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I want to discuss accessibility because it is the most important thing for making websites. Other A List Apart articles give you innovation and insight. This article will give you homework. These are just my personal views, but they’re pretty good.

I want to start off with a couple of statements, and you will agree:

1. Designers are good people. I have never heard a designer say, “I don’t care if somebody can’t read this text”, “Not my fault if somebody can’t use this device”, or “Who cares if this is confusing?”
2. Some designs exclude people. You have seen people unable to read the text on a website or app that somebody designed. You’ve seen people unable to use a physical device that somebody has designed. You’ve seen people utterly bamboozled while trying to use a service that somebody designed.

So what?

The first question is, “Is this life-or-death stuff?” The answer is, “Yes.” In my favorite essay, This Is All There Is, Aral Balkan makes the point that pretty much everything that we design can affect life events and death events. Aral gives the example of how even a straightforward bus timetable app can affect life and death events, if we design it badly:

• somebody might miss a life event, such as their daughter’s fifth birthday party; or
• somebody might miss a death event, such as the chance to say goodbye to a dying grandmother.

The next—and frustrating—question is, “Why do some designs still exclude people?” After all, we know that:

• not everybody can see perfectly;
• not everybody can hear perfectly;
• not everybody thinks the same way; and
• not everybody moves the same way.

I think the answer is that there’s too much to recall. Consider, if you will, the wide variety of topics that A List Apart articles cover. Designers are expected to remember all of that guidance, plus all of the accessibility guidance, plus so much more. It is too much.

Recognizing accessibility issues while designing

I’d like to point toward one possible solution, starting from Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design. These are from the mid-1990s, and—although there’s a good chance that you, gentle reader, are a lot younger than that—please bear with me. 

Seeing as the problem is that there’s too much to recall, I want to look at heuristic № 6, “Recognition rather than Recall.” Jakob Nielsen said that for users, information required to use the design should be visible or easily retrievable when needed. I suggest we tweak that to make life easier for designers. Let’s say that the information required to produce the design should be visible or easily retrievable when needed. In other words, let’s make it easier to recognise accessibility issues while we’re designing.

How are we going to do that? I really like the book A Web for Everyone—Designing Accessible User Experiences by Sarah Horton and Whitney Quesenbery. I really like this book not only because it includes a quote from me—actually two quotes, but I don’t like to boast—but because it includes personas that are perfect for helping us to recognise accessibility issues. That’s the good news. The even better news is that these personas are available now for free on the companion website to the book What Every Engineer Should Know About Digital Accessibility, again by Sarah Horton, with David Sloan this time.

Meet your users

I’m going to introduce you to these personas now:

• Vishnu, an engineer and global citizen with low vision says, “I want to be on the same level as everyone else”, “If I can adjust my screen, I can read comfortably”, and, “Translating in my head is easier with simpler sentences.”
• Trevor, a high school student with autism, says, “I like consistent, familiar places on the web”, “When I can learn the pattern, I can find my way”, and, “Reading is hard for me”.
• Steven, a deaf graphic artist and American Sign Language speaker, says, “My only disability is that everyone doesn’t sign”, and, “Without captions, it’s meaningless to me”.
• Maria, a bilingual community health worker, says, “I love this. It’s all here … when I can find it”, “When a site is confusing, I just leave”—fair enough, Maria!—and, “When I hear and see it, health information makes more sense”.
• Lea, an editor living with fatigue and pain, says, “No one gets that this really is a disability”, “Don’t make me work so hard”—please do not bombard this lady with drop-down lists—and, “Links at the top of the page make navigation easier for me”.
• Jacob, a blind paralegal and a bit of a geek, says, “The right technology lets me do anything”, and “This makes it possible to do my job”.
• Emily, who has cerebral palsy and is living independently, says, “I want to do everything for myself”, “Simpler screens are easier screens”—hell yeah, Emily!—and, “Tell me what I need in advance”.
• Carol, a grandmother with macular degeneration which affects her sight, says, “My grandkids are dragging me into the world of technology”, “I don’t understand what the screen is saying”, and, “Why can’t the text be just a little bit larger?”

I want to throw one more persona at you now, because, well, A List Apart readers are overachievers. One of my favorite authors, Cennydd Bowles—who literally wrote the book on Future Ethics—says to create Personas Non Grata. In other words, every time we design something, we have to think about what a bad guy could do with that thing, and whom that might affect.

To actually use these personas while designing, I like what Eric Meyer and Sara Wachter-Boettcher in Design for Real Life call the Designated Dissenter: for each project that you work on, one of your teams should be responsible for asking, “Will this work for Vishnu?”, “How’s Trevor going to get on with this?”, and so on. 

Then, once you’ve used the personas to recognise the accessibility issues, you can look up the guidelines for whichever platforms you’re designing for: 

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2
• Accessibility designing — Material Design 3
• Accessibility — Windows apps
• Accessibility | Apple Developer Documentation
• Check your interface for accessibility (Ubuntu)

Your mission, should you choose to accept it

I told you in the introduction of this article that I would give you homework. You thought I was joking. So, here’s your homework: I want you to grab the personas from the Know About Accessibility website, and use them throughout every design project to help you recognise accessibility issues while you work—and reclaim design for everyone.

NOTE: This article is based on “Recognise,” my five-minute presentation from Interaction Design Association (IxDA) Dublin’s Defuse (Design for Use) event in 2025.

Every language app in your pocket inherited a teaching method built for Latin. Understanding why that happened is a more useful design lesson than anything the apps themselves will teach you.

In 1788, Prussia introduced the Abitur, a standardized national examination required for entry into universities and the civil service. To pass it, students needed to demonstrate measurable, gradable knowledge. The system needed to teach language to large classrooms, produce consistent outcomes, and do it with one teacher and thirty students. The educators responsible for designing this system reached for the only teaching template they had, one that had been used in European schools for two centuries: the method developed to teach Latin.

Latin, by 1788, was a dead language. Nobody needed to speak it. The scholars who studied it were reading Cicero and Virgil, not conducting conversations. The method built around it, memorizing grammar rules, constructing translations, analyzing written texts, reflected that reality exactly. Oral skills were irrelevant. Comprehension of written form was everything. The method was not designed to produce speakers. It was designed to produce readers of texts in a language nobody spoke.

When Prussia applied this template to French and German, living languages spoken by living people, the premise did not change. Johann Valentin Meidinger’s textbook Praktische Französische Grammatik, published in 1804, ran to 37 editions across Europe by 1857. Karl Plotz formalized the approach into what became the dominant model for teaching modern languages across Europe and eventually the United States, where it became known simply as the Prussian Method [1]. Each institution that adopted it trained teachers in it, who trained students who became teachers. The constraint that created the method, how do you grade language at scale with limited resources, became invisible inside the method itself. What remained was the assumption: language is a body of rules to be learned consciously and measured. It was a design decision dressed up, over time, as a pedagogical truth.

The observation that should have ended it

There are people in the world who cannot read or write a language and speak it fluently. There are children who hold full conversations years before they can read a single word. There are immigrants who arrive in a country knowing nothing of its language and come out, years later, speaking it naturally, not because they studied it, but because they lived inside it. Literacy and fluency are separate things produced by entirely separate mechanisms. The Grammar-Translation method, as it became known, assumed they were the same thing. That assumption was inherited from a method designed for a language nobody needed to speak, and it was wrong the moment it was applied to a language people actually used.

The evidence against it accumulated slowly. In the mid to late nineteenth century, reformers including François Gouin in France and Maximilian Berlitz in the United States argued independently that language should be taught the way it is actually acquired, through immersive exposure to real communication in the target language, not through analysis of its rules. Berlitz built an entire school network around this principle. The reformers were correct. They were also largely ignored by mainstream education systems, because the Grammar-Translation method had one decisive advantage that direct immersion did not: it could be graded.

In 1982, the linguist Stephen Krashen gave the argument its most formal articulation in what he called the Monitor Model of second language acquisition. His distinction was precise: language acquisition, the unconscious process through which children absorb their native language and through which adults succeed in immersive environments, is categorically different from language learning, the conscious study of grammar rules and vocabulary that classrooms deliver [2]. Acquisition produces fluency. Learning, at best, produces the ability to pass a test. The evidence supporting this distinction, and the observation that immersive exposure to real native-speaker communication is the mechanism that produces genuine fluency, has only grown since.

I went to Brazil without a word of Portuguese and came out speaking it. I studied French in a classroom for years and cannot hold a conversation in French today. This is not an unusual experience. It is the expected outcome, and it has been the expected outcome for as long as we have had formal language education.

The same decision, made again in a different medium

Prussian educators faced the question: How do you deliver language learning at scale, measure progress, and retain users over time? The answer it arrived at was structurally identical to the one arrived at in 1788. Duolingo gamified the grammar drill into a streak. Anki formalized the translation exercise into a spaced-repetition flashcard. Babbel organized grammar lessons into structured modules. The interfaces were new. The underlying assumption, that language is a thing you study rather than an environment you inhabit, was not.

This was not a failure of design skill. The products that emerged from these decisions are, in many respects, genuinely well-crafted. Duolingo’s retention mechanics are sophisticated. Anki’s spaced repetition is grounded in real cognitive science. They are excellent at what they actually do. The problem is what they actually do: produce measurable engagement with a proxy for language rather than the conditions that produce language itself. A streak is measurable. A vocabulary score is measurable. The moment a user walks out of an app and holds a real conversation in another language, that happens in the world, outside the product, and cannot be instrumented.

When the outcome a user needs is difficult to measure directly, the design process tends to reach for something that can be measured. The proxy becomes the goal. The interface optimizes for it. The gap between what the product delivers and what the user actually needed grows. This is not a pattern unique to language learning. It is a pattern that repeats across product categories whenever a design constraint—the need to measure, the need to scale, the need to produce a grade—gets built into a system so deeply that it stops being visible as a constraint and starts being mistaken for a truth about the problem itself.

What happens when the constraint changes

The constraint that made the Grammar-Translation method necessary in 1788 was real and rational. One teacher. Thirty students. A standardized exam. You cannot grade a conversation at scale. You can grade a translation exercise. The method was not chosen because it produced fluency. It was chosen because it produced a score.

That constraint no longer exists in the same form. Technology has made it possible to deliver immersive, real-time conversation practice to anyone with a smartphone, at a cost that continues to fall. The design problem is no longer how to make language learning gradable at scale. It is how to make the conditions of genuine language acquisition accessible to people who cannot move to another country or afford a native-speaker tutor.

The products that are now closest to solving the actual problem are not the ones that invented a new pedagogy. They are the ones that removed the access barrier to an old one. Praktika builds AI conversation partners with distinct personalities, regional dialects, and cultural context, replicating the specificity of a real native speaker rather than a generic language-learning voice. Langua clones native speaker voices so that the interaction feels like a real conversation rather than a lesson. Rosetta Stone’s foundational methodology, image association in the target language with no translation, was built on the same insight Berlitz arrived at in the nineteenth century: language is acquired through immersive exposure, not through analysis of its rules [3]. A 2025 meta-analysis of 31 studies found that AI conversation tools produced a statistically significant improvement in language learning outcomes, a result that no amount of flashcard optimization has consistently matched [4].

None of these products invented a new theory of language acquisition. They translated an existing one into something more people could reach.

The design question this leaves

The Grammar-Translation method persisted not because educators were wrong about design, but because a design decision made under a specific constraint became, over two centuries, indistinguishable from the thing itself. The constraint, how do you grade language at scale, was forgotten. The method it produced was inherited as if it were a description of how language works, passed from Prussia to Europe to America to the App Store, from the grammar drill to the streak.

Every time a design team optimizes for a metric because the actual outcome is hard to measure, they are making a version of the same decision. It is often the right decision given real constraints. The question worth asking is whether the constraint that made it necessary still exists, or whether it has simply become invisible inside the system it originally produced.

Before reaching for what can be measured, it is worth asking what the user actually needs to do, and what stopped them from doing it before. Sometimes the answer is a new solution. More often it is an old one that was always out of reach.

You’ve seen that guy before. He was somebody’s boss in one movie, a suspicious neighbor in another, and probably a doctor in a television show you watched ten years ago. You know his face immediately, but his name is nowhere to be found in your memory. Hollywood is full of actors like that, the ones who make supporting characters memorable without always getting their names on the poster. Some have spent decades working in everything from sitcoms to Oscar-winning dramas. Others are so good at disappearing into different roles that you don’t realize you’ve watched them five times already. Here are 15 familiar faces you might finally be able to put a name to.

The post 15 Actors You Can Recognize, But You Can’t Name appeared first on Den of Geek.

Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood is a celebration of all things Tinsel Town. Beyond its plot about fading star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) battling the Manson Family, the movie is a gift to fans of ’60s Hollywood. Unless you’re a fan of Bruce Lee, that is. In the most controversial scene of the movie, the slovenly Booth easily defeats Lee (Mike Moh), who comes off like an incompetent braggart.

Reducing the greatest film action star of all time to a jobber for Booth irritated Once Upon a Time‘s original viewers. So it’s shocking that the second trailer for the upcoming sequel The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth would remind us of it. Yet, throughout the trailer, various characters refer to Booth less as Rick Dalton’s stunt man and more as the guy who beat Bruce Lee. Fortunately, however, the trailer does offer some room for revision.

Set eight years after the events of Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth finds the titular stuntman looking for work after his partnership with Dalton has ended (“He got too fat,” says Booth in the trailer, probably on all that I-Talian food). Things seem to turn around when an agent (Elizabeth Debicki) for actor Charlie Peters (Scott Caan) calls him up for work. But what could the work be, given that Charlie does his own stunts? The trailer lets that question linger until its final moments, when Cliff hints that Peters has gotten caught up with some Filipino gangsters and needs help getting out. Cliff can help, because he beat up the Manson Family. And also Bruce Lee.

That last point seems of greater interest to the characters in the trailer, even more so than the fact that Cliff and Rick beat a group of Manson Family members (played by up-and-coming stars such as Austin Butler and Mikey Madison). Everyone from Peters’s wife Toni (Carla Gugino) to Blaxploitation star Hot Rod Harrison (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) brings it up. For his part, Cliff tries to downplay the event, saying it was a long time ago, and had been exaggerated over the years.

In other words, Cliff is revising the story, which fits with the original movie’s theme. After all, Cliff and Rick’s heroics saved Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) from the fate she suffered in our world. Revision is also a favorite theme of Tarantino’s. However, Tarantino only wrote the script for Cliff Booth, letting David Fincher step in to direct. And Fincher, who demands endless takes of one scene, is not known for being freewheeling and improvisational.

So what does that mean for the legend of Cliff Booth and the diminishment of Bruce Lee? We can’t tell from this trailer alone, but it is clear that the sequel isn’t afraid of making viewers as uncomfortable as its predecessor. But, then again, that’s Hollywood: sensational, unreliable, and ultimately pure fantasy.

The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth comes to theaters on November 25, 2026 and to Netflix on December 23, 2026.

The post New Cliff Booth Trailer Addresses Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Biggest Problem appeared first on Den of Geek.

It’s easy to root for Jim and Pam when Michael is running around the office making everybody uncomfortable and Dwight is taking his job a little too seriously. They’re usually the ones exchanging looks across the room, wondering how they ended up working with these people. But Jim has a pretty mean streak when it comes to pranks, and Pam isn’t always the innocent bystander she appears to be. They’ve embarrassed coworkers, lied to each other, and occasionally made decisions that were genuinely difficult to defend. Some of their worst moments are played for laughs, while others get surprisingly uncomfortable. Here are 15 times Jim and Pam weren’t nearly as lovable as they thought.

The post 15 Times Jim and Pam Were Actually the Worst People on ‘The Office’ appeared first on Den of Geek.

Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood is a celebration of all things Tinsel Town. Beyond its plot about fading star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) battling the Manson Family, the movie is a gift to fans of ’60s Hollywood. Unless you’re a fan of Bruce Lee, that is. In the most controversial scene of the movie, the slovenly Booth easily defeats Lee (Mike Moh), who comes off like an incompetent braggart.

Reducing the greatest film action star of all time to a jobber for Booth irritated Once Upon a Time‘s original viewers. So it’s shocking that the second trailer for the upcoming sequel The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth would remind us of it. Yet, throughout the trailer, various characters refer to Booth less as Rick Dalton’s stunt man and more as the guy who beat Bruce Lee. Fortunately, however, the trailer does offer some room for revision.

Set eight years after the events of Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth finds the titular stuntman looking for work after his partnership with Dalton has ended (“He got too fat,” says Booth in the trailer, probably on all that I-Talian food). Things seem to turn around when an agent (Elizabeth Debicki) for actor Charlie Peters (Scott Caan) calls him up for work. But what could the work be, given that Charlie does his own stunts? The trailer lets that question linger until its final moments, when Cliff hints that Peters has gotten caught up with some Filipino gangsters and needs help getting out. Cliff can help, because he beat up the Manson Family. And also Bruce Lee.

That last point seems of greater interest to the characters in the trailer, even more so than the fact that Cliff and Rick beat a group of Manson Family members (played by up-and-coming stars such as Austin Butler and Mikey Madison). Everyone from Peters’s wife Toni (Carla Gugino) to Blaxploitation star Hot Rod Harrison (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) brings it up. For his part, Cliff tries to downplay the event, saying it was a long time ago, and had been exaggerated over the years.

In other words, Cliff is revising the story, which fits with the original movie’s theme. After all, Cliff and Rick’s heroics saved Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) from the fate she suffered in our world. Revision is also a favorite theme of Tarantino’s. However, Tarantino only wrote the script for Cliff Booth, letting David Fincher step in to direct. And Fincher, who demands endless takes of one scene, is not known for being freewheeling and improvisational.

So what does that mean for the legend of Cliff Booth and the diminishment of Bruce Lee? We can’t tell from this trailer alone, but it is clear that the sequel isn’t afraid of making viewers as uncomfortable as its predecessor. But, then again, that’s Hollywood: sensational, unreliable, and ultimately pure fantasy.

The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth comes to theaters on November 25, 2026 and to Netflix on December 23, 2026.

The post New Cliff Booth Trailer Addresses Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Biggest Problem appeared first on Den of Geek.

Somewhere in your parents’ house, there’s probably a family photograph nobody has looked at in years. Everyone is dressed up, somebody has an unfortunate haircut, and at least one person is wearing an outfit that raises a few questions. Maybe your mother insisted on matching sweaters, or your grandmother made something special for the occasion. Either way, nobody thought to warn you that the picture would eventually end up on the internet. Reddit has become a wonderful place for people to share these old treasures, usually with a healthy sense of humor about their younger selves. Here are 15 family photos featuring some particularly memorable fashion decisions.

The post 15 Family Photos Where Fashion Choices Might Be Questionable appeared first on Den of Geek.

Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood is a celebration of all things Tinsel Town. Beyond its plot about fading star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) battling the Manson Family, the movie is a gift to fans of ’60s Hollywood. Unless you’re a fan of Bruce Lee, that is. In the most controversial scene of the movie, the slovenly Booth easily defeats Lee (Mike Moh), who comes off like an incompetent braggart.

Reducing the greatest film action star of all time to a jobber for Booth irritated Once Upon a Time‘s original viewers. So it’s shocking that the second trailer for the upcoming sequel The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth would remind us of it. Yet, throughout the trailer, various characters refer to Booth less as Rick Dalton’s stunt man and more as the guy who beat Bruce Lee. Fortunately, however, the trailer does offer some room for revision.

Set eight years after the events of Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth finds the titular stuntman looking for work after his partnership with Dalton has ended (“He got too fat,” says Booth in the trailer, probably on all that I-Talian food). Things seem to turn around when an agent (Elizabeth Debicki) for actor Charlie Peters (Scott Caan) calls him up for work. But what could the work be, given that Charlie does his own stunts? The trailer lets that question linger until its final moments, when Cliff hints that Peters has gotten caught up with some Filipino gangsters and needs help getting out. Cliff can help, because he beat up the Manson Family. And also Bruce Lee.

That last point seems of greater interest to the characters in the trailer, even more so than the fact that Cliff and Rick beat a group of Manson Family members (played by up-and-coming stars such as Austin Butler and Mikey Madison). Everyone from Peters’s wife Toni (Carla Gugino) to Blaxploitation star Hot Rod Harrison (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) brings it up. For his part, Cliff tries to downplay the event, saying it was a long time ago, and had been exaggerated over the years.

In other words, Cliff is revising the story, which fits with the original movie’s theme. After all, Cliff and Rick’s heroics saved Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) from the fate she suffered in our world. Revision is also a favorite theme of Tarantino’s. However, Tarantino only wrote the script for Cliff Booth, letting David Fincher step in to direct. And Fincher, who demands endless takes of one scene, is not known for being freewheeling and improvisational.

So what does that mean for the legend of Cliff Booth and the diminishment of Bruce Lee? We can’t tell from this trailer alone, but it is clear that the sequel isn’t afraid of making viewers as uncomfortable as its predecessor. But, then again, that’s Hollywood: sensational, unreliable, and ultimately pure fantasy.

The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth comes to theaters on November 25, 2026 and to Netflix on December 23, 2026.

The post New Cliff Booth Trailer Addresses Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Biggest Problem appeared first on Den of Geek.

Thrift stores are full of surprises, but some discoveries raise more questions than answers. You might walk in looking for a decent coffee mug and leave wondering why someone manufactured a lobster-shaped clock. Then there’s the clothing, the unusual artwork, and the decorative objects that seem to exist purely to confuse people. The best part is that somebody once paid full price for these things, and somebody else eventually decided to donate them. Luckily, a few shoppers had their cameras ready when they spotted these wonderfully questionable treasures. Here are 15 thrift store finds that could easily pass for elaborate practical jokes.

The post 15 Thrift Store Finds That Look More Like a Joke appeared first on Den of Geek.

Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood is a celebration of all things Tinsel Town. Beyond its plot about fading star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) battling the Manson Family, the movie is a gift to fans of ’60s Hollywood. Unless you’re a fan of Bruce Lee, that is. In the most controversial scene of the movie, the slovenly Booth easily defeats Lee (Mike Moh), who comes off like an incompetent braggart.

Reducing the greatest film action star of all time to a jobber for Booth irritated Once Upon a Time‘s original viewers. So it’s shocking that the second trailer for the upcoming sequel The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth would remind us of it. Yet, throughout the trailer, various characters refer to Booth less as Rick Dalton’s stunt man and more as the guy who beat Bruce Lee. Fortunately, however, the trailer does offer some room for revision.

Set eight years after the events of Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth finds the titular stuntman looking for work after his partnership with Dalton has ended (“He got too fat,” says Booth in the trailer, probably on all that I-Talian food). Things seem to turn around when an agent (Elizabeth Debicki) for actor Charlie Peters (Scott Caan) calls him up for work. But what could the work be, given that Charlie does his own stunts? The trailer lets that question linger until its final moments, when Cliff hints that Peters has gotten caught up with some Filipino gangsters and needs help getting out. Cliff can help, because he beat up the Manson Family. And also Bruce Lee.

That last point seems of greater interest to the characters in the trailer, even more so than the fact that Cliff and Rick beat a group of Manson Family members (played by up-and-coming stars such as Austin Butler and Mikey Madison). Everyone from Peters’s wife Toni (Carla Gugino) to Blaxploitation star Hot Rod Harrison (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) brings it up. For his part, Cliff tries to downplay the event, saying it was a long time ago, and had been exaggerated over the years.

In other words, Cliff is revising the story, which fits with the original movie’s theme. After all, Cliff and Rick’s heroics saved Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) from the fate she suffered in our world. Revision is also a favorite theme of Tarantino’s. However, Tarantino only wrote the script for Cliff Booth, letting David Fincher step in to direct. And Fincher, who demands endless takes of one scene, is not known for being freewheeling and improvisational.

So what does that mean for the legend of Cliff Booth and the diminishment of Bruce Lee? We can’t tell from this trailer alone, but it is clear that the sequel isn’t afraid of making viewers as uncomfortable as its predecessor. But, then again, that’s Hollywood: sensational, unreliable, and ultimately pure fantasy.

The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth comes to theaters on November 25, 2026 and to Netflix on December 23, 2026.

The post New Cliff Booth Trailer Addresses Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Biggest Problem appeared first on Den of Geek.

Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood is a celebration of all things Tinsel Town. Beyond its plot about fading star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) battling the Manson Family, the movie is a gift to fans of ’60s Hollywood. Unless you’re a fan of Bruce Lee, […]

The post New Cliff Booth Trailer Addresses Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Biggest Problem appeared first on Den of Geek.

Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood is a celebration of all things Tinsel Town. Beyond its plot about fading star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) battling the Manson Family, the movie is a gift to fans of ’60s Hollywood. Unless you’re a fan of Bruce Lee, that is. In the most controversial scene of the movie, the slovenly Booth easily defeats Lee (Mike Moh), who comes off like an incompetent braggart.

Reducing the greatest film action star of all time to a jobber for Booth irritated Once Upon a Time‘s original viewers. So it’s shocking that the second trailer for the upcoming sequel The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth would remind us of it. Yet, throughout the trailer, various characters refer to Booth less as Rick Dalton’s stunt man and more as the guy who beat Bruce Lee. Fortunately, however, the trailer does offer some room for revision.

Set eight years after the events of Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth finds the titular stuntman looking for work after his partnership with Dalton has ended (“He got too fat,” says Booth in the trailer, probably on all that I-Talian food). Things seem to turn around when an agent (Elizabeth Debicki) for actor Charlie Peters (Scott Caan) calls him up for work. But what could the work be, given that Charlie does his own stunts? The trailer lets that question linger until its final moments, when Cliff hints that Peters has gotten caught up with some Filipino gangsters and needs help getting out. Cliff can help, because he beat up the Manson Family. And also Bruce Lee.

That last point seems of greater interest to the characters in the trailer, even more so than the fact that Cliff and Rick beat a group of Manson Family members (played by up-and-coming stars such as Austin Butler and Mikey Madison). Everyone from Peters’s wife Toni (Carla Gugino) to Blaxploitation star Hot Rod Harrison (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) brings it up. For his part, Cliff tries to downplay the event, saying it was a long time ago, and had been exaggerated over the years.

In other words, Cliff is revising the story, which fits with the original movie’s theme. After all, Cliff and Rick’s heroics saved Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) from the fate she suffered in our world. Revision is also a favorite theme of Tarantino’s. However, Tarantino only wrote the script for Cliff Booth, letting David Fincher step in to direct. And Fincher, who demands endless takes of one scene, is not known for being freewheeling and improvisational.

So what does that mean for the legend of Cliff Booth and the diminishment of Bruce Lee? We can’t tell from this trailer alone, but it is clear that the sequel isn’t afraid of making viewers as uncomfortable as its predecessor. But, then again, that’s Hollywood: sensational, unreliable, and ultimately pure fantasy.

The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth comes to theaters on November 25, 2026 and to Netflix on December 23, 2026.

The post New Cliff Booth Trailer Addresses Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Biggest Problem appeared first on Den of Geek.

This article contains major Godzilla Minus Zero spoilers. Our spoiler-free review is here. Have a safe trip. Rarely has such a sweet, innocuous phrase carried such devastating power in a movie as when Akiko (Sae Nagatani) stands atop a lonely slide and cries it again and again. It’s a chant, a prayer for safe passage, […]

The post Godzilla Minus Zero: Exploring the Ending and the Nuclear Destruction of Ideals appeared first on Den of Geek.

Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood is a celebration of all things Tinsel Town. Beyond its plot about fading star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) battling the Manson Family, the movie is a gift to fans of ’60s Hollywood. Unless you’re a fan of Bruce Lee, that is. In the most controversial scene of the movie, the slovenly Booth easily defeats Lee (Mike Moh), who comes off like an incompetent braggart.

Reducing the greatest film action star of all time to a jobber for Booth irritated Once Upon a Time‘s original viewers. So it’s shocking that the second trailer for the upcoming sequel The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth would remind us of it. Yet, throughout the trailer, various characters refer to Booth less as Rick Dalton’s stunt man and more as the guy who beat Bruce Lee. Fortunately, however, the trailer does offer some room for revision.

Set eight years after the events of Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth finds the titular stuntman looking for work after his partnership with Dalton has ended (“He got too fat,” says Booth in the trailer, probably on all that I-Talian food). Things seem to turn around when an agent (Elizabeth Debicki) for actor Charlie Peters (Scott Caan) calls him up for work. But what could the work be, given that Charlie does his own stunts? The trailer lets that question linger until its final moments, when Cliff hints that Peters has gotten caught up with some Filipino gangsters and needs help getting out. Cliff can help, because he beat up the Manson Family. And also Bruce Lee.

That last point seems of greater interest to the characters in the trailer, even more so than the fact that Cliff and Rick beat a group of Manson Family members (played by up-and-coming stars such as Austin Butler and Mikey Madison). Everyone from Peters’s wife Toni (Carla Gugino) to Blaxploitation star Hot Rod Harrison (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) brings it up. For his part, Cliff tries to downplay the event, saying it was a long time ago, and had been exaggerated over the years.

In other words, Cliff is revising the story, which fits with the original movie’s theme. After all, Cliff and Rick’s heroics saved Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) from the fate she suffered in our world. Revision is also a favorite theme of Tarantino’s. However, Tarantino only wrote the script for Cliff Booth, letting David Fincher step in to direct. And Fincher, who demands endless takes of one scene, is not known for being freewheeling and improvisational.

So what does that mean for the legend of Cliff Booth and the diminishment of Bruce Lee? We can’t tell from this trailer alone, but it is clear that the sequel isn’t afraid of making viewers as uncomfortable as its predecessor. But, then again, that’s Hollywood: sensational, unreliable, and ultimately pure fantasy.

The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth comes to theaters on November 25, 2026 and to Netflix on December 23, 2026.

The post New Cliff Booth Trailer Addresses Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Biggest Problem appeared first on Den of Geek.

There are a lot of fan conventions out there, but they don’t all embrace the wonderfully weird side of pop culture the way Phantom Fest does. Only at this Houston-based gathering can you discover an unexpected international gem while simultaneously revisiting a beloved cult classic and celebrating alongside the performers and filmmakers who make genre […]

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Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood is a celebration of all things Tinsel Town. Beyond its plot about fading star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) battling the Manson Family, the movie is a gift to fans of ’60s Hollywood. Unless you’re a fan of Bruce Lee, that is. In the most controversial scene of the movie, the slovenly Booth easily defeats Lee (Mike Moh), who comes off like an incompetent braggart.

Reducing the greatest film action star of all time to a jobber for Booth irritated Once Upon a Time‘s original viewers. So it’s shocking that the second trailer for the upcoming sequel The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth would remind us of it. Yet, throughout the trailer, various characters refer to Booth less as Rick Dalton’s stunt man and more as the guy who beat Bruce Lee. Fortunately, however, the trailer does offer some room for revision.

Set eight years after the events of Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth finds the titular stuntman looking for work after his partnership with Dalton has ended (“He got too fat,” says Booth in the trailer, probably on all that I-Talian food). Things seem to turn around when an agent (Elizabeth Debicki) for actor Charlie Peters (Scott Caan) calls him up for work. But what could the work be, given that Charlie does his own stunts? The trailer lets that question linger until its final moments, when Cliff hints that Peters has gotten caught up with some Filipino gangsters and needs help getting out. Cliff can help, because he beat up the Manson Family. And also Bruce Lee.

That last point seems of greater interest to the characters in the trailer, even more so than the fact that Cliff and Rick beat a group of Manson Family members (played by up-and-coming stars such as Austin Butler and Mikey Madison). Everyone from Peters’s wife Toni (Carla Gugino) to Blaxploitation star Hot Rod Harrison (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) brings it up. For his part, Cliff tries to downplay the event, saying it was a long time ago, and had been exaggerated over the years.

In other words, Cliff is revising the story, which fits with the original movie’s theme. After all, Cliff and Rick’s heroics saved Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) from the fate she suffered in our world. Revision is also a favorite theme of Tarantino’s. However, Tarantino only wrote the script for Cliff Booth, letting David Fincher step in to direct. And Fincher, who demands endless takes of one scene, is not known for being freewheeling and improvisational.

So what does that mean for the legend of Cliff Booth and the diminishment of Bruce Lee? We can’t tell from this trailer alone, but it is clear that the sequel isn’t afraid of making viewers as uncomfortable as its predecessor. But, then again, that’s Hollywood: sensational, unreliable, and ultimately pure fantasy.

The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth comes to theaters on November 25, 2026 and to Netflix on December 23, 2026.

The post New Cliff Booth Trailer Addresses Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Biggest Problem appeared first on Den of Geek.

Last year, Star Wars fans were shocked by the revelation that Lucasfilm turned down The Hunt for Ben Solo, a story that would have followed The Artist Formerly Known as Kylo Ren as he dealt with his redemption in the wake of Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker. Not only would Adam […]

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Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood is a celebration of all things Tinsel Town. Beyond its plot about fading star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) battling the Manson Family, the movie is a gift to fans of ’60s Hollywood. Unless you’re a fan of Bruce Lee, that is. In the most controversial scene of the movie, the slovenly Booth easily defeats Lee (Mike Moh), who comes off like an incompetent braggart.

Reducing the greatest film action star of all time to a jobber for Booth irritated Once Upon a Time‘s original viewers. So it’s shocking that the second trailer for the upcoming sequel The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth would remind us of it. Yet, throughout the trailer, various characters refer to Booth less as Rick Dalton’s stunt man and more as the guy who beat Bruce Lee. Fortunately, however, the trailer does offer some room for revision.

Set eight years after the events of Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth finds the titular stuntman looking for work after his partnership with Dalton has ended (“He got too fat,” says Booth in the trailer, probably on all that I-Talian food). Things seem to turn around when an agent (Elizabeth Debicki) for actor Charlie Peters (Scott Caan) calls him up for work. But what could the work be, given that Charlie does his own stunts? The trailer lets that question linger until its final moments, when Cliff hints that Peters has gotten caught up with some Filipino gangsters and needs help getting out. Cliff can help, because he beat up the Manson Family. And also Bruce Lee.

That last point seems of greater interest to the characters in the trailer, even more so than the fact that Cliff and Rick beat a group of Manson Family members (played by up-and-coming stars such as Austin Butler and Mikey Madison). Everyone from Peters’s wife Toni (Carla Gugino) to Blaxploitation star Hot Rod Harrison (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) brings it up. For his part, Cliff tries to downplay the event, saying it was a long time ago, and had been exaggerated over the years.

In other words, Cliff is revising the story, which fits with the original movie’s theme. After all, Cliff and Rick’s heroics saved Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) from the fate she suffered in our world. Revision is also a favorite theme of Tarantino’s. However, Tarantino only wrote the script for Cliff Booth, letting David Fincher step in to direct. And Fincher, who demands endless takes of one scene, is not known for being freewheeling and improvisational.

So what does that mean for the legend of Cliff Booth and the diminishment of Bruce Lee? We can’t tell from this trailer alone, but it is clear that the sequel isn’t afraid of making viewers as uncomfortable as its predecessor. But, then again, that’s Hollywood: sensational, unreliable, and ultimately pure fantasy.

The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth comes to theaters on November 25, 2026 and to Netflix on December 23, 2026.

The post New Cliff Booth Trailer Addresses Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Biggest Problem appeared first on Den of Geek.