informs the movie that you're making. When you start hearing the stories from a true perspective ... of people who were actually there, it gives you a clear viewpoint of where you are as an artist and the story you would like to tell. It was a great experience to be there."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: For the film, director Bigelow sought to immerse audiences "into something that was raw, immediate and visceral". Impressed with cinematographer Barry Ackroyd's work on "United 93" and "The Wind That Shakes the Barley," Bigelow invited him to work on her film. While the film was independently produced and filmed on a low budget, Bigelow used four Super 16 mm cameras to capture multiple perspectives, saying,


title: The Hurt Locker

text: "That's how we experience reality, by looking at the microcosm and the macrocosm simultaneously. The eye sees differently than the lens, but with multiple focal lengths and a muscular editorial style, the lens can give you that microcosm/macrocosm perspective and that contributes to the feeling of total immersion." In staging the film's action sequences, Bigelow did not want to lose a sense of the geography and used multiple cameras to allow her to "look at any particular set-piece from every possible perspective."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: "The Hurt Locker" was edited by Chris Innis and Bob Murawski. The two editors worked with almost 200 hours of footage from the multiple hand-held cameras in use during the shoot. Adding to the challenge, Boal's screenplay had a non-traditional, asymmetrical, episodic structure. There was no traditional "villain", and tension was derived from the characters' internal conflicts and the suspense from the explosives and snipers.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: "This movie is kind of like a horror film where you're unable to see the killer," says Innis. "You know a bomb could go off at any minute, but you never know just when it's going to happen, so the ideas of [Alfred] Hitchcock—about making your audience anxious—were influential for us when we did the editing."The raw footage was described as a "hodge-podge of disconnected, nausea-inducing motion that was constantly crossing the 180-degree line".


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Innis spent the first eight weeks editing the film on location in Jordan, before returning to Los Angeles, where Murawski joined her. The process took over eight months to complete. The goal was to edit a brutally realistic portrayal of the realities of war, using minimal special effects or technical enhancement. Innis stated that they "really wanted the film to retain that 'newsreel' documentary quality... Too many stage-y effects would have been distracting. The editing in this film was all about restraint".


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Editing on location led to additional complications in post-production. The production was unwilling to risk sending undeveloped film through high-security airports where the cans could be opened, X-rayed, or damaged. Accordingly, film was hand-carried on a flight by a production assistant from Amman to London. After the Super 16mm film was transferred to DVcam at a lab in London, the video dailies were transported by plane back to the Middle East to be imported into the editing system. The whole journey would take anywhere from three days to a week and was described by Innis as the "modern-day equivalent of shipping via donkey cart." The low production budget and the lack of a developed film infrastructure in the area hampered the process, according to Innis. "We were working with grainy Super 16mm film, editing in standard definition. We tried doing FTP downloads, but at the time, the facilities in Jordan simply couldn't handle it." Producer Tony Mark later negotiated the use of a local radio station late at night to receive low-grade QuickTime clips over the Internet so the crew would not be shooting blindly.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: "The Hurt Locker" had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival on September 4, 2008, and the film received a 10-minute standing ovation at the end of its screening. At the festival, the film won the SIGNIS award, the Arca Cinemagiovani Award (Arca Young Cinema Award) for "Best Film Venezia 65" (chosen by an international youth jury); the Human Rights Film Network Award; and the Venezia Cinema Award known as the "Navicella". The film also screened at the 33rd Annual Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, where it generated "keen interest", though distributors were reluctant to buy it since previous films about the Iraq War performed poorly at the box office. Summit Entertainment purchased the film for distribution in the United States in what was perceived as "a skittish climate for pic sales".


title: The Hurt Locker

text: In the rest of 2008, "The Hurt Locker" screened at the 3rd Zurich Film Festival, the 37th Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, the 21st Mar del Plata Film Festival, the 5th Dubai International Film Festival, and the 12th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. In 2009, "The Hurt Locker" screened at the Göteborg International Film Festival, the 10th "Film Comment" Selects festival, and the South by Southwest film festival. It was the closing night film at Maryland Film Festival 2009, with Bigelow presenting. It had a centerpiece screening at the 3rd AFI Dallas International Film Festival, where director Kathryn Bigelow received the Dallas Star Award. Other 2009 festivals included the Human Rights Nights International Film Festival, the Seattle International Film Festival, and the Philadelphia Film Festival.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: "The Hurt Locker" was first publicly released in Italy by Warner Bros. on October 10, 2008. Summit Entertainment picked the film up for distribution in the United States for $1.5 million after it was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: "The Hurt Locker" was released in the United States on June 26, 2009, with a limited release at four theaters in Los Angeles and New York City. Over its first weekend the film grossed $145,352, averaging $36,338 per theater. The following weekend, beginning July 3, the film grossed $131,202 at nine theaters, averaging $14,578 per theater.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: It held the highest per-screen average of any film playing theatrically in the United States for the first two weeks of its release, gradually moving into the top 20 chart with much wider-released, bigger budget studio films. It held around number 13 or number 14 on box office charts for an additional four weeks. Summit Entertainment took "The Hurt Locker" wider to more than 200 screens on July 24, 2009 and more than 500 screens on July 31, 2009.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: The film's final gross was $17,017,811 in the United States and Canada, and $32,212,961 in other countries, bringing its worldwide total to $49,230,772. It was a success against its budget of $15 million.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: According to the "Los Angeles Times", "The Hurt Locker" performed better than most recent dramas about Middle East conflict. The film outperformed all other Iraq-war-themed films such as "In the Valley of Elah" (2007), "Stop-Loss" (2008) and Afghanistan-themed "Lions for Lambs" (2007).


title: The Hurt Locker

text: In the United States, "The Hurt Locker" is one of only five Best Picture winners ("The English Patient", "Amadeus", "The Artist", and "The Shape of Water" being the other four) to never enter the weekend box office top 5 since top 10 rankings were first recorded in 1982. It is also one of the only two Best Picture winners on record never to have entered the weekend box office top 10 ("The Artist" being the other).


title: The Hurt Locker

text: "The Hurt Locker" opened in the top ten in the United Kingdom in 103 theaters, scoring the fourth-highest per-screen average of $3,607, ranking between "G-Force" and "" in overall grosses. The film garnered half a million dollars in its opening weekend in the United Kingdom of August 28 through August 30, 2009, and grossed over a million dollars in the UK, Japan, Spain, and France through March.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: According to an article in the Springfield, Illinois "State Journal-Register", as of August 2009, there was a shortage of film prints of "The Hurt Locker", as well as other hit independent films such as "Food, Inc." Distributors told theater owners that they would have to wait weeks or months past the initial U.S. release date to get the few available prints that were already in distribution. "Sometimes the distributors goof up," said a film buyer for one theater. "They misjudge how wide they should go." One theory is that the independent films have a hard time competing for screen space during the summer against blockbuster tent-pole films that take up as much as half the screens in any given city, flooding the United States market with thousands of prints. Theater owners have also complained about distributors "bunching too many movies too close together". It is also thought that independent film distributors are trying to cut their losses on prints by recycling them. Given the popularity of some of the films that are "hard to come by", this strategy may be leaving box office money on the table.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: "The Hurt Locker" was released on DVD and Blu-ray in North America on January 12, 2010. This disc includes an added audio commentary featuring director Kathryn Bigelow, writer Mark Boal, and other members of the production crew; an image gallery of photos from shooting; and a 15-minute EPK featurette highlighting the filming experience in Jordan and the film's production. The UK DVD and Blu-ray have no commentary.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: On February 22, 2022, two years after getting a digital 4K release, Lionsgate and Best Buy released a steelbook of the movie, marking the first time it came to 4K resolution.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: "The Hurt Locker" received widespread acclaim, with Renner's performance receiving praise from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 97%, based on 289 reviews, with a weighted average rating of 8.50/10. It was the second highest-rated film of 2009, behind Pixar's "Up". The critics' consensus reads, "A well-acted, intensely shot, action filled war epic, Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" is thus far the best of the recent dramatizations of the Iraq War." Metacritic, which assigns a normalized score, gave the film an average score of 95 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Roger Ebert of "The Chicago Sun Times" rated the film as the best of 2009, writing, ""The Hurt Locker" is a great film, an intelligent film, a film shot clearly so that we know exactly who everybody is and where they are and what they're doing and why." He applauded how the suspense was built, calling the film "spellbinding". Ebert considered Renner "a leading contender for Academy Awards", writing, "His performance is not built on complex speeches but on a visceral projection of who this man is and what he feels. He is not a hero in a conventional sense." He eventually ranked it the second-best film of the decade, behind only "Synecdoche, New York".


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Richard Corliss of "Time" magazine also spoke highly of Renner's performance, calling it a highlight of the film. Corliss wrote,


title: The Hurt Locker

text: "He's ordinary, pudgy-faced, quiet, and at first seems to lack the screen charisma to carry a film. That supposition vanishes in a few minutes, as Renner slowly reveals the strength, confidence and unpredictability of a young Russell Crowe. The merging of actor and character is one of the big things to love about this movie... It's a creepy marvel to watch James in action. He has the cool aplomb, analytical acumen and attention to detail of a great athlete, or a master psychopath, maybe both."Corliss praised the film's "steely calm" tone, reflective of its main character. Corliss summarized, ""The Hurt Locker" is a near-perfect movie about men in war, men at work. Through sturdy imagery and violent action, it says that even Hell needs heroes."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: A. O. Scott of "The New York Times" called "The Hurt Locker" the best American feature film yet made about the war in Iraq:


title: The Hurt Locker

text: "You may emerge from "The Hurt Locker" shaken, exhilarated and drained, but you will also be thinking ... The movie is a viscerally exciting, adrenaline-soaked tour de force of suspense and surprise, full of explosions and hectic scenes of combat, but it blows a hole in the condescending assumption that such effects are just empty spectacle or mindless noise."Scott noticed that the film reserved criticism of the war but wrote of how the director handled the film's limits, "Ms. Bigelow, practicing a kind of hyperbolic realism, distills the psychological essence and moral complications of modern warfare into a series of brilliant, agonizing set pieces." He also applauded the convergence of the characters in the film, saying that it "focuses on three men whose contrasting temperaments knit this episodic exploration of peril and bravery into a coherent and satisfying story." Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote that the performances of Renner, Mackie, and Geraghty would raise their profiles considerably, and said their characters reveal their "unlooked-for aspects," such as Renner's character being playful with an Iraqi boy. Turan applauded Boal's "lean and compelling" script and said of Bigelow's direction, "Bigelow and her team bring an awesome ferocity to re-creating the unhinged mania of bomb removal in an alien, culturally unfathomable atmosphere."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Guy Westwell of "Sight & Sound" wrote that the cinematographer Barry Ackroyd provided "sharp handheld coverage" and that Paul N.J. Ottosson's sound design "uses the barely perceptible ringing of tinnitus to amp up the tension." Westwell praised the director's skill:


title: The Hurt Locker

text: "The careful mapping of the subtle differences between each bomb, the play with point of view ... and the attenuation of key action sequences ... lends the film a distinctive quality that can only be attributed to Bigelow's clever, confident direction."The critic noted the film's different take on the Iraq War, writing that "it confronts the fact that men often take great pleasure in war." He concluded,


title: The Hurt Locker

text: "This unapologetic celebration of a testosterone-fuelled lust for war may gall. Yet there is something original and distinctive about the film's willingness to admit that for some men (and many moviegoers) war carries an intrinsic dramatic charge."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Amy Taubin of "Film Comment" described "The Hurt Locker" as "a structuralist war movie" and "a totally immersive, off-the-charts high-anxiety experience from beginning to end." Taubin praised Ackroyd's "brilliant" cinematography with multiple viewpoints. She said of the film's editing, "Bob Murawski and Chris Innis's editing is similarly quick and nervous; the rapid changes in POV as they cut from one camera's coverage to another's, makes you feel as if you, like the characters, are under threat from all sides."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Joe Morgenstern of "The Wall Street Journal" called it "A first-rate action thriller, a vivid evocation of urban warfare in Iraq, a penetrating study of heroism and a showcase for austere technique, terse writing and a trio of brilliant performances." The "Toronto Star" critic Peter Howell said, "Just when you think the battle of Iraq war dramas has been fought and lost, along comes one that demands to be seen... If you can sit through "The Hurt Locker" without your heart nearly pounding through your chest, you must be made of granite." "Entertainment Weekly"'s film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum gave the film the rare "A" rating, calling it, "an intense, action-driven war pic, a muscular, efficient standout that simultaneously conveys the feeling of combat from within as well as what it looks like on the ground. This ain't no war videogame."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Derek Elley of "Variety" found "The Hurt Locker" to be "gripping" as a thriller but felt that the film was weakened by, "its fuzzy (and hardly original) psychology." Elley wrote that it was unclear to know where the drama lay: "These guys get by on old-fashioned guts and instinct rather than sissy hardware—but it's not a pure men-under-stress drama either." The critic also felt that the script showed "signs of artificially straining for character depth." Anne Thompson, also writing for "Variety", believed "The Hurt Locker" to be a contender for Best Picture, particularly based on the unique subject matter pursued by a female director and on being an exception to other films about the Iraq War, which had performed poorly.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Tara McKelvey from "The American Prospect" wrote that the film is pro-U.S. Army propaganda, although it suggests it is anti-war with the opening statement: "War is a drug." She continues,


title: The Hurt Locker

text: "You feel empathy for the soldiers when they shoot. And in this way, the full impact of the Iraq war—at least as it was fought in 2004—becomes clear: American soldiers shot at Iraqi civilians even when, for example, they just happened to be holding a cell phone and standing near an IED." She concludes, "For all the graphic violence, bloody explosions and, literally, human butchery that is shown in the film, "The Hurt Locker" is one of the most effective recruiting vehicles for the U.S. Army that I have seen."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: John Pilger, journalist and documentarian, criticized the film in the "New Statesman", writing that it "offers a vicarious thrill via yet another standard-issue psychopath high on violence in somebody else's country where the deaths of a million people are consigned to cinematic oblivion."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: In 2010, the "Independent Film & Television Alliance" selected the film as one of the 30 Most Significant Independent Films of the last 30 years.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: "The Hurt Locker" was named the tenth "Best Film of the 21st Century So Far" in 2017 by "The New York Times" chief film critics A. O. Scott and Manohla Dargis.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: The film was criticized by some Iraq veterans and embedded reporters for inaccurately portraying wartime conditions. Writing for "The Huffington Post", Iraq veteran Kate Hoit said that "The Hurt Locker" is "Hollywood's version of the Iraq war and of the soldiers who fight it, and their version is inaccurate." She described the film as being "better than a lot of the recent war movies that have been released" but expressed concerns that several errors—among them wrong uniforms, lack of radio communication, or misbehavior of the soldiers—would alienate service members from enjoying the film.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Author Brandon Friedman, also a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, shared a similar view at "VetVoice": ""The Hurt Locker" is a high-tension, well-made, action movie that will certainly keep most viewers on the edges of their seats. But if you know anything about the Army, or about operations or life in Iraq, you'll be so distracted by the nonsensical sequences and plot twists that it will ruin the movie for you. It certainly did for me." Friedman criticized the inaccuracy of the film's representation of combat, saying, "in real life, EOD techs don't conduct dangerous missions as autonomous three-man teams without communications gear ... Another thing you'll rarely hear in combat is an EOD E-7 suggesting to two or three of his guys that they leave the scene of an explosion in an Iraqi city by saying: 'C'mon, let's split up. We can cover more ground that way.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: At the blog "Army of Dude", infantryman and Iraq veteran Alex Horton noted that "the way the team goes about their missions is completely absurd." He still generally enjoyed it and called it "the best Iraq movie to date."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Troy Steward, another combat veteran, wrote on the blog "Bouhammer" that while the film accurately depicted the scale of bomb violence and the relations between Iraqis and troops, "just about everything else wasn't realistic." Steward went on to say: "I was amazed that a movie so bad could get any kind of accolades from anyone."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: A review published March 8, 2010, in the "Air Force Times" cited overall negative reviews from bomb experts in Iraq attached to the 4th Brigade, 1st Armored Division, quoting a bomb disposal team leader who called the film's portrayal of a bomb expert "grossly exaggerated and not appropriate," and describing the lead character as "more of a run and gun cowboy type … exactly the kind of person that we're not looking for." Another bomb disposal team member said that the lead character's "swagger would put a whole team at risk. Our team leaders don't have that kind of invincibility complex, and if they do, they aren't allowed to operate. A team leader's first priority is getting his team home in one piece."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: On the embedded side, former correspondent for "The Politico" and "Military Times" Christian Lowe (who embedded with U.S. military units each year from 2002 to 2005) explained at "DefenseTech": "Some of the scenes are so disconnected with reality to be almost parody."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Former British bomb disposal officer Guy Marot said, "James makes us look like hot-headed, irrational adrenaline junkies with no self-discipline. It’s immensely disrespectful to the many officers who have lost their lives."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: On the other hand, Henry Engelhardt, an adjutant with the National Explosive Ordnance Disposal Association having twenty years' experience in bomb defusal, complimented the film's atmosphere and depiction of the difficulties of the job, saying, "Of course, no film is realistic in all its details, but the important things were done very well."


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Starting with its initial screening at the 2008 Venice International Film Festival, "The Hurt Locker" has earned many awards and honors. It also ranked on more film critics' top 10 lists than any other film of 2009. It was nominated in nine categories at the 82nd Academy Awards and won in six: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Film Editing. It lost the award for Best Actor to "Crazy Heart", Best Original Score to "Up", and Best Cinematography to "Avatar". Bigelow became the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: Kathryn Bigelow was awarded the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Achievement in Feature Film for the film, being only one of two women to do so along with Chloe Zhao for "Nomadland". The film won six awards at the BAFTAs held on February 21, 2010, including Best Film and Best Director for Bigelow. "The Hurt Locker" was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: The Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Director was given to Kathryn Bigelow, the first time the honor has gone to a woman. The film swept most critics groups awards for Best Director and Best Picture, including Chicago, Boston, and Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York' film critics group associations. "The Hurt Locker" is one of only six films that have won all three major U.S. critics group prizes (LA, NY, NSFC), together with "Goodfellas", "Schindler's List", "L.A. Confidential", "The Social Network," and "Drive My Car"; and also the second to win Best Picture after "Schindler's List".


title: The Hurt Locker

text: The five awards from the Boston Society of Film Critics were the most by that organization to a single film in the group's 30-year history.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: In February 2010, the film's producer Nicolas Chartier emailed a group of Academy Award voters in an attempt to sway them to vote for "The Hurt Locker" instead of "a $500M film" (referring to "Avatar") for the Best Picture award. He later issued a public apology, saying that it was "out of line and not in the spirit of the celebration of cinema that this acknowledgment is". The Academy banned him from attending the award ceremony, the first time the Academy has ever banned an individual nominee.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: In early March 2010, U.S. Army bomb disposal expert Master Sergeant Jeffrey Sarver filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against "The Hurt Locker". Sarver's lawsuit claimed he used the term "hurt locker" and the phrase "war is a drug" around Boal, that his likeness was used to create the character William James, and that the portrayal of James defames Sarver. Sarver said he felt "just a little bit hurt, a little bit felt left out" and cheated out of "financial participation" in the film. Sarver claimed he originated the title of the film; however, according to the film's website, the title is a decades-old colloquialism for being injured, as in "they sent him to the hurt locker." It dates back to the Vietnam War where it was one of several phrases meaning "in trouble or at a disadvantage; in bad shape." Boal defended himself to the press, saying "the film is a work of fiction inspired by many people's stories." He said he talked to more than 100 soldiers during his research. Jody Simon, a Los Angeles-based entertainment lawyer, noted that "soldiers don't have privacy," and that when the military embedded Boal they gave him full permission to use his observations as he saw fit. Summit Entertainment, the producers of the film, said in early March that they hoped for a quick resolution to the suit. In the December 8, 2011, issue of "The Hollywood Reporter", it was announced that the court threw out Sarver's lawsuit. A federal judge ordered him to pay more than $180,000 in attorney fees.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: On May 12, 2010, Voltage Pictures, the production company behind "The Hurt Locker", announced that it would attempt to sue "potentially tens of thousands" of online computer users who downloaded unlicensed copies of the film using the BitTorrent and P2P networks. It would be the largest lawsuit of its kind. On May 28, 2010, it filed a complaint against 5,000 unidentified BitTorrent users in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia; Voltage announced its intention to demand $1,500 from each defendant to release him or her from the suit. Several people, however, refused to settle with the studio. The US Copyright Group (USCG) has since dropped all cases against the alleged "Hurt Locker" downloaders.


title: The Hurt Locker

text: On August 29, 2011, the Federal Court of Canada ordered three Canadian ISPs—Bell Canada, Cogeco, and Vidéotron—to disclose the names and addresses of the subscribers whose IP addresses were suspected of having downloaded a copy of the film. The ISPs were given two weeks to comply with the order.


title: Peaches Geldof

text: Peaches Honeyblossom Geldof (13 March 1989 – 6 or 7 April 2014) was an English columnist, television personality, and model.


title: Peaches Geldof

text: Born and raised in London, Geldof was educated at Queen's College after her parents' divorce in 1996, and later moved to New York City, where she worked as a writer for the UK edition of "Elle Girl" magazine. She also worked in television, producing and developing her own television programmes which were broadcast in the United Kingdom in 2006. In the later part of her life, Geldof worked primarily in modelling and television, and gave birth to sons in 2012 and 2013.


title: Peaches Geldof

text: Geldof was found dead at her home on 7 April 2014; the inquest found that she died of a heroin overdose.


title: Peaches Geldof

text: Peaches Geldof was born in London on 13 March 1989, the second daughter of Bob Geldof and Paula Yates and a granddaughter of Hughie Green. She had two sisters, Fifi Trixibelle Geldof (born 1983) Little Pixie Geldof (born 1990) and one half-sister, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence (born 1996).


title: Peaches Geldof

text: She grew up in Chelsea, London, and Faversham, Kent, and was educated at Queen's College, London. After moving out of her father's house at the age of eighteen, she rented a flat in Islington, London. She completed her A-Levels and was accepted at Queen Mary & Westfield College, University of London, where she planned to study English literature and journalism, but deferred it to move to New York City with her then-husband, Max Drummey.


title: Peaches Geldof

text: Geldof wrote a magazine column for the UK edition of "Elle Girl", starting with its April 2004 issue and continuing until the magazine folded in October 2005. From the ages of 14 to 17, she wrote a weekly socio-political column for "The Daily Telegraph", and wrote numerous articles for "The Guardian".


title: Peaches Geldof

text: In 2005, she wrote and presented her own documentary television programme, "Peaches Geldof: Teenage Spirit", which was followed up by "Peaches Geldof: Teen America", which aired on Sky One on 1 March 2006. In 2006, Geldof was placed at number seven in the "Tatler"'s list of Top Ten Fashion Icons for the year, the youngest person on the list. In 2007, readers of FHM voted her the 53rd sexiest woman in the world.


title: Peaches Geldof

text: In September 2007, she made her catwalk début modelling for PPQ at London Fashion Week. She was also announced as the face of the Australian fashion line "Dotti". Premiering on 19 October 2008 was "Peaches: Disappear Here", an MTV One reality series in which she founded a new youth-oriented magazine.


title: Peaches Geldof

text: In 2009, she was signed to a six-figure modelling deal to become the face of the Miss Ultimo collection. In 2010 she was dropped from Ultimo after nude pictures and allegations of drug use were posted on the Internet and published in the media. Geldof denied the claims and said, "I am disappointed that Ultimo has decided not to extend my contract based on a wildly exaggerated account of a night in Los Angeles five months ago." Michelle Mone, the head of Ultimo underwear, said that "as a brand that targets young women, we feel it is impossible for Peaches to continue".


title: Peaches Geldof

text: In 2011, Geldof presented a six-part ITV2 series called "OMG! with Peaches Geldof", a magazine-format chat and guest show with audience participation.


title: Peaches Geldof

text: In 2000, when she was 11 years old, her mother died of a heroin overdose at the age of 41. In a 2013 interview with "Elle" magazine, Geldof explained how difficult the process of coming to terms with her mother's death was:


title: Peaches Geldof

text: On 5 August 2008, Geldof married Max Drummey, an American musician from the band Chester French, at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. On 7 February 2009, the couple announced that they had amicably decided to end their marriage. In April 2011, Drummey filed for divorce in Los Angeles, citing irreconcilable differences.


title: Peaches Geldof

text: For a while in 2010, she lived in the same house in Los Angeles as Christina Curry, the daughter of former MTV veejay Adam Curry and Dutch singer Patricia Paay. Plans for the two to make a reality television series for MTV were aborted for unknown reasons.


title: Peaches Geldof

text: In June 2011, Geldof became engaged to Thomas Cohen, lead singer of the London band S.C.U.M. They were married on 8 September 2012, at the same church in Davington, Kent, where her parents married 26 years earlier, and also where her mother's funeral was held in 2000. Geldof had two sons with Cohen, born in 2012 and 2013.


title: Peaches Geldof

text: Geldof professed to being a Scientologist during a 2009 interview with Fearne Cotton for the documentary series "When Fearne Met Peaches Geldof", and in November that year she attended the 25th anniversary of the International Association of Scientologists at Saint Hill Manor in East Grinstead, West Sussex. She later explored aspects of Judaism, and in 2013 began to express interest in the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), describing it as "a belief system to apply to day-to-day life to attain peacefulness". She had the initials OTO tattooed on her left forearm.


title: Peaches Geldof

text: In 2013, Geldof released details that risked identifying victims of paedophile Ian Watkins, leading her to have to make a public apology.


title: Peaches Geldof

text: On 7 April 2014, Geldof was found dead at her home in Wrotham, Kent. The police found and seized drug paraphernalia at the house. Bob Geldof said in a statement: "We are beyond pain. She was the wildest, funniest, cleverest, wittiest and the most bonkers of all of us. We loved her and will cherish her forever." Her widower Thomas Cohen said in a statement: "My beloved wife Peaches was adored by myself and her two sons Astala and Phaedra and I shall bring them up with their mother in their hearts every day."


title: Peaches Geldof

text: Geldof's funeral took place on 21 April 2014 at St Mary Magdalene and St Lawrence Church in Davington, Kent, the same church where she was married, where her parents were married, and where her mother's funeral service was held. The private service was attended by her father, husband, other family and friends and various members of the UK entertainment and fashion industries.


title: Peaches Geldof

text: The inquest opened into Geldof's death at Gravesend Old Town Hall on 1 May 2014. On 23 July, the coroner found that the cause of her death was opioid intoxication, and recorded a verdict of drug-related death. There was no evidence it was deliberate. Geldof had been taking the maintenance drug methadone for two and a half years before her death. She had started taking heroin again in February 2014, and of the drug were found in the house. On 3 July 2015, Kent Police announced that they had ended the investigation into her death, as they had "exhausted all lines of inquiry" trying to find out who had supplied Geldof with the Class A drug.


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: Road House is a 1989 American action film directed by Rowdy Herrington and starring Patrick Swayze as a cooler at a newly refurbished roadside bar who protects a small town in Missouri from a corrupt businessman. Sam Elliott co-stars as a bouncer, the mentor, friend, and foil of Swayze's character. The cast also includes Kelly Lynch as Swayze's love interest and Ben Gazzara as the main antagonist.


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: James Dalton is a professional "cooler", with a mysterious past who is enticed from his job in New York City by Frank Tilghman to take over security at his own club, the Double Deuce, in Jasper, Missouri. Tilghman plans to invest substantial money into the club to enhance its image, and he needs a first-rate cooler to maintain stability. Handed control of all bar operations and hiring by Frank, Dalton fires multiple employees for theft and drug dealing.


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: Dalton is introduced to local business magnate Brad Wesley, who effectively controls the town. His henchmen threaten Tilghman, and during the ensuing struggle Dalton receives a knife wound. At the hospital, he begins a friendship with Dr. Elizabeth "Doc" Clay, which develops into a romance. Dalton also reunites with his mentor, aging cooler Wade Garrett, who comes in to town after receiving a disconcerting phone call from Dalton.


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: Wesley summons Dalton to his home and reveals knowledge of Dalton's past regarding an incident in which he killed a man in self-defense. Wesley tries to convince Dalton to work for him once he extorts the Double Deuce. Dalton refuses and Wesley increases his attack on the club as well as beginning to sabotage other businesses that start disobeying him. After Wesley's henchman Jimmy Reno sets Dalton's house on fire, he kills him in self-defense, shocking Elizabeth.


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: After Wesley has Garrett killed, Dalton snaps and storms Wesley's estate, killing most of his henchmen and ultimately incapacitating Wesley. As he tries to walk away, Wesley pulls a gun on him. Before Wesley can shoot, however, he is shot to death by the townspeople, who deny any knowledge of what had happened to the arriving police. In the end, the town celebrates its newfound freedom at the Double Deuce.


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: Annette Bening was originally cast as Dr. Elizabeth Clay but she was fired because she and Patrick Swayze had no chemistry, so she was replaced by Kelly Lynch.


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: Filming started in April 1988 on location throughout California, primarily in Newhall, Valencia, and Canyon Country. The filming of much of the "New Double Deuce" used Anaheim's "Cowboy" bar, also later called the "Bandstand" among other names until it closed. The opening and monster truck scenes were filmed in Reedley, California. The Kings River runs between the two residences. The monster truck used was Bigfoot #7, which was originally built for the film. The scene cost $500,000 to film.


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: The soundtrack for "Road House" featured Canadian guitarist Jeff Healey, whose band was featured in the film as the house band for the Double Deuce. Cruzados were the band in the opening credits, contributing three songs to the film that never made the soundtrack. Patrick Swayze also wrote one song and sang two for the soundtrack. The film's score was composed by Michael Kamen. A limited edition 14-track score album part of the Special Collection was issued by Intrada Records in 2012. An expanded limited 31-track score was reissued for the film's 30th anniversary by La-La Land Records in 2019.


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: Between VHS, DVD, Blu-ray and Streaming service sales, 'Road House' has grossed over $203 million, including its original box office of $61 million. The film was originally released on VHS and then on DVD. In the United States Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer first released the film on DVD on February 4, 2003, with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio and theatrical trailer as the sole extra feature. In 2006 a Deluxe Edition DVD was released with two audio commentaries including one with the director, two featurettes titled "On the Roadhouse" and "What Would Dalton Do?". "Road House" was first issued by MGM on Blu-ray disc on June 2, 2009. A second disc combines the same six special features ported from the Deluxe DVD. After being reissued numerous times in the U.S., in 2016 Shout! Factory released a 2-disc Blu-ray collectors edition with fourteen extra features with material ported over from the previous editions. New supplements include a 'making of' documentary with new interviews by Herrington, actors Kelly Lynch, John Doe, Kevin Tighe, Julie Michaels and Red West, a separate conversation with the director and featurette for the film's music. The magnet clasp boxed limited edition 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray/Blu-ray combo pack from Vinegar Syndrome was released on November 25, 2022.


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: The film grossed $30 million in the United States and Canada and $31 million internationally for a worldwide total of $61 million. The film was more successful on home video. The film also found life on cable television.


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, "Road House" has a rating of 39% based on 44 reviews and has an average rating of 5.2 out of 10. The consenus states: "Whether "Road House" is simply bad or so bad it's good depends largely on the audience's fondness for Swayze -- and tolerance for violently cheesy action."


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film 2 out of 4 stars and commented, ""Road House" exists right on the edge between the 'good-bad movie' and the merely bad. I hesitate to recommend it, because so much depends on the ironic vision of the viewer. This is not a good movie. But viewed in the right frame of mind, it is not a boring one, either."


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: When interviewed by Anthony Bourdain, Bill Murray lauded the film as unappreciated, with a complex plot and respect among actors in the film industry since its release. Kelly Lynch told "The A.V. Club", "Every time "Road House" is on and he [Murray] or one of his idiot brothers are watching TV – and they're always watching TV – one of them calls my husband and says (in a reasonable approximation of Carl Spackler from "Caddyshack"), 'Kelly's having sex with Patrick Swayze right now. They're doing it. He's throwing her against the rocks.'" Murray is the best friend of Lynch's husband, Mitch Glazer, and Lynch herself considers Murray a "buddy".


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: "Road House" was nominated for (but did not "win") five Golden Raspberry Awards: Worst Picture, Worst Actor (Patrick Swayze), Worst Supporting Actor (Ben Gazzara), Worst Director, and Worst Screenplay. The film is listed in Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson's book "The Official Razzie Movie Guide" as one of The 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made.


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: A sequel, "Road House 2", was released directly to DVD in July 2006. Set many years later and telling the story of Dalton's adult son, it featured no characters from the original cast and only a few references to Dalton (who was reportedly shot dead before the film took place). The sequel confirmed that Dalton's first name was James, which could be seen momentarily on the medical chart in the original film's hospital scene, but which had been otherwise left unsaid. At the same time "Road House 2" was released, the original film was reissued in a deluxe edition featuring, among other features, separate audio commentary tracks by director Herrington, Kevin Smith, and Scott Mosier, which the duo had expressed an interest in during the introduction of the tenth anniversary "Clerks" DVD.


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: In 2003, an off-Broadway musical production of "Road House" was staged as a campy comedy by Timothy Haskell, as seen by its full title of "Road House: The Stage Version Of The Cinema Classic That Starred Patrick Swayze, Except This One Stars Taimak From The 80's Cult Classic ""The Last Dragon"" Wearing A Blonde Mullet Wig".


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: Following the death of Eric Garner, the New York City Police Department began using a scene from "Road House" as part of a mandatory, three-day retraining course for 22,000 officers expected to "be nice" under pressure.


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: On September 9, 2015, it was announced that Ronda Rousey would star in a remake of "Road House". On October 12, 2015, Nick Cassavetes was announced to write and direct the film. However, plans for the film fell through and the remake was quietly canceled in 2016.


title: Road House (1989 film)

text: In November 2021, it was reported that Jake Gyllenhaal was in talks to star in a remake of "Road House" by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer with Doug Liman directing. In August 2022, a full cast was announced including Conor McGregor, Billy Magnussen, Gbemisola Ikumelo and Daniela Melchior and would debut on Amazon Prime Video. The film is rumored to have a similar plot with a modern twist. Gyllenhaal's character is to be a former UFC fighter who is now retired and working at a roadhouse in the Florida Keys. Production for the movie will begin in August 2022 and is planned to be released worldwide on Amazon Prime.


title: Hank Williams Jr.

text: Randall Hank Williams (born May 26, 1949), known professionally as Hank Williams Jr. or Bocephus, is an American singer-songwriter and musician. His musical style is often considered a blend of southern rock, blues, and country. He is the son of country musician Hank Williams and the father of musicians Holly Williams and Hank Williams III.


title: Hank Williams Jr.

text: Williams began his career following in his famed father's footsteps, covering his father's songs and imitating his father's style. Williams' first television appearance was in a 1964 episode of ABC's "The Jimmy Dean Show", in which at age fourteen he sang several songs associated with his father. Later that year, he was a guest star on "Shindig!"


title: Hank Williams Jr.

text: Williams' style evolved slowly as he struggled to find his own voice and place within country music. This was interrupted by a near-fatal fall off the side of Ajax Peak in Montana on August 8, 1975. After an extended recovery, he challenged the country music establishment with a blend of country, rock and blues. As a multi-instrumentalist, Williams' repertoire of skills includes guitar, bass guitar, upright bass, steel guitar, banjo, dobro, piano, keyboards, saxophone, harmonica, fiddle, and drums. In 2020, Williams Jr. was selected to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.


title: Hank Williams Jr.

text: Williams was born Randall Hank Williams on May 26, 1949, in Shreveport, Louisiana. His father nicknamed him Bocephus (after Grand Ole Opry comedian Rod Brasfield's ventriloquist dummy). After his father's death in 1953, he was raised by his mother, Audrey Williams.


title: Hank Williams Jr.

text: While he was a child, a number of contemporary musicians visited his family, who influenced and taught him various music instruments and styles. Among these figures of influence were Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Fats Domino, Earl Scruggs, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Williams first stepped on the stage and sang his father's songs when he was eight years old.


title: Hank Williams Jr.

text: He attended John Overton High School in Nashville, Tennessee, where he would bring his guitar to music class and play for pep rallies and performances of the choir.


title: Hank Williams Jr.

text: In 1964, Williams made his recording debut with "Long Gone Lonesome Blues", one of his father's many classic songs.


title: Hank Williams Jr.

text: He provided the singing voice of his father in the 1964 film "Your Cheatin' Heart." He also recorded an album of duets with recordings of his father.


title: Hank Williams Jr.

text: Although Williams' recordings earned him numerous country hits throughout the 1960s and early 1970s with his role as a "Hank Williams impersonator", he became disillusioned and severed ties with his mother.


title: Hank Williams Jr.

text: By the mid-1970s Williams began to pursue a musical direction that would eventually make him a superstar. While recording a series of moderately successful songs, Williams began a heavy pattern of both drug and alcohol abuse. Upon moving to Alabama, in an attempt to refocus both his creative energy and his troubled personal life, Williams began playing music with Southern rock musicians including Waylon Jennings, Toy Caldwell, and Charlie Daniels. "Hank Williams Jr. and Friends" (1975), often considered his watershed album, was the product of these then-groundbreaking collaborations.


title: Hank Williams Jr.

text: On August 8, 1975, Williams was nearly killed in a mountain-climbing accident in southwestern Montana. While climbing Ajax Peak on the continental divide (Idaho border) west of Jackson, the snow beneath him collapsed and he fell almost onto rock; he suffered multiple skull and facial fractures. The incident was chronicled in the semi-autobiographical, made-for-television film "". He spent two years in recovery, having several reconstructive surgeries in addition to having to learn to talk and sing again. To hide the scars and the disfigurement from the accident, Williams grew a beard and began wearing sunglasses and a cowboy hat. The beard, hat, and sunglasses have since become his signature look, and he is rarely seen without them.


title: Hank Williams Jr.

text: In 1977, Williams recorded and released "One Night Stands" and "The New South", and worked closely with his old friend Waylon Jennings on the song "Once and For All".


title: Hank Williams Jr.

text: In 1980, he appeared on the PBS show "Austin City Limits" during Season 5, along with the Shake Russell-Dana Cooper Band.


title: Hank Williams Jr.

text: In 1976, "Rolling Stone" wrote that Williams' "mainstream country material has always been among Nashvilles best". Williams' career began to hit its peak after the Nashville establishment gradually—and somewhat reluctantly—accepted his new sound. His popularity had risen to levels where he could no longer be overlooked for major industry awards.


title: Hank Williams Jr.

text: He was prolific throughout the 1980s, sometimes recording and releasing two albums a year. "Family Tradition", "Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound", "Habits Old and New", "Rowdy", "The Pressure Is On", "High Notes", "Strong Stuff", "Man of Steel", "Major Moves", "Five-O", "Montana Cafe", and many others resulted in a long string of hits.


title: Hank Williams Jr.

text: Between 1979 and 1992, Williams released 21 albums—18 studio albums and three compilations—that were all certified at least gold by the RIAA. Between 1979 and 1990, he enjoyed a string of 30 Top Ten singles on the Billboard Country charts, including eight No. 1 singles, for a total of 44 Top Ten singles, including a total of 10 No. 1 singles, during his career.