title: Indo-Pacific

text: The Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe referred to the "confluence" of the Indian and Pacific Oceans in his speech to the Indian Parliament in August 2007 as "the dynamic coupling as seas of freedom and of prosperity" in the "broader Asia". The focus of Japanese Prime Minister's August 2007 speech in the Indian Parliament was on security of sea lanes linking the two oceans. In the academic discourse relating to such maritime security issue in the Indo-Pacific, the first articulation was carried by a paper published in January 2007 by the Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi. It was a result of consultations between IDSA and the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA) held in New Delhi in October 2006. From 2010 onwards, the term Indo-Pacific acquired salience within the Indian government and has since been used often by India's apex political leadership. From about 2011 onwards, the term has been used frequently by strategic analysts and high-level government/military leadership in Australia, Japan and the United States to denote said region. However, a formal/official documented articulation of the term first appeared in Australia's Defence White Paper, 2013. It is also "symbiotically linked" with the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—an informal grouping of like-minded democracies in the region, comprising Australia, India, Japan, and the United States.


title: Indo-Pacific

text: In 2013, Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa proposed an "Indo-Pacific Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation" to restore trust, manage unresolved territory disputes, and help countries deal with change in the region. In 2013, U.S. officials have begun using the term "Indo-Asia Pacific".


title: Indo-Pacific

text: In 2019, the United States Department of State published a document formalizing the concept of a "Free and Open Indo-Pacific", to be sustained among members of "the Quad", a partnership of four Indo-Pacific democracies led by the United States, in concert with Australia, India, and Japan. "Indo-Pacific" has also featured prominently in top-level U.S. strategic documents such as the 2017 National Security Strategy, the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, and the 2018 National Defense Strategy. According to Felix Heiduk and Gudrun Wacker at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, the concept is aimed at containing China and is "primarily understood as a U.S.-led containment strategy directed against China" in Beijing. It has been argued that the concept of the Indo-Pacific may lead to a change in popular "mental maps" of how the world is understood in strategic terms.


title: Indo-Pacific

text: The term's profile was raised when it found mention in the joint statement issued by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and United States President Donald Trump after the former's state visit to the White House on 26 June 2017. "As responsible stewards in the Indo-Pacific region, President Trump and Prime Minister Modi agreed that a close partnership between the United States and India is central to peace and stability in the region. In marking 70 years of diplomatic relations between India and the United States, the leaders resolved to expand and deepen the strategic partnership between the countries and advance common objectives. Above all, these objectives include combatting terrorist threats, promoting stability across the Indo-Pacific region, increasing free and fair trade, and strengthening energy linkages". However, President Trump's November 2017 articulation on Indo-Pacific was widely seen as something that would usher in a new (US–China) Cold War. This led to the Indian Prime Minister spelling out the Indian vision of Indo-Pacific as an enabler for "a common pursuit of progress and prosperity... not directed against any country... (albeit based on) our principled commitment to rule of law". According to Dr. Cenk Tamer, the U.S. seeks to create an "anti-China axis" in the Asia-Pacific region through the conceptualization of the Indo-Pacific because it sees India as a key part in containing China. This was reiterated by President Biden, who declared a "secure and prosperous Indo-Pacific." Tamer calls the Indo-Pacific a concept that started to gain ground in international relations as a geopolitical challenge by the U.S. toward China.


title: Indo-Pacific

text: The Australian Citizens Party, a minor third party associated with the LaRouche movement, criticises the "Indo-Pacific" vision as a reenactment of Nazi strategy, given the concept's link to Karl Haushofer.


title: Indo-Pacific

text: Former Prime Minister of Australia Paul Keating, in a televised address at the National Press Club, criticised the notion of the "Indo-Pacific" as a construct of the United States in its diplomatic war with China:


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: Nintendo EAD Tokyo began developing "Super Mario Galaxy" after the release of "Donkey Kong Jungle Beat" in late 2004, when Shigeru Miyamoto suggested that Nintendo commission a large-scale "Mario" game. The concept of spherical platforms originated from "Super Mario 128", a GameCube tech demo shown at Nintendo Space World in 2000. Nintendo aimed to make the game appeal to players of all ages, and the team had more freedom in designing it compared to other "Super Mario" games because of the outer space setting. The game was directed by Yoshiaki Koizumi and soundtrack was composed by Mahito Yokota and Koji Kondo, using a symphony orchestra for the first time in the series.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: "Super Mario Galaxy" was a critical and commercial success, hailed as one of the best games in the series and one of the greatest video games of all time. At the time of its closure in 2019, "Super Mario Galaxy" was the highest-rated game of all time on review-aggregating site GameRankings. It received outstanding critical acclaim, citing the game's graphics, gravity mechanics and level design, soundtrack, setting, and story. It won several awards from top gaming publications, including multiple "Game of the Year" titles, and became the first Nintendo title to win the BAFTA Award for Best Game. The game is the ninth best-selling Wii game worldwide with sales of 12.80 million. The game was released as a Nintendo Selects title in 2011, as a download via the Wii U's eShop in 2015, on the Nvidia Shield in China in 2018, and as part of the "Super Mario 3D All-Stars" collection for the Nintendo Switch in 2020. A sequel, "Super Mario Galaxy 2", was released for the Wii in 2010.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: "Super Mario Galaxy" is set in outer space, where Mario travels through different galaxies to collect Power Stars, earned by completing missions, defeating a boss, or reaching a particular area. Each galaxy contains planetoids and orbiting structures for the player to explore. Each astronomical object has its own gravitational force, allowing the player to completely circumnavigate the planetoids, walking sideways or upside down. The player can usually jump from one independent object and fall towards another one nearby. Although the main gameplay is in 3D, there are several areas in the game in which the player's movements are restricted to a two-dimensional plane.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: The game's main hub is the Comet Observatory, a spaceship which contains six domes that provide access to most of the game's 42 available galaxies, with each dome except one holding five. Five domes end with a boss level in which the objective is to defeat Bowser or Bowser Jr. and earn a special Power Star, known as a Grand Star, that gives the player access to the next dome. The player only has access to one galaxy when they begin the game; as more Power Stars are collected, more galaxies and Stars become available. The player is awarded the ability to play as Luigi after collecting 120 Power Stars as Mario. Once 120 Power Stars are collected with both characters, the player is rewarded one further challenge which, upon completion, awards the player with the final two stars, and two commemorative pictures of the characters that can be sent to the Wii Message Board.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: The player-character is controlled via the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. While most of Mario's abilities are taken directly from "Super Mario 64", such as the long jump, wall jumps, and a variety of somersaults, a new feature called the Star Pointer that uses the Wii Remote's motion sensor is included. It is a small blue cursor that appears when the Wii Remote pointer is pointed at the screen. The Star Pointer is used to pick up special konpeito-shaped objects called "Star Bits", which can then be shot to stun enemies, manipulate obstacles, or feed Hungry Lumas (star-shaped sentient beings). The pointer can also latch onto small blue objects called "Pull Stars", which can pull Mario through space. In certain levels that encase the player in a floating bubble, the Star Pointer is used to blow wind and maneuver the bubble.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: Early in the game, the player learns a new ability known as the "Spin" technique, which has appeared in varying forms throughout the "Super Mario" franchise. In "Super Mario Galaxy", the "spin" is primarily used for melee attacks to stun enemies and shatter objects, as well as triggering special propellers called "Sling Stars" or "Launch Stars" that launch Mario across large distances through space. The "spin" utility is also used for climbing vines, ice skating, flipping switches, unscrewing bolts, and for activating several power-ups. Other Wii Remote functions are available for smaller quests, such as surfing aboard a manta ray or balancing atop a large ball and rolling it through an obstacle course.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: Nine power-ups grant Mario temporary abilities. For example, special mushrooms bestow the player with a Bee, Boo, or Spring Mushroom. The Bee Mushroom allows Mario to hover through the air, climb on honeycombs, and walk on clouds and flowers; the Boo Mushroom allows him to float through the air, become transparent, and move through certain obstacles; and the Spring Mushroom allows him to jump to high areas that would be otherwise inaccessible. The Fire Flower allows Mario to throw fireballs at enemies, and the Ice Flower grants flame attack immunity and allows Mario to create hexagonal ice tiles to cover any liquid surface he walks on. The Rainbow Star grants Mario invincibility and lets him run faster.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: Mario's health consists of a three-piece health meter, which is depleted through contact with enemies and hazards. When swimming underwater, Mario has an air supply meter, which quickly depletes his main health meter if it runs out. Mario's health and air supply can be restored by collecting coins, or through touching bubbles if underwater. When the health meter becomes empty, the player loses a life and must go back to a predetermined checkpoint. The health meter can temporarily expand to six units through the use of a Life Mushroom. Instant death can occur by being swallowed by quicksand or dark matter, by being crushed by hazards, or by falling into black holes or other bottomless pits. The player can obtain extra lives by collecting 1-Up Mushrooms, 50 coins without losing a life, or 50 Star Bits.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: "Super Mario Galaxy" has a co-operative two-player option called "Co-Star" mode, in which one player controls Mario while the other uses only the Wii Remote to control a second Star Pointer on-screen to gather Star Bits and shoot them at enemies. The second player can also make Mario jump, and the height of Mario's jump can be increased if the first and second player press the A button at the same time. The second player can prevent some enemies from moving by aiming the pointer star at them and holding the A button.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: The centennial Star Festival is held to watch a comet in the Mushroom Kingdom. On the night of the Star Festival, Princess Peach discovers a star-shaped creature called a Luma and invites Mario to come to the festival to see the Luma she discovered. Just as Mario arrives at the town, Bowser invades the Mushroom Kingdom in a fleet of airships, littering the landscape with fireballs and petrifying its citizens in crystals. He invites Peach to his creation of his galaxy and removes Peach's castle from its foundations using a giant flying saucer, and lifts it into outer space. Kamek, one of Bowser's minions, launches Mario, who tried to rescue Princess Peach, into space and onto a small planet with his magic while the Luma escapes from her hands. On the planet, Mario wakes up after being knocked unconscious and meets the Luma which Peach found earlier, along with the space Princess Rosalina and her star-shaped companions, the Lumas. Rosalina describes herself as a watcher of the stars who uses the Comet Observatory to travel across the universe. However, Bowser has stolen all of the Power Stars that act as the Observatory's power source, rendering it immobile. Bestowed with the power to travel through space through one of the Lumas, Mario sets off on a journey across the universe to reclaim the Power Stars and restore power to Rosalina's observatory. Along the way, he finds friends from the Mushroom Kingdom such as Luigi and the Toads while fighting Bowser and Bowser Jr. at certain points.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: Upon collecting enough Power Stars, the Comet Observatory flies to the center of the universe, where Bowser is holding Peach captive. While confronting Bowser, Mario learns that he plans to rule the entire universe with Peach at his side. Mario defeats Bowser and frees Peach, but one of the galaxy's planets collapses on itself, becoming a supermassive black hole that begins consuming the entire universe. The Lumas sacrifice themselves and jump into the black hole to destroy it, causing the black hole to collapse into a singularity and the universe is recreated entirely as the singularity explodes in a huge supernova. Rosalina appears to Mario, revealing that dying stars are later reborn as new stars. When the universe is recreated, Mario awakens in the Mushroom Kingdom, which was recreated in the supernova, alongside Peach and Bowser, and he celebrates the new galaxy that has emerged in the skies. If the player collects 120 stars, Rosalina will thank the player and, with the reborn Lumas, leave aboard the Comet Observatory to travel the cosmos again.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: The concept for "Super Mario Galaxy"s gameplay originated from ideas taken from "Super Mario 128", a technology demonstration shown at Nintendo Space World in 2000 to exemplify the processing power of the GameCube. The demonstration's director (and future director of "Super Mario Galaxy"), Yoshiaki Koizumi, desired that one of its distinguishing features, spherical-based platforms, should be used in a future game, but was held back in belief that such a feature would be impossible for technical reasons. "Super Mario" creator Shigeru Miyamoto suggested to work on the next large-scale Mario game after Nintendo EAD Tokyo finished development on "Donkey Kong Jungle Beat" in late 2004, pushing for the spherical platform concept to be realised. A prototype of the game's physics system took three months to build, where it was decided that the game's use of spherical platforms would best be suited to planetoids in an outer space environment, with the concept of gravity as a major feature. During development, the designers would often exchange ideas with Miyamoto from his office in Kyoto, where he would make suggestions to the game design. According to Koizumi, many ideas were conceived before development of the Wii console itself begun.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: The idea for Mario to have a "spin" attack came during the early stages of development, when it was decided that jumping on enemies on a spherical map would be difficult for some players – at one point, Koizumi remarked that making characters jump in a 3D environment was "absurd". Takeo Shimizu, the game's producer and programmer, noted that the most basic action in a 3D action game was to simply run, and concluded that the easiest way to attack was to "spin", not jump. Prior to the development team shifting focus on the Wii and realising the potential of its different controls, the "spin" attack was originally planned to be executed by swivelling the analogue stick on the GameCube controller. The "spin" was initially activated via rotation of the Nunchuk's control stick, but after motion sensing was confirmed to be implemented in the Wii Remote, the "spin" was changed to be activated through shaking the latter. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata wanted to prioritise the game's "fun factor" by giving the player a sense of achievement after they have completed a difficult task; Iwata noted an increasing number of consumers giving up during a video game and thus wanted "Super Mario Galaxy" to appeal to that audience. In response, the development team created a co-operative mode which allowed one player to control Mario whilst the other controlled the pointer with the Wii Remote, therefore enabling lesser experienced players to enjoy themselves in the game.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: The development team wanted the game to be enjoyed from the ages of "5 to 95", so during early stages of development, they took steps to ensure that the player would adjust to the game without difficulty. However, Miyamoto thought that it was too easy and lacked insensitivity, asserting that a game loses its excitement when it is made unchallenging. To balance out the difficulty, Koizumi suggested that Mario's health meter should have a maximum capacity of three instead of eight, but at the same time more 1-Up Mushrooms and checkpoints would be placed in the game. Koizumi said that he wanted to alter the game's "intensity factor" by limiting the number of hits the player could take to three, as opposed to "Super Mario 64" and "Super Mario Sunshine", which featured eight. Retrospectively, Iwata added that decreasing the health meter to three from eight is "representative of the things that players do not notice that actually changes the gameplay dramatically".


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: With the concept of gravity and spherical platforms being the central elements of gameplay, the development team drafted several ideas on how to implement them into the game. Koichi Hayashida, a co-designer of the game, initially expressed scepticism of incorporating a spherical playing field into a jump-based platform game, stating that it would be "a bad match". Shimizu also had a negative reaction to the idea, with his main concern being that the implementation of spherical platforms would be impossible to achieve due to technical reasons, and "felt a sense of danger" when the plan was eventually approved. However, once Shimizu started debugging the game he realised that the experience felt "totally fresh" and thought that he was "playing a game like nothing that's come before it". Futoshi Shirai, the game's level designer, stated that unlike Hayashida and Shimizu, he had a positive impression of the new gameplay elements. Shirai liked the idea of being able to run on different types of planetoids, and came up with designs such as planets in the shape of ice cream and apples. Because the game was in outer space, the team could devise ideas that would have otherwise been hard to implement in other "Super Mario" games. Shirai said that the benefit of working with a spherical-shaped world was that they could design and discover new things, with Kenta Motokura, the game's artist, similarly stating that the player would be continuously enjoying their adventure by travelling to new planets. Koizumi appreciated the "free and open" feel of developing the game, saying that it enabled the team to make the game more fun for the player.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: Throughout development, staff members enjoyed the level of freedom the game offered, in particular the transforming abilities of Mario. Iwata noted that Mario's Bee Suit was popular with women, and also stated that the titular character's other suits were designed to add variations to the gameplay. According to Hayashida, the idea to include transformations in the game came from Koizumi. One of the female members of staff who worked on "Super Mario Galaxy" wrote a note saying "I want a Bee Mario" when asked by Koizumi what they wanted to transform Mario into. Shirai stated that the development team always discussed their ideas together, and devised ways to incorporate an idea into the game and make it more entertaining. Iwata concluded that having the game take place in space was advantageous, as it was flexible enough to accommodate a wide range of ideas.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: After development was finished, the team reflected that the fundamental part of a "Super Mario" game was to make the player think about how "fun" it was to play the game itself, rather than simply finishing it. To accomplish this, Koizumi made sure that there were certain areas of the game which could be enjoyed by all types of people, including children. Shimizu added that "Super Mario Galaxy"s ulterior motive was to have everybody "gather around the TV", as he felt that a game starring Mario was not necessarily something which could be enjoyed by playing alone. The game was made to support six different save files – Shimizu liked the idea of one player looking at the progress of another player and seeing how they compared against their own. Iwata stated that when the first "Super Mario" game was released, there used to be "many more" people gathering around the television who would enjoy watching the gameplay experience. Iwata asserted that well-made video games were more enjoyable to spectate, and hoped that "Super Mario Galaxy"s co-operative mode would tempt someone who does not usually play video games to join.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: During development, Mahito Yokota, who was in charge of the musical direction, originally wanted "Super Mario Galaxy" to have a Latin American style of music; and even had composed 28 tracks in that style. Latin American percussion instruments had already been featured in previous "Super Mario" installments, such as steelpans, bongo drums, and congas. For "Super Mario Galaxy"s theme, Yokota used Latin American instruments and a synthesiser to replicate the sounds featured in old science fiction films. The composition was approved by Yoshiaki Koizumi, the game's director and designer, but when Yokota presented it to the game's sound supervisor, Koji Kondo, he stated that it was "no good". When asked why his music was rejected, Kondo responded: "if somewhere in your mind you have an image that Mario is cute, please get rid of it". Incensed by the rejection, Yokota almost resigned from his job, but Kondo implied that Mario's character was "cool" and instructed him to try again.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: According to Yokota, he was under the impression that Mario was suited for children, causing him to create "cute" music that would appeal to the targeted audience. The game's director, Yoshiaki Koizumi, after Yokota's music was rejected, later complimented him telling him "It wasn't so bad". Three months later, Yokota presented three different styles of music to Miyamoto: one piece had an orchestral sound, the other had pop music, and the last featured a mix of both orchestral and pop music. Miyamoto chose the orchestral piece, as it sounded the most "space-like". Yokota stated that Miyamoto chose the piece without knowing that Kondo actually wrote it. In a retrospective interview, Satoru Iwata said that Miyamoto chose the music that sounded "space-like" because he was looking for a sound that would express the game, in contrast to the tropical sounds of "Super Mario Bros." Yokota revealed that he initially struggled to create music that sounded like a "Super Mario" game, but as time progressed he declared that the songs he made for the game had "become natural".


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: To create a sense of variety with the soundtrack, Yokota and Kondo wrote pieces individually; Kondo composed four pieces for the game whereas Yokota composed the rest. Kondo composed the pieces that Yokota specifically requested, as he thought that the game's soundtrack would "end up all sounding the same" if it were composed by one person. The game originally heavily utilised the Wii Remote speaker for "all sorts of sound [effects]", but Masafumi Kawamura, the game's sound director, decided they were redundant when played in tandem with those from the television. Kawamura decided to restrict Wii Remote sound effects to those triggered by Mario's actions, such as hitting an enemy, feeling that it better immersed the player.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: The game's soundtrack features 28 orchestral songs performed by a 50-person symphony orchestra. Yokota initially had concerns whether or not orchestral music would fit in with the rhythm of a Mario game, but thought that such music would make the scale of the game "seem more epic". Kondo, on the other hand, believed if orchestral music were used the player would be "obligated to play the game in time to the music". To synchronise the soundtrack to gameplay, Kawamura utilised similar techniques he used to synchronise sound effects in "" and "Donkey Kong Jungle Beat" — in which the game synchronises MIDI data with streaming data, resulting in sound effects playing at the same time as background music. To make synchronisation possible, the audio team requested the orchestra to perform at different tempos set with a metronome.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: The official soundtrack was released on 24 January 2008. It was initially an exclusive to Club Nintendo subscribers in Japan, although the soundtrack became available to European Club Nintendo members in November 2008. The soundtrack was released in two versions: the "Original Soundtrack", which only contains 28 tracks from the game, and the "Platinum Edition", which contains another 53 tracks on a second disc for a total of 81 tracks. In North America, the "Original Soundtrack" was included in a black Wii Family Edition console bundle alongside "New Super Mario Bros. Wii" in 2011.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: "Super Mario Galaxy" has received critical acclaim, becoming the sixth-highest-rated game of all time on review aggregator Metacritic with an aggregate score of 97 out of 100 based on 73 reviews. On review-aggregate website GameRankings, it is the highest-rated game with at least 20 reviews, having a 97.64% ranking based on 78 reviews.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: The visuals and presentation were the most praised aspects of the game. Chris Scullion of the "Official Nintendo Magazine" asserted that the graphics pushed the Wii to its full potential, and stated that its visual effects and large playing areas would constantly astound the player. Jeremy Parish from "1UP.com" noted that despite the Wii's limitations, the visuals were "absolutely impressive", especially when modified at a higher resolution. "Computer and Video Games"s Andrew Robinson opined that Nintendo favored gameplay over graphics, but thought "Super Mario Galaxy" "got both perfect". Margaret Robertson of "Eurogamer" called the visuals an "explosion of inventiveness", stating that the game's detail is only matched by its mission design ingenuity. Andrew Reiner of "Game Informer" approved of the game's portrayal of water and particle effects, but noted the visuals were in similar detail to "Super Mario Sunshine". Patrick Shaw from "GamePro" opined that the game takes full advantage of the Wii's capabilities, both in terms of presentation and control schemes.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: Regarding the presentation, "Game Revolution"s Chris Hudak thought that "Super Mario Galaxy" was a "next-gen reincarnation" of "Super Mario 64", stating the game was polished, engaging and evocative. Alex Navarro of "GameSpot" commended the colourful and vibrant level details, animations and character designs, saying that "there simply isn't a better-looking Wii game available". Furthermore, Navarro praised the game engine's ability of keeping frame rate drops to "infrequent bouts". Bryn Williams of "GameSpy" asserted that the game had the best visuals on the Wii, saying that the graphics "are out of this world" and that its wide range of colours produces "better-than-expected" texturing. A reviewer from "GamesRadar" stated that "words simply can't describe" the game's visual concepts. Louis Bedigan from "GameZone" thought the visualisations from "Super Mario Galaxy" contrast from the blocky characters of previous "Super Mario" games, praising the planet designs as beautiful and everything else as "pure eye candy". Matt Casamassina of "IGN" thought "Super Mario Galaxy" was the only game that pushed the Wii console, stating it combines "great art" with "great tech", resulting in what he described to be "stunning results". David Halverson of "Play" opined that the game was "supremely" polished and featured "gorgeous next-gen" graphics.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: The gameplay, in particular the gravity mechanics and use of the Wii Remote, was also praised. A reviewer from "Famitsu" commented on the game's tempo, believing it was "abnormally good" and that the different variations in level design and difficulty gradually "builds things up". A reviewer from "Edge" praised the game's use of the Wii Remote, stating the control schemes were more subtle and persuasive as opposed to the "vigorous literalism" of "". Scullion was initially sceptical about using the Wii Remote as a pointer, but admitted that "within mere minutes it felt like we'd been doing this since the days of "Mario 64"". Scullion also thought that the game's strongest aspect was the "incomparable" gameplay. Parish praised the fluctuating gravity that was featured in the game, stating that it "makes even the wildest challenge feel almost second nature". Robinson similarly commended the gravity, saying that the different uses of the game's gravitational pulls allows the scale to grow to "genuinely draw-dropping proportions". Robertson regarded the use of gravity as an "explosion of inventiveness". Reiner thought that the game reinvented the platform genre for the seventh generation of video game consoles, stating that "Super Mario Galaxy" was both nostalgic and new by breaking the laws of physics.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: Shaw asserted that the new gameplay mechanics reinvigorated the "Super Mario" franchise, and summarised by saying it was the best title since "Super Mario 64". Similarly, Hudak thought that the game was a reincarnation of "Super Mario 64", whilst stating that the variety of gameplay had a "signature Miyamoto style". Navarro said that the level designs were "top flight in every regard" and also praised the game's introduction of suits, adding that they brought a "great dimension" to gameplay. Williams opined that the game's "shallow" two-player mode did not add anything to the overall experience. He did praise the various gameplay components and the use of both the Wii Remote and Nunchuck, stating that the setup was "pinpoint accurate". A reviewer from "GamesRadar" thought that the control scheme had a fluid response that improved over the controls of its predecessor, "Super Mario Sunshine". Regarding the controls and world designs, Bedigan stated that both aspects are "close to perfection as a game can get". Casamassina found the gameplay mechanics, in particular varying physics, as "ridiculously entertaining". He also regarded the motion control as being well implemented, stating that the player would appreciate the change of pace that the levels offer. Halverson particularly commended the innovative controls, saying the Wii Remote and Nunchuck was "at its finest" and that it was difficult to imagine playing it in another fashion.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: The soundtrack and audio were well received by critics. Scullion believed it to be the best out of any "Super Mario" game, declaring that each track matches the environments featured throughout the game. Parish considered the orchestrated music superior to the visuals, saying that the dynamic sounds were "quintessentially Mario" yet uncharacteristically sophisticated. Reiner stated that the orchestrated soundtrack was beautiful as well as nostalgic, with Robinson similarly citing it as "amazing". Navarro praised the modernised orchestrated soundtrack, stating that it was both excellent and "top-notch". Williams thought the game featured the best sound on the Wii, stating that original soundtrack would "go down in history" as Nintendo's best first-party effort. A reviewer from "GamesRadar" stated that "Super Mario Galaxy" featured the finest orchestral bombast ever heard in a game. Bedigan asserted that the soundtrack was "another step forward" in video game music, praising the music as moving and breathtaking. Casamassina judged the game's music "so exceptional" and "absolutely superb", summarising that it had the best music out of any Nintendo game to date. Hudak criticised the "traditional Mario-esque" lack of voice acting, despite admitting that if the game did feature voice acting it would "probably seem lame and wrong".


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: "Super Mario Galaxy" has been a commercial success, selling 350,000 units in Japan within its first few weeks of sale. In the United States, the game sold 500,000 units within its first week of release, earning it the highest first-week sales for a Mario game in the country at the time. The NPD Group reported that 1.4 million copies of the game were sold in the US in December 2007, making it the highest-selling game of the month, and that the game had become the fifth bestselling game of 2007 with 2.52 million units having been sold since its release. After 13 months, it had sold 7.66 million copies worldwide. By January 2010, the game had sold 4.1 million units in the US, and by February it had become one of nine Wii titles to surpass 5 million unit sales in the country. By the end of March 2020, Nintendo had sold 12.80 million copies of the game worldwide, making it the third bestselling non-bundled Wii game and the ninth bestselling Nintendo-published game for the Wii.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: "Super Mario Galaxy" received Game of the Year 2007 awards from "IGN", "GameSpot", "Nintendo Power", "Kotaku", and "Yahoo! Games". The game was also perceived as the highest ranking title in 2007 according to the review aggregator "GameRankings". In February 2008, "Super Mario Galaxy" received the "Adventure Game of the Year" award from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences at the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards (now known as the D.I.C.E. Awards); it was also nominated for "Overall Game of the Year", "Console Game of the Year", "Outstanding Achievement in Game Design", "Outstanding Achievement in Gameplay Engineering" and "Outstanding Innovation in Gaming". "Super Mario Galaxy" placed third in the "Official Nintendo Magazine"s "100 greatest Nintendo games of all time" list. In 2009, the game won the "Game of the Year" BAFTA at the 5th British Academy Games Awards, surpassing "" and becoming the first Nintendo game to win this award, whilst in the same year, "Super Mario Galaxy" was named the number one Wii game by "IGN". It was also named by "Eurogamer" and "IGN" as the "Game of the Generation". In 2015, the game placed 11th on "USgamer"s "15 Best Games Since 2000" list. "Guinness World Records" ranked "Super Mario Galaxy" 29th in their list of top 50 console games of all time based on initial impact and lasting legacy. In their final issue, the "Official Nintendo Magazine" ranked "Super Mario Galaxy" as the greatest Nintendo game of all time. The soundtrack also won the "Best Design in Audio" award from "Edge".


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: In the 1,000th issue of "Famitsu", Miyamoto expressed his interest in making a sequel to "Super Mario Galaxy". The game was originally called ""Super Mario Galaxy More"" during development, and was initially going to feature variations of planets featured in "Super Mario Galaxy". Over time, new elements and ideas were brought into the game, and it was decided that the game would be a full sequel. "Super Mario Galaxy 2" was announced during the Nintendo conference at E3 2009 held in Los Angeles. It was released on 23 May 2010 in North America, 27 May 2010 in Japan and on 11 June 2010 in Europe. The sequel has been met with as much critical acclaim as its predecessor, and has sold 6.36 million copies worldwide as of April 2011.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: "Super Mario Galaxy", as well as several other Wii games, was rereleased for Nvidia's Shield Tablet in China on 22 March 2018 as the result of a partnership between Nintendo, Nvidia and iQiyi. The game runs on the Shield via an emulator, but has interface and control modifications, and support for 1080p resolution. Due to the lack of motion controls on the Shield, some controls are remapped; for example, the on-screen pointer is remapped to the right analogue stick and the button to choose a Galaxy is remapped to the right trigger.


title: Super Mario Galaxy

text: The game is included alongside "Super Mario 64" and "Super Mario Sunshine" in the "Super Mario 3D All-Stars" collection on Nintendo Switch. It was released on 18 September 2020.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: Foundation is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov. It is the first published in his "Foundation Trilogy" (later expanded into the "Foundation" series). "Foundation" is a cycle of five interrelated short stories, first published as a single book by Gnome Press in 1951. Collectively they tell the early story of the Foundation, an institute founded by psychohistorian Hari Seldon to preserve the best of galactic civilization after the collapse of the Galactic Empire.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: Four of the five stories had been earlier published in "Astounding Science Fiction" between 1942 and 1944 under different titles. A fifth part, the first in fictional chronology, was added for the 1951 Gnome Press edition. The original four stories also appeared in 1955 as part of Ace's double novel series as D-110 under the title "The 1,000-Year Plan".


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: Two further books, each consisting of two novellas, were published shortly after and the three are considered a trilogy. Much later Asimov wrote two sequels and two prequels to the trilogy. Later writers have written new additions authorized by Asimov's estate.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: The "Foundation" Series is often regarded as one of Isaac Asimov's best works, alongside his "Robot" series.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: On August 1st, 1941 Isaac Asimov proposed to John W. Campbell of "Astounding Science Fiction" that he write a short story set in a slowly declining Galactic Empire, based on the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Campbell liked the idea, and by the end of a two-hour meeting Asimov planned to write a series of stories depicting the fall of the first Galactic Empire and the rise of the second. Asimov submitted the first "Foundation" story on September 8th, Campbell purchased it on September 15th, and "Astounding" published it in May 1942. Asimov wrote seven more stories over eight years, and they were collected into "The Foundation Trilogy". Published from 1951 to 1953, the three books became Asimov's most popular science fiction and won a Hugo Award for Best All-Time Series in 1966.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: This part is original to the 1951 book version. It takes place in 12,067 G.E. ("Galactic Era"). The story begins on Trantor, the capital of the 12,000-year-old Galactic Empire, powerful but slowly decaying. Hari Seldon, a mathematician and psychologist, has developed psychohistory, a new field of science and psychology that treats all possibilities in large societies by mathematics, allowing for the probabilistic prediction of future events.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: By means of psychohistory, Seldon has discovered the decline and eventual fall of the Empire, angering the aristocratic members of the Commission of Public Safety, the "de facto" rulers of the Empire. The Commission considers Seldon's views and statements treasonous, and he is arrested along with the young mathematician Gaal Dornick, who has arrived on Trantor to join Seldon's group. Seldon is tried by the Commission; he defends his beliefs, explaining his theories and predictions, including his belief that the Empire will collapse in 300 years and while a Second Empire will eventually rise it will only come after a 30,000-year dark age. He informs the Commission that an alternative to this future is attainable and explains to them that creating a compendium of all human knowledge, the "Encyclopedia Galactica", may not prevent the inevitable fall of the Empire but would reduce the dark age to one millennium.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: The skeptical Commission, not wanting to make Seldon a martyr, offers him exile to a remote world, Terminus, with others who could help him create the "Encyclopedia". He accepts their offer, prepares for the departure of the "Encyclopedists" and receives an imperial decree officially acknowledging his actions. Seldon informs Dornick that, despite the Empire's belief it won by exiling Seldon, the outcome was exactly what he had intended and hoped for. Terminus would be the home of the first Foundation while a second would be established "at Star's End." Seldon then reveals that he is dying, and implores Dornick to become a leader in the new Foundation.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: "The Encyclopedists" was originally published in the May 1942 issue of "Astounding Science-Fiction" under the title of "Foundation". The story begins in 50 F.E. ("Foundation Era") on Terminus, which has almost no mineral resources. There is one region suitable for the development of a large city, named Terminus City. The colony of professionals, devoted to the creation of the "Encyclopedia Galactica", is managed by the Board of Trustees of the Encyclopedia Galactica Foundation, composed solely of scientists, called the Encyclopedists. The affairs of Terminus City itself are handled by the city's first Mayor, Salvor Hardin, who is a political figurehead and virtually powerless due to the influence of the Board of Trustees. However, Hardin refuses to accept the "status quo," which he believes puts Terminus in danger of political exploitation by the four neighboring prefectures of the Empire, which have declared independence and severed contact with its capital, Trantor, and are now calling themselves "The Four Kingdoms." Hardin manages to avoid an attempt by the Kingdom of Anacreon to establish military bases on Terminus and to take advantage of their nuclear power, which Terminus retains but which the Four Kingdoms do not. Hardin succeeds in diverting Anacreon from its initial goal and furthers his goal of the establishment of a stable political system on Terminus.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: Hardin's efforts are still resisted by the Board of Trustees and its chairman, Dr. Lewis Pirenne, who erroneously believe they are protected by imperial decree. To remove this obstacle, Hardin and his chief advisor, Yohan Lee, plan a "coup d'état" designed to remove the Board of Trustees from its politically powerful position on the same day that, in the city's Time Vault, a holographic recording of Hari Seldon is programmed to play. The recording will contain psychohistoric proof of Hardin's success or failure; Hardin realizes that his coup is a great gamble due to the possible case that his beliefs are incompatible with Seldon's original goals.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: The next day in the Time Vault the holographic recording of Hari Seldon appears. He reveals that the "Encyclopedia Galactica" is actually a distraction intended to make the colony's creation possible. The true purpose of the Foundation is to form one nucleus of a Second Galactic Empire and shorten the predicted period of chaos to a mere thousand years, rather than thirty thousand years.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: After the recording ends, the Encyclopedists admit to Hardin that they had been wrong, and Pirenne schedules a meeting to discuss their next action. Hardin knew that this victory would give him the leverage he needed to gain significant power and thus "assume actual government" by removing the "figurehead" status from his Mayoral office. He also knew that Anacreon's forces would be arriving soon to forcibly take the Foundation. Salvor Hardin had guessed the solution, and as Hari Seldon said, "it was obvious."


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: "The Mayors" was originally published in the June 1942 issue of "Astounding Science-Fiction" as "Bridle and Saddle" (referring to Aesop's fable "The Horse that Lost its Liberty", a variant of which is recited by Hardin during the climax of the story). Following Seldon's first holographic recording, Salvor Hardin visits the other three kingdoms and convinces them not to allow Anacreon to gain sole possession of the Foundation's scientific advances, thereby driving off Anacreon from the planet Terminus. By 80 F.E., the Foundation's scientific understanding has given it significant leverage over the Four Kingdoms, though it is still isolated from the Galactic Empire. Exercising its control over the region through an artificial religion – Scientism – the Foundation shares its technology with the Four Kingdoms while referring to it as religious truth. Maintenance technicians comprise Scientism's priesthood, trained on Terminus. A majority of the priests themselves are unaware of the true importance of their "religion," referring to advanced technology as "holy" artifacts and tools. The religion is not suppressed by the secular elite of the Four Kingdoms, reminiscent of Western European rulers of the early medieval period, who use it to consolidate their power over the zealous populaces.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: Hardin, as Mayor of Terminus City, is the effective ruler of the Foundation, and has been reelected as mayor continuously since his political victory over the "Encyclopedia Galactica" Board of Trustees. However, his influence is suddenly checked by a new political movement led by city councillor Sef Sermak, which encourages direct action against the Four Kingdoms and a cessation of the scientific proselytizing encouraged by Hardin's administration. The movement, which calls itself "The Actionist Party" and whose followers refer to themselves as Actionists, is wildly popular, and Sermak and his fellow Actionist leaders refuse to respond to Hardin's efforts to appease them.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: The kingdom that is most concerning to the Actionists is that of Anacreon, ruled by Prince Regent Wienis and his nephew, the teenaged King Lepold I. Wienis plans to overthrow the Foundation's power by launching a direct military assault against Terminus, making use of an abandoned Imperial battlecruiser redesigned by Foundation experts to fit the needs of the elite Anacreonian navy. However, Hardin orders a few minor modifications to be incorporated into the ship's design prior to its completion.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: Wienis plans to launch his offensive on the night of his nephew's coronation as king and sole ruler of Anacreon. Hardin attends the coronation ceremony and is arrested, but he has already arranged with Anacreonian High Priest Poly Verisof, who is aware of the true nature of Scientism and is also Terminus's Ambassador to Anacreon, to foster a popular uprising against Wienis. Convincing the Anacreonian populace that an assault against the Foundation and Terminus is blasphemous, Verisof leads an infuriated mob to the royal palace and surrounds it, demanding Hardin's release. Meanwhile, one of Hardin's modifications to the battlecruiser shows itself; an ultrawave relay, a remote kill-switch to the ship's systems. The priest-attendant of the ship, Theo Aporat, presents the relay's activation as a divine curse, and the crew, convinced of the Foundation's god's power, mutinies against its commander, Admiral Prince Lefkin, Wienis's son. Lefkin confronts the mutineers and, captured, is forced to broadcast a message to Anacreon. The message demands Wienis's arrest and trial before an ecclesiastical court, and threatens a bombardment of the royal palace if that and other demands are not met. Wienis, maddened by his failure, orders Hardin's execution, but his royal guardsmen refuse to obey him. Attempting and failing, due to a protective energy field, to kill Hardin personally, Wienis dies by suicide.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: Hardin is proven correct again upon his return to Terminus City by another Seldon recording, set to play at this date. Though Actionists continue to hold a significant amount of power, enough now to control the City Council, an attempt to impeach the Mayor has already failed, and his popularity is renewed among the city's residents. It is also confirmed by Hari Seldon that the Foundation's immediate neighbors, the Four Kingdoms, will now be virtually powerless and incapable of resisting Scientism's advance. However, the growing nationalism of the fractured Periphery makes it hard for religion to make further conquests.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: "The Traders" was originally published in the October 1944 issue of "Astounding Science-Fiction" as "The Wedge". Circa 135 F.E., the Foundation has expanded and has sent out officially sanctioned Traders to exchange technology with neighboring planets for what amounts to greater political and economic power. Master Trader Eskel Gorov, also an agent of the Foundation government, has travelled to the worlds of Askone, where he hopes to trade atomics. Gorov, however, is met with resistance by Askone's governing Elders due to traditional taboos that effectively ban advanced technology. Gorov is imprisoned and sentenced to death; the Elders refuse Foundation requests for clemency.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: Trader Limmar Ponyets is ordered by the Foundation to try to negotiate with the Elders, and travels to the central Askonian planet. Ponyets meets with the Elders' Grand Master and deduces that, though he is determined to have Gorov executed, he may be willing to exchange the captive for a suitable bribe, which Ponyets realizes would be a sum of gold. Ponyets clumsily fashions a transmuter that will convert iron into gold. The Grand Master informs Ponyets that others who have attempted this have failed and have been punished with execution for both their attempt and for their failure; Ponyets succeeds and convinces the Grand Master that the gold is appropriate for Askonian religious decoration, which pleases the Elders.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: Councilor Pherl, the Grand Master's protégé, appears to be wary of Ponyets. Meeting with the Councilor, Ponyets discovers that Pherl is instead quite willing to work with him, if only due to the chance of eventually attaining the Grand Mastership himself. Pherl, from a different ethnic background than traditional Grand Masters and a young man, believes that a stable supply of gold will be able to dramatically increase his power, and Ponyets sells him the transmuter. He also plants a video recorder inside and blackmails him with a recording of the transmuter's use.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: Gorov is released quickly. According to a new agreement, he and Ponyets can take as much tin from Pherl's mines as they can carry. Ponyets discusses his success with Gorov, explaining that now Pherl will become the new Grand Master - and one very much interested in selling Foundation goods, since Ponyets left all his cargo with him, and making people buy it is the only way for Pherl to salvage some of his pride. Gorov criticizes his technique due to what he perceives as Ponyets's lack of morality. Ponyets replies by reminding Gorov of a statement attributed to Salvor Hardin: "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!"


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: "The Merchant Princes" was first published in the August 1944 issue of "Astounding Science-Fiction" as "The Big and the Little".


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: Circa 155 F.E., the Foundation has subjugated the neighboring Four Kingdoms and tries expanding its religious empire. However, due to rumors of the subjugation of the Four Kingdoms and, later, Askone, further expansion faces heavy resistance. Recently, three Foundation vessels have vanished near the Republic of Korell, which is thus suspected of either independent technological development or buying smuggled Foundation goods. Master Trader Hober Mallow is assigned to deal with Korell and also to investigate their technological development and find the missing ships. Those who have assigned this mission to Mallow, Foreign Secretary Publis Manlio and Mayoral Secretary Jorane Sutt, believe that a Seldon Crisis is underway; they fear a nuclear conflict involving the Foundation.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: Sutt and Manlio, wanting to weaken the strong Trader faction and suspecting Mallow of being connected to the smugglers, plant an agent, Jaim Twer, aboard Mallow's ship, the "Far Star." After the "Far Star" lands in a remote location on Korell, the crew allows a Foundation missionary aboard, in violation of orders Mallow has given that no one board or leave without his permission.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: Korellian law forbids Foundation missionaries to be on the planet under penalty of death. The crew determines that the Reverend Jord Parma of Anacreon (as he calls himself) had been captured by the Korellians but escaped before being killed. Rev. Parma is injured and apparently confused. Shortly after he has been let aboard the ship, an angry mob appears, demanding that the missionary be turned over to them as an escaped criminal. This rapid response by the Korellians in such a remote location arouses Mallow's suspicion: Where did Parma escape from? Why was there a mob seemingly already gathered in the middle of nowhere? Suspecting a set-up, rather than fight the mob, Mallow decides to turn the missionary over to them (and to certain death). Very soon after, Mallow is invited to meet Korell's authoritarian ruler, Commdor ("First Citizen Of The State") Asper Argo, which indicates that Mallow had passed a test. Argo appears friendly and welcomes Foundation technological gifts; however, he refuses to allow Foundation missionaries on Korell, which coincides with Mallow's own intentions.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: Mallow offers the Commdor tools for heavy industry, believing that will allow him to visit a factory, where the advanced technology would be found if Korell has it. He sees no sign of it, but catches a glimpse of the ruler's guards' weapons - atomic handguns bearing the markings of the Galactic Empire. Mallow's discoveries lead him to believe that the Empire may be attempting to expand into the Periphery again and has been providing weapons to client states such as Korell. Leaving the Republic and his ship, he journeys alone to the planet Siwenna, which he believes may be the capital of an Imperial province. He finds Siwenna a desolate and sad place. He meets the impoverished patrician Onum Barr in the latter's crumbling mansion. Barr helps Mallow to understand the political situation. He had served in the Imperial government on Siwenna decades earlier, before a series of ambitious viceroys who each dreamt of becoming Emperor. After the previous viceroy rebelled against the Emperor, Barr participated in a revolution that overthrew the viceroy. However, the Imperial fleet sent to remove the viceroy wanted to conquer a rebellious province even if it was no longer in rebellion, and began a massacre that claimed the lives of all but one of Barr's children. The new viceroy also plans a rebellion, but keeps a backup plan: fleeing into the Periphery and carving out a sizable realm there. He had secured a political alliance with Korell by marrying his daughter to Asper.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: Mallow manages to tour a Siwennian power plant. He observes that the technicians can only maintain the plants, but cannot repair them, and that the nuclear generators are much bigger than those of Terminus. Both mean that the Empire cannot replace the goods Mallow sells to the Commdor. He also realizes that religion cannot make further conquests for the Foundation, but a commercial empire can.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: A year after his return to Terminus, Mallow is tried for murder because he gave the Foundation missionary to the mob. However, he produces a recording revealing that the "missionary" was in fact a Korellian secret policeman. Acquitted, Mallow is received with delight by the population of Terminus, which (along with the wealth obtained by trading with Korell) all but ensures him the Mayor's seat in the elections scheduled to take place in the following year. Mallow has Sutt and Manlio arrested, suspecting them (rightly) of planning a coup with the aid of the Four Kingdoms' religious elements. As Mayor, Mallow soon faces tension with Korell, which declares war on the Foundation, using its Imperial flotilla to attack Foundation ships. But instead of counterattacking Mallow takes no action but for imposing an embargo on Korell, which collapses its economy due to its dependency on Foundation technology, thus forcing its surrender.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: Mallow's ally Ankor Jael points out that Mallow's actions have placed the Foundation on the path to plutocracy and wonders about the future. Mallow responds that the future is none of his concern, as Seldon has undoubtedly foreseen and prepared for it already, leaving the resolution of future crises to his successors.


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: Reviewer Groff Conklin declared "Foundation" "a book of real intellectual entertainment and adventure." Boucher and McComas, however, found it "competent enough writing and thinking, if on the dull side." P. Schuyler Miller received the volume favorably, but noted that the "revision and inter-writing" of the component stories was "not quite so successful a job" as Asimov had managed with "I, Robot".


title: Foundation (Asimov novel)

text: In 1966 the "Foundation" trilogy won the prestigious Hugo Award for Best All-Time Series. In 2018 the chapter "The Encyclopedists" won a retrospective 1943 Hugo Award for the Best Novelette of the preceding year.


title: Roar (2022 TV series)

text: Roar is an American anthology series from Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, the creators of "GLOW". Based on the 2018 short story collection of the same name by Cecelia Ahern, the 8-episode series premiered on Apple TV+ on April 15, 2022.


title: Roar (2022 TV series)

text: Each story in the collection is about women's experiences and how women navigate through other's perceptions of them as well as their own. Highlighting what it means to be a woman, these stories are considered "darkly comic feminist fables."


title: Roar (2022 TV series)

text: "Roar" was announced in August 2018, with the news that "GLOW" creators Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch were showrunning the TV series being developed based on Cecelia Ahern's short story collection "Roar", published in the UK in November 2018 and in the US in April 2019. The project would be produced by Nicole Kidman and Per Saari's Blossom Films, Bruna Papandrea's Made Up Stories, and Theresa Park. Additionally, Ahern's Greenlight Go Productions and Endeavor Content were also attached to produce.


title: Roar (2022 TV series)

text: On March 2, 2021, it was announced that the show will air on Apple TV+ as eight 30-minute episodes each told from a female point of view, which mark Flahive’s and Mensch's first project under their new overall deal with the streamer.


title: Roar (2022 TV series)

text: The casting of Nicole Kidman, Cynthia Erivo, Merritt Wever, and Alison Brie was announced on March 2, 2021. In August 2021, Betty Gilpin, Meera Syal, Fivel Stewart, and Kara Hayward joined the cast.


title: Roar (2022 TV series)

text: Production for "Roar" began in Los Angeles, California on May 28, 2021, and concluded on August 1, 2021. So Yong Kim, Rashida Jones, Quyen Tran and Anya Adams directed episodes of the series.


title: Roar (2022 TV series)

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 71% approval rating with an average rating of 6.3/10, based on 31 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "The feminist themes of "Roar" don't carry smoothly across some installments, but the sheer amount of talent on hand comes through loud and clear." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 57 out of 100 based on 12 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Roar (2022 TV series)

text: In May 2022, the British TV show "Gogglebox" featured a scene from the fifth episode "The Woman Who Was Fed By a Duck" wherein the duck performs a sex act on the woman. The broadcast of this scene resulted in over 200 complaints to the broadcasting regulator, Ofcom.


title: Michael Mancuso

text: Michael "The Nose" Mancuso (born July 18, 1955) is an American mobster. He is a member of the American Mafia (Cosa Nostra) and the boss of the Bonanno crime family, one of Five Families in New York City. In June 2013, while imprisoned Mancuso was picked as the new official boss of the Bonanno family. On March 12, 2019, Mancuso was released from prison.


title: Michael Mancuso

text: During the early 1980s, before joining the Bonanno family, Mancuso was affiliated with the East Harlem Purple Gang. In August 1984, Mancuso fatally shot his wife Evelina and left her body on a bench in front of Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx. Mancuso pleaded guilty to manslaughter of his wife and received a 10-year prison sentence.


title: Michael Mancuso

text: In 2004, acting boss Vincent Basciano promoted him to the acting underboss position. He became acting boss in November 2004, after Basciano was imprisoned. In May 2005, Joseph Massino implicated Mancuso in the 1999 murder of Gerlando Sciascia. In early 2006, Basciano allegedly ordered Mancuso's murder.


title: Michael Mancuso

text: On February 16, 2006, Mancuso was arrested in Las Vegas for ordering the murder of associate Randolph Pizzolo on November 30, 2004. Mancuso followed the orders of imprisoned acting boss Vincent Basciano and arranged Pizzolo's murder. The hit was carried out by soldier Anthony "Ace" Aiello. On August 6, 2008, Mancuso and soldier Aiello pleaded guilty to murdering Pizzolo. On December 16, 2008, judge Nicholas Garaufis sentenced Mancuso to 15 years in prison and Aiello to 30 years in prison for the murder of Pizzolo.


title: Michael Mancuso

text: In June 2013, Mancuso, while imprisoned for the next five years, was picked as the new official boss of the family. Mancuso is controlling the family through his Bronx associates and underboss Thomas DiFiore. He appointed Joseph Cammarano Jr as the Bonanno family street boss and also as the acting underboss in 2015. In April 2015, it was reported that Mancuso was imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Institution, Danbury, in Danbury, Connecticut. On March 12, 2019, Mancuso was released from federal custody.


title: Michael Mancuso

text: On March 9, 2022, Mancuso was arrested and is under investigation for violating the terms of his supervised release by associating with members of organized crime.


title: Pete Ham

text: Peter William Ham (27 April 1947 – 24 April 1975) was a Welsh singer, songwriter and guitarist best known as a lead vocalist of and composer for the 1970s rock band Badfinger, whose hit songs include "No Matter What", "Day After Day" and "Baby Blue". He also co-wrote the ballad "Without You", a worldwide number-one hit for Harry Nilsson that has become a standard covered by hundreds of artists. Ham was granted two Ivor Novello Awards related to the song in 1973.


title: Pete Ham

text: Ham died by suicide in 1975 at the age of 27, when he became depressed while embroiled in band-related issues, such as label and management problems, as well as a lack of funds. The emotional scar his death left on Badfinger eventually led to the suicide of former bandmate Tom Evans in 1983.


title: Pete Ham

text: Ham was born in Swansea, Wales. He formed a local rock group called The Panthers circa 1961. This group would undergo several name and line-up changes before it became The Iveys in 1965. The band was relocated to London by The Mojos manager, Bill Collins, in 1966, and they continued to perform for three years throughout the United Kingdom. Ham eventually became the prominent songwriter for the band, after a Revox tape recorder was made available by Collins to encourage him. Ray Davies of The Kinks took an initial interest in the group, although tracks produced by Davies did not surface commercially until decades later. In 1968, The Iveys came to the attention of Mal Evans (The Beatles' personal assistant) and were eventually signed to the Beatles' Apple Records label after approval from all four Beatles, who were reportedly impressed by the band's songwriting abilities.


title: Pete Ham

text: The Iveys changed their name to Badfinger with the single release of "Come and Get It", a composition written by Paul McCartney that became a worldwide top-ten hit. Ham had initially protested against using a non-original to promote the band, as he had gained confidence in the group's compositions, but he was quickly convinced of the springboard effect of having a likely hit single. His own creative perseverance paid off eventually, as his "No Matter What" became another top-ten worldwide hit in late 1970. He followed up with two more worldwide hits in "Day After Day" and "Baby Blue".


title: Pete Ham

text: Ham's greatest songwriting success came with his co-written composition "Without You" – a worldwide number-one when it was later covered by Harry Nilsson and released in 1971. The song has since become a standard and has been covered by hundreds of singers. An Ivor Novello award for Song of the Year was issued in 1973 along with Grammy nominations. George Harrison used Ham's talents for a number of album sessions, including on the "All Things Must Pass" album and for other Apple Records artist's recordings. This friendship culminated with Ham's acoustic guitar duet on "Here Comes the Sun" with Harrison at The Concert for Bangladesh in 1971, documented in the theatrical film of the concert. In 1972, Badfinger was picked up by Warner Bros. Records, as the Apple Records label was crumbling and it seemed the band was primed for major recognition.


title: Pete Ham

text: Warner Bros. Records sued Badfinger's business manager, Stan Polley, after an advance vanished. With their current album suddenly withdrawn and their follow-up rejected, Badfinger spent the early months of 1975 trying to figure out how to proceed under the unclear legal situation. Their March 1975 salary cheques did not clear, and the April cheques never arrived. Panic set in, especially for Ham, who had recently bought a £30,000 house in Woking, Surrey, and whose girlfriend was expecting a child. According to Jackson, the band tried to continue without Polley's involvement by contacting booking agents and prospective managers throughout London, but they were routinely declined because of their restrictive contracts with Polley and impending legal actions. Ham reportedly tried on many occasions to contact Polley by telephone during the early months of 1975, but was never able to reach him.


title: Pete Ham

text: On the night of 23 April 1975, Ham received a phone call from the United States, telling him that all his money had disappeared. Later that night he met Tom Evans and they went to The White Hart Pub in Surrey together, where Ham drank ten whiskies. Evans drove him home at three o'clock on the morning of 24 April 1975. Ham hanged himself at the age of 27 in his garage studio in Woking later that morning. His suicide note—addressed to his girlfriend, Anne Herriot, and her son, Blair—blamed Polley for much of his despair and inability to cope with his disappointments in life. The note read: "Anne, I love you. Blair, I love you. I will not be allowed to love and trust everybody. This is better. Pete. P.S. Stan Polley is a soulless bastard. I will take him with me".


title: Pete Ham

text: Ham had shown growing signs of mental illness over the past months, with Gibbins remembering Ham burning cigarettes on his hands and arms. He was cremated at the Morriston Crematorium, Swansea; his ashes were spread in the memorial gardens. Ham's daughter, Petera, was born one month after his death. In May, Warner Bros terminated its contract with Badfinger, and Badfinger dissolved. Around that time, Apple also deleted all of Badfinger's albums from its catalogue.


title: Pete Ham

text: Ham is often credited as being one of the earliest purveyors of the power pop genre. His most widespread effect in popular music was with the ballad "Without You", which he wrote with Badfinger bandmate Tom Evans. Collections of Ham's home demo recordings have been released posthumously: 1997's "7 Park Avenue", 1999's "Golders Green" and 2013's "The Keyhole Street Demos 1966–67".


title: Pete Ham

text: On 27 April 2013, an official blue plaque was unveiled by Swansea City Council to honour Pete Ham in his hometown. The unveiling was attended by two former members of the original Badfinger band, The Iveys: Ron Griffiths and David Jenkins, plus former Badfinger member Bob Jackson. The plaque, designed by Dan Matovina, honoured Ham and all the Iveys and Badfinger members of his lifetime. The ceremony was followed by a concert featuring former Badfinger members Bob Jackson and Al Wodtke.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers is a 1995 American slasher film directed by Joe Chappelle and written by Daniel Farrands. The film stars Donald Pleasence, Paul Rudd, and Marianne Hagan. It is the sixth installment in the "Halloween" film series, and concludes the Jamie Lloyd story arc established in "" and "". Set six years after the events of "Halloween 5", the plot follows Michael Myers as he stalks the Strode family (Laurie Strode's uncle and the latter's wife, daughter and grandson), in order to kill his last surviving relatives while Dr. Sam Loomis pursues him once more. The film also reveals the source of Michael's immortality and his drive to kill.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Shot in Salt Lake City in the fall of 1994, "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers" had a reported troubled production. Its original cut performed poorly with test audiences, leading to the film undergoing a series of reshoots and edits. The finished film was distributed by Dimension Films, who would go on to distribute the rest of the series until 2018's "Halloween". It was released on September 29, 1995, grossing $15.1 million at the domestic box office on a budget of $5 million, and was panned by critics upon release. Donald Pleasence died on February 2, 1995, nearly eight months before the film was released. The film was dedicated to his memory.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: After the film's home media release, the original workprint of the film, which featured 45 minutes of alternative footage and a different ending, was discovered by fans of the series. This version, dubbed the "Producer's Cut", developed a cult following, with bootleg DVD copies sold on eBay and online petitions targeting for an official release of it. In 2014, the "Producer's Cut" was officially released on Blu-ray.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers" was followed by "" in 1998, which does not contain any references to Jamie Lloyd storyline of the prior three films (although they were featured in the original script and comic book tie-ins published by Chaos! Comics), instead serving as a direct sequel to "Halloween II" (1981).


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: On October 31, 1989, Michael Myers and his niece Jamie Lloyd are abducted from the Haddonfield Police Station by the Man in Black. Six years later, on October 30, 1995, a now fifteen-year-old Jamie gives birth to a child, and the Man in Black, revealed to be the leader of a Druid-like cult, takes the child away. Later, Nurse Mary, a midwife, helps Jamie escape with her child, but Michael kills her. Jamie and her child flee in a stolen pick-up truck, with Michael in pursuit.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Meanwhile, Dr. Sam Loomis has retired and moved to a cabin on the outskirts of Haddonfield, where he lives as a hermit. He is visited by his friend Dr. Terence Wynn, the chief administrator of Smith's Grove Sanitarium, where Michael had been incarcerated as a boy; Wynn asks Loomis to return to Smith's Grove. They overhear Jamie's plea for help on a local radio station when she makes a call to Loomis, only to be ignored by the radio D.J. Barry Simms. Michael catches up with Jamie, and she crashes the truck into an old barn. He kills Jamie but finds that her child is not in the truck.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: In Haddonfield, Tommy Doyle, whom Laurie Strode babysat in 1978, now lives in a boarding house run by an elderly woman named Mrs. Blankenship. Tommy is a reclusive individual who has become obsessed with finding the truth behind Michael's motives. The dysfunctional family living in the Myers house across the street are relatives of the Strode family: Kara Strode, her six-year-old son Danny, her teenage brother Tim, caring mother Debra, and abusive father, John. Danny is being tormented by the Man in Black who is grooming him to follow Michael's footsteps, leading him to almost use a knife on John during a heated argument between him and Kara during breakfast, the latter being slapped by her father.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Tommy finds Jamie's baby at the bus station, takes him to the hospital. There he runs into Loomis and tells him about the Strode family living in the Myers house. Tommy takes the baby back to his house where he names it Steven. Loomis goes to the Strode house and alerts Debra on Michael. While Debra starts to pack up belongings to leave, Michael shows up and kills her. Tommy runs into Danny on the street who is coming home from school and takes him home. Kara returns calling for Debra but is unable to find her. She comes across Tommy with Danny in Danny's room. Tommy takes them to the boarding house, where he reveals to Kara that he believes Michael has been inflicted with "Thorn", an ancient Druid curse that causes him to kill his bloodline on Halloween night and believes that Jamie's baby will be Michael's final sacrifice.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Later that night, Tommy meets Loomis at a Halloween party at a community college that Kara, Tim, and Tim's girlfriend Beth attend with a DJ, Barry Simms, as a special guest. Meanwhile, Mrs. Blankenship reveals to Kara that she was babysitting Michael the night he killed his sister and that Danny hears the same voice telling him to kill as Michael did, indicating the curse will pass on to Danny if Steven is killed. Shortly after, Michael kills John, Tim, Beth, and Barry Simms. Kara follows Danny back to the Strode house after he is summoned by the Man in Black. There she sees Michael and fights him off, then escapes with Danny back to boarding house where Tommy and Loomis are waiting. To their shock, the cult has arrived there with Mrs. Blankenship as an ally and the Man in Black is revealed to be Dr. Wynn. The cult drugs Loomis and Tommy and takes Kara, Danny, and Steven to Smith's Grove. Kara is locked in a maximum-security ward while the boys are kept in an operating room.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Tommy and Loomis awaken and go to Smith's Grove. There Loomis confronts Wynn, who reveals that the Smith's Grove staff have been working with the Thorn cult to study the power of Thorn and learn how to control it. It is implied that Steven is the successful result of in vitro fertilization experiments to clone Michael's pure evil. Wynn wants Loomis to join in on his conspiracy, as he was the first to see the evil inside Michael. Loomis refuses and is knocked out by a doctor. Meanwhile, Tommy frees Kara as Michael pursues them through the sanitarium. They find Wynn and his team, who are about to perform a medical procedure on Danny and Steven. Michael suddenly appears and turns against Wynn and the doctors, killing them all.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Tommy and Kara rescue the kids, and Michael chases them into a laboratory, where Kara notices fetuses from Wynn's failed experiments. Tommy injects Michael with corrosives and beats him unconscious with a lead pipe. Tommy, Kara, and the children leave Smith's Grove while Loomis stays behind to take care of business. Inside, Michael's mask lies alone on the lab floor, and Loomis screams in the background, leaving their fates unknown.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: After the less than enthusiastic response to "" which came out only a year after "", producer Moustapha Akkad put the series on hold to re-evaluate its potential. Akkad felt "Halloween 5" had strayed too far from "Halloween 4" and the box office response was much lower than expected. As early as 1990, both Danielle Harris and Don Shanks were expected to return as Jamie Lloyd and The Shape, with the possibility of Donald Pleasence and Wendy Kaplan reprising their roles as well. That same year, screenwriter and long-time "Halloween" fan Daniel Farrands set out to write the sixth entry in the "Halloween" series. Farrands gave his horror film scripts to the producer of "Halloween 5", Ramsey Thomas; impressed by his writing, Thomas set a meeting for Farrands with executive producer Moustapha Akkad. Farrands described the meeting:


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Farrands, who knew the films, as well as Dennis Etchison's novelizations intimately, constructed a bible of the entire franchise and presented it to the studio. The film lingered in development as a planned October 1990 release was missed, but Akkad persisted and began courting Michele Soavi in 1992. Soavi would reject the offer and not long after the producers entered a series of complicated legal battles ensued which delayed plans for a sequel; eventually Miramax Films (via its Dimension Films division) bought the rights to the "Halloween" series. Concurrently with the legal battle, series co-creator John Carpenter had teamed up with New Line Cinema to outbid Miramax. Carpenter's proposal saw the film take place on a space station. The idea may have been referenced in a scene in which a conspiracy theorist calls Barry Sims's radio show ranting about the CIA launching Michael Myers into space. The rejected premise might also have inspired the plot for "Jason X." With Miramax on board, the studio hoped to start production by October 1993, but yet again, this did not materialize. Instead, Bob Weinstein hired Gary Fleder to helm the film. Fleder recommended Phil Rosenberg, who became the first writer hired for the film. His script, titled "Halloween 666: The Origin", was hated by Akkad, who tossed the script across his room after he finished reading it. However, Miramax responded favorably to Rosenberg's work and opted to continue moving forward until Fleder would drop off of the film citing "creative differences". Hot off the success of "Pulp Fiction", Quentin Tarantino was approached to write and direct the film. Tarantino would decline but instead suggested "Evil Dead II" co-writer Scott Spiegel to direct the film instead. Tarantino's planned script would have involved Michael Myers and the Man in Black fleeing Haddonfield together and going on a road trip down Route 66 while murdering people, but he was never officially hired and Spiegel later departed the project. Tarantino's rejected ideas bear a resemblance with his screenplay for "Natural Born Killers", which he was pitching to Miramax Films at the same time as he was considering ideas for a screenplay for "Halloween 6". According to the commentary track from the Producer's Cut of the film, while Tarantino was considered in the early stages of production, the story that Tarantino had ever actually completed a script is an urban legend. Roger Avary was also unsuccessful in pitching for the film. Spiegel was unenthusiastic about Rosenberg's screenplay and struggled to perform the script polish he was assigned. He would ultimately depart the project. By April 1994, Phil's brother, Scott Rosenberg was tasked with revising the script, but failed to satisfy Akkad.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Other concepts involved Michael being found to be Dr. Loomis's son or Michael's mother being kept as a sex slave by the Man in Black.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: With Rosenberg's draft now dead in the water by the end of April, the studio pursued upcoming writers Irving Belateche and Lawrence Guterman to completely overhaul "Halloween 666". With an October 1994 release window instilled by Weinstein, Matthew Patrick of "Hider in the House" was selected as director. Upon his hiring, Patrick immediately flew down to Salt Lake City for location scouting and brought in his frequent cinematographer Billy Dickson. However, neither Patrick or Akkad were appeased by the script, with the former even referring to it as "unfinished". Patrick was granted his own revision of the script, but tensions rose between Akkad and Weinstein. With production gearing up to begin in two weeks without a finalized cast, Patrick would ultimately quit the project in May 1994. In June 1994, Farrands was hired to write a new screenplay, as the film had an impending shooting date scheduled for October in Salt Lake City, Utah. At this time, Fred Walton, best known for directing "When a Stranger Calls" and "April Fool's Day," was attached to direct the film. A deal was not reached with Walton, which led the studio to hire Joe Chappelle after being impressed with his debut film, "Thieves Quartet". Farrands has said his initial intent for the film was to "bridge the later films (4–5) in the series to the earlier films (1–2) while at the same time taking the story into new territory so that the series could expand for future installments." This in part meant expanding on the presence of the "Man in Black" as well as the appearance of the Thorn symbol, both of which appear without explanation at the end of "Halloween 5". In beginning the script, Farrands contacted the writers of "Halloween 4" and "5" for additional information, but they were unable to provide clear answers, leaving him to "pick up the pieces."


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Farrands expanded the "Curse of Thorn" plot line, in which Jamie Lloyd is kidnapped by a covert cult who has cursed Michael Myers via the Runic symbol of Thorn, which compels him to kill and also affords him immortality. Farrands had in part based the idea on dialogue present in "Halloween II" (1981) about the night of Samhain, during which the "veil between the living and the dead is thinnest," the one time of the year during which Myers became "active, and seeks out his bloodline." References to Druidism as well as Myers's grandfather "hearing voices" had also appeared in the 1978 novelization of "Halloween" by Curtis Richards. While the character of Jamie Lloyd dies early in the film, the initial versions of Farrands' script had her character surviving until the final act, at which point she was ultimately killed by Michael. Other elements of Farrands' working script that ultimately had to be trimmed down included an extension of the Curse of Thorn subplot, which had the entire town of Haddonfield in collusion with the cult, an idea Akkad wanted to use for the series' seventh installment. However, this idea was scrapped in favor of the "" script in 1997.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: According to Farrands, there were around ten different drafts of his script between June 1994 and the October 1994 film shoot and much of the finale that appears in the theatrical version (including the events at the hospital, as well as the references to the cult using Myers's power as a means of scientific investigation), was not written by him, and had been written and shot in post-production under the supervision of Dimension Films.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Farrands compares Tommy's arc in that film to Laurie Strode's in "Halloween H20": that of a traumatized victim who must stop running and face their worst fear. He claims that this was supposed to be more obvious, with flashbacks to the original film, but the development of the film resulted in many of those scenes being lost. Farrands says that he brought Tommy back as a way of bridging the gap between the sequels and the first film. His intent was for Tommy to be the successor to Dr. Loomis, to act as a "voice of sanity...a kind of modern Van Helsing, the fearless Michael hunter!", a role he believed was missing from "H20" and "".


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Originally, Kara's fate varied in various script drafts. In the first draft, Kara is murdered by her son Danny in the Haddonfield Bus Depot, while the near final draft had the film ending with Tommy and Kara driving away. The film as released ends with Kara and Tommy driving off with the children, Danny and Stephen.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Farrands describes Michael as a "sexual deviant". According to him, the way Michael follows girls around and watches them contains a subtext of repressed sexuality. Farrands theorizes that, as a child, Michael became fixated on the murder of his sister Judith, and for his own twisted reasons felt the need to repeat that action over and over again, finding a sister-like figure in Laurie who excited him sexually. He also believes that by making Laurie Michael's literal sister, the sequels took away from the simplicity and relatability of the original "Halloween". Nevertheless, when writing "Curse", Farrands was tasked with creating a mythology for Michael which defined his motives and why he could not be killed. He says, "He can't just be a man anymore, he's gone beyond that. He's mythical. He's supernatural. So, I took it from that standpoint that there's something else driving him. A force that goes beyond that five senses that has infected this boy's soul and now is driving him." As the script developed and more people became involved, Farrands admits that the film went too far in explaining Michael Myers and that he himself was not completely satisfied with the finished product.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Farrands, a long-time fan of the series, sought to incorporate various references and allusions to the previous "Halloween" films, particularly the original, to play with the ""Halloween" mythology." These range from situational allusions, such as Tommy Doyle living across the street from the Strode house (a play on the events in the original "Halloween", which take place between the Wallace and Doyle residences, which are across the street from one another) to minor references, such as the naming of an address from "Halloween II" (1981), and the character of Mrs. Blankenship, a name referred to in passing in "" (1982). Other references outside the narrative diegeses of the series include the names of characters, such as John and Debra Strode (referencing John Carpenter and Debra Hill), as well as the naming of Danny Strode, a character Farrands has said was modeled after Danny Torrance in "The Shining" (1980).


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Farrands also referenced Carpenter's "The Fog" (1980) with the line referring to a "stomach pounder" (a protein milkshake Tim drinks early in the film), and Beth's murder scene was modeled after a scene from Fred Walton's "When a Stranger Calls" (1979) (Farrands wrote the scene upon hearing that Walton had been attached to direct the project, though Walton would eventually drop out of the production). Additionally, extended scenes of Kara walking on the college campus and en route to her home were intended to allude to scenes featuring Laurie Strode in the first film, while Danny dropping his pumpkin while walking home alludes to a scene in the first film in which a group of bullies force Tommy to drop his pumpkin outside the elementary school.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Donald Pleasence returned to play Dr. Loomis, in what would be one of his final film performances; according to Farrands, Pleasence was fond of the script. Danielle Harris, who was seventeen at the time, contacted producer Paul Freeman about reprising her role as Jamie Lloyd, and went so far as completing paperwork to become legally emancipated in order to shoot the film. She was officially cast in the role, but Dimension Films could not come to an agreement over her salary; Harris alleges that Dimension offered her a scaled $1,000 to shoot the part over the course of a week, which was less than the amount of money she had paid for her emancipation. Farrands and Freeman both had wanted Harris for the part, but at that point "had their hands tied."


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: According to Harris, the head of the casting department refused to negotiate her salary, stating that she was a "scale character who dies in the first twenty minutes." This ultimately led to her dropping out of the project. "People automatically assume I wanted some crazy amount of money, or something," Harris commented in 2014, "[but] it's not like I [was] demanding of anything, really ... When you've been asked to do something and then they insult you by saying, "You're a piece of shit, you die in the first act—I don't give a fuck that you were in two other "Halloween" movies, who cares?"... I was in shock." Actress J. C. Brandy was cast as Harris's replacement.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: The producers initially wanted Brian Andrews to reprise his role as Tommy Doyle. However, with Andrews not having an agent, they were unable to contact him. Paul Stephen Rudd was cast in the part of Tommy, which marked his first starring role before he appeared in "Clueless" (1995). The leading female role, Kara, was given to Marianne Hagan; however, Hagan has since stated that Miramax executives Bob and Harvey Weinstein did not favor her for the part, and made aesthetic criticisms about her being "too thin" and her chin being "too pointy". Farrands, however, had wanted Hagan for the part because he felt she possessed an "every-girl" quality of having "lived a little, and had a hard time," and likened her screen presence to that of Jamie Lee Curtis. The filmmakers also approached Howard Stern to make a cameo appearance as the radio DJ Barry Sims, but he declined in order to appear in "Private Parts".


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: For the role of Dr. Terence Wynn, Mitch Ryan was cast, based on his performance in "Lethal Weapon" (1987); Farrands originally urged the producers to cast Christopher Lee, having had the veteran horror actor in mind when writing the character. This is a reference on Carpenter's initial choice for role of Dr. Loomis during film making of Halloween from 1978 where he was offered that role, but declined due to low pay, only to regret it in later years. Denise Richards also auditioned for the part of Beth, but the studio passed on her, giving the role to Mariah O'Brien. Stunt performer George P. Wilbur, who portrayed Michael in the , reprised his role as Michael Myers. However, once reshoots took place, Wilbur was replaced by A. Michael Lerner as director Joe Chapelle found Wilbur to be "too bulky."


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Special effects artist John Carl Buechler created the mask for the film, which was based heavily on the mask featured in the poster for "Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers". Buechler hand-crafted the mask over actor George P. Wilbur's face.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Filming began in fall of 1994 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Within the first week of shooting, however, the city experienced an early winter snowstorm, which complicated the production. As a result, several scenes which were supposed to take place on exterior locations had to be transferred to interiors. The original hospital scenes were shot at the abandoned Old Primary Children's Hospital in The Avenues section of Salt Lake City.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Producer Paul Freeman and director Chappelle reportedly rewrote the ending on-set, even from shot-to-shot as production deadlines loomed. Freeman also sent the crew home when crucial scenes needed to be shot; deleted scripted scenes indiscriminately; rewrote dialogue and action sequences; and assumed the responsibility of directing second-unit shots and the supervision of post-production of the original cut. These complications resulted in Dimension Films' parent company (and the film's co-production company) Miramax, taking over the film's production, and ordering many of the reworked sequences to be reshot.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Associated producer Malek Akkad explained the film's lack of a cohesive "vision" being the result of director Chappelle "answering" to the visions of the distributor, Dimension Films; Moustapha Akkad's production company, Nightfall Productions; and writer Daniel Farrands. Tensions between what Dimension, Nightfall, and Farrands envisioned for the film resulted in a finished product that had needed "more forethought," according to Akkad.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: In early 1995, after filming and editing was completed, "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers" was given a test screening in New York City which, as described by actress Marianne Hagan, "consisted primarily of fourteen-year-old boys." During the Q&A afterward, one of the audience members expressed great displeasure at the ending of the film, which entailed a Celtic ritual and the passing on of the "Curse of Thorn" to the Dr. Loomis character. As a result of the audience's disapproval toward the film's finale, the movie was rushed back into production, this time without Donald Pleasence, who died on February 2, 1995. Pleasence had been in ill health during the shooting of the film.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: Reshoots took place in Los Angeles, California in the summer of 1995. According to Farrands, the reshoots occurred with a new director of photography and spanned a total of four days. At this time, the Akkads were sidelined as Dimension Films took over the film and Farrands was instructed to pen a new ending. However, simultaneously, a new writer was brought in for rewrites. These revisions included "thunderous voices of God", a group of doctors seeking to harness "scientifically-engineered evil", as well as turning Kara into a "machine gun-toting heroine", similar to "Linda Hamilton in """. Farrands dropped the recharacterization of Kara and the voices, but the doctor elements remained in the film. A. Michael Lerner replaced George P. Wilbur in the role of Michael Myers, as the studio executives wanted him to appear less bulky. This resulted in continuity errors as the last third of the film features a slimmer Myers. Some of the additional footage incorporated into the finale of the film was shot at Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: In addition to the re-shoots prompted by the poor test screening, the film also underwent significant editing in post-production, resulting in brisker pacing and a "flashier" cinematic style that favored "blood and guts," but, according to Farrands, ultimately resulted in a "more confusing" movie. According to writer Farrands, the stylized flash cuts prominent in the final theatrical cut of "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers" were not originally intended, and he likened the style of the final product to an "MTV video rather than a "Halloween" film." Composer Alan Howarth similarly called the final product a "fix job," with numerous elements of the production being in flux both during and after principal photography. In addition to Howarth's score being redone, the film's sound design was also significantly altered from Howarth's original "minimalist" design.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: The original music score is composed and orchestrated by long-time "Halloween" contributor Alan Howarth, his work in the series dating back to his collaboration with John Carpenter on "Halloween II". However, Howarth's score was redone by music editor Paul Rabjohns when the film went through reshoots. A soundtrack album was released by Varèse Sarabande, and is an unusual combination of the music featured in the original cut of the film, as well as that of the final theatrical cut. According to Howarth, he helped re-score the revised cut of the film, incorporating the use of guitar and drums in addition to the original score, which had been more synthesizer and piano-based. Howarth's official score for the film was released on August 24, 1995.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: The music of Alabama-based rock band Brother Cane was featured throughout the movie. The music came from their 1995 release "Seeds" on Virgin Records. The album's hit single "And Fools Shine On" can be heard when Kara, Tim and Beth arrive at school in their car. The song is also heard during the closing credits. Three other Brother Cane songs (all from the "Seeds" album) are featured in the film: "Hung on a Rope", "20/20 Faith", and "Horses & Needles". "Disconnected" by the group I Found God is also featured in the film.


title: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

text: The film's troubled production resulted in two cuts of the film, which prompted a legal battle between the film's production company, Nightfall, who wanted to release the original cut, and its distributor, Dimension Films, who had incorporated reshoots and additional material. Ultimately, Dimension Films won the dispute, and their cut of the film was officiated for theatrical release.