The fall is upon us. There’s no Grand Theft Auto 6. All bets are off.
Fall is a season of transitions, and this year, entertainment is matching the mood: franchises are mutating, long-rumored projects are finally arriving, and the line between “comfort food” and “chaotic experiment” is blurrier than ever.
Games are where the chaos looks the most fun. In September, Silent Hill f promises a return to cursed suburbia and Final Fantasy Tactics dusts off the grid. Tucked in between the heavy hitters is Baby Steps, a physics platformer about the existential horror of trying to walk like a normal person. Battlefield 6, Pokemon Legends: Z-A, and Ninja Gaiden 4 loom, with Outer Worlds 2 and Kirby Air Riders ready to remind us that both space capitalism and pastel puffballs are eternal. How many simultaneous save files can one human brain handle?
Movies have their tentpoles, sure, but even Hollywood seems ready to gamble. Aziz Ansari directs Keanu Reeves as a clumsy angel in Good Fortune; Yorgos Lanthimos ropes Emma Stone to a chair in Bugonia; Guillermo del Toro is making Frankenstein, which somehow feels overdue. Even RRR S.S. Rajamouli went ahead and remixed two of his 20-year-old movies into a four-hour mega-movie, as a little treat. Between the movies, we’re getting the end of Stranger Things and a show about undead Marvel heroes. It’s a lot!
So, as the nights get longer and your streaming bill gets more insulting, at least you can look forward to one thing: too much good stuff to watch and play. Let’s dive in.