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“Language is not merely a set of unrelated sounds, clauses, rules, and meanings; it is a totally coherent system bound to context and behavior.” — Kenneth L. Pike

The web has accents. So should our design systems.

Design Systems as Living Languages

Design systems aren’t component libraries—they’re living languages. Tokens are phonemes, components are words, patterns are phrases, layouts are sentences. The conversations we build with users become the stories our products tell.

But here’s what we’ve forgotten: the more fluently a language is spoken, the more accents it can support without losing meaning. English in Scotland differs from English in Sydney, yet both are unmistakably English. The language adapts to context while preserving core meaning. This couldn’t be more obvious to me, a Brazilian Portuguese speaker, who learned English with an American accent, and lives in Sydney.

Our design systems must work the same way. Rigid adherence to visual rules creates brittle systems that break under contextual pressure. Fluent systems bend without breaking.

Consistency becomes a prison

The promise of design systems was simple: consistent components would accelerate development and unify experiences. But as systems matured and products grew more complex, that promise has become a prison. Teams file “exception” requests by the hundreds. Products launch with workarounds instead of system components. Designers spend more time defending consistency than solving user problems.

Our design systems must learn to speak dialects.

A design dialect is a systematic adaptation of a design system that maintains core principles while developing new patterns for specific contexts. Unlike one-off customizations or brand themes, dialects preserve the system’s essential grammar while expanding its vocabulary to serve different users, environments, or constraints.

When Perfect Consistency Fails

At Booking.com, I learned this lesson the hard way. We A/B-tested everything—color, copy, button shapes, even logo colors. As a professional with a graphic design education and experience building brand style guides, I found this shocking. While everyone fell in love with Airbnb’s pristine design system, Booking grew into a giant without ever considering visual consistency.  

The chaos taught me something profound: consistency isn’t ROI; solved problems are.

At Shopify. Polaris () was our crown jewel—a mature design language perfect for merchants on laptops. As a product team, we were expected to adopt Polaris as-is. Then my fulfillment team hit an “Oh, Ship!” moment, as we faced the challenge of building an app for warehouse pickers using our interface on shared, battered Android scanners in dim aisles, wearing thick gloves, scanning dozens of items per minute, many with limited levels of English understanding.

Task completion with standard Polaris: 0%.

Every component that worked beautifully for merchants failed completely for pickers. White backgrounds created glare. 44px tap targets were invisible to gloved fingers. Sentence-case labels took too long to parse. Multi-step flows confused non-native speakers.

We faced a choice: abandon Polaris entirely, or teach it to speak warehouse.

The Birth of a Dialect

We chose evolution over revolution. Working within Polaris’s core principles—clarity, efficiency, consistency—we developed what we now call a design dialect:

Constraint	Fluent Move	Rationale
Glare & low light	Dark surfaces + light text	Reduce glare on low-DPI screens
Gloves & haste	90px tap targets (~2cm)	Accommodate thick gloves
Multilingual	Single-task screens, plain language	Reduce cognitive load

Result: Task completion jumped from 0% to 100%. Onboarding time dropped from three weeks to one shift.

This wasn’t customization or theming—this was a dialect: a systematic adaptation that maintained Polaris’s core grammar while developing new vocabulary for a specific context. Polaris hadn’t failed; it had learned to speak warehouse.

The Flexibility Framework

At Atlassian, working on the Jira platform—itself a system within the larger Atlassian system—I pushed for formalizing this insight. With dozens of products sharing a design language across different codebases, we needed systematic flexibility so we built directly into our ways of working. The old model—exception requests and special approvals—was failing at scale.

We developed the Flexibility Framework to help designers define how flexible they wanted their components to be:

Tier	Action	Ownership
Consistent	Adopt unchanged	Platform locks design + code
Opinionated	Adapt within bounds	Platform provides smart defaults, products customize
Flexible	Extend freely	Platform defines behavior, products own presentation

During a navigation redesign, we tiered every element. Logo and global search stayed Consistent. Breadcrumbs and contextual actions became Flexible. Product teams could immediately see where innovation was welcome and where consistency mattered.

The Decision Ladder

Flexibility needs boundaries. We created a simple ladder for evaluating when rules should bend:

Good: Ship with existing system components. Fast, consistent, proven.

Better: Stretch a component slightly. Document the change. Contribute improvements back to the system for all to use.

Best: Prototype the ideal experience first. If user testing validates the benefit, update the system to support it.

The key question: “Which option lets users succeed fastest?”

Rules are tools, not relics.

Unity Beats Uniformity

Gmail, Drive, and Maps are unmistakably Google—yet each speaks with its own accent. They achieve unity through shared principles, not cloned components. One extra week of debate over button color costs roughly $30K in engineer time.

Unity is a brand outcome; fluency is a user outcome. When the two clash, side with the user.

Governance Without Gates

How do you maintain coherence while enabling dialects? Treat your system like a living vocabulary:

Document every deviation – e.g., dialects/warehouse.md with before/after screenshots and rationale.

Promote shared patterns – when three teams adopt a dialect independently, review it for core inclusion.

Deprecate with context – retire old idioms via flags and migration notes, never a big-bang purge.

A living dictionary scales better than a frozen rulebook.

Start Small: Your First Dialect

Ready to introduce dialects? Start with one broken experience:

This week: Find one user flow where perfect consistency blocks task completion. Could be mobile users struggling with desktop-sized components, or accessibility needs your standard patterns don’t address.

Document the context: What makes standard patterns fail here? Environmental constraints? User capabilities? Task urgency?

Design one systematic change: Focus on behavior over aesthetics. If gloves are the problem, bigger targets aren’t “”breaking the system””—they’re serving the user. Earn the variations and make them intentional.

Test and measure: Does the change improve task completion? Time to productivity? User satisfaction?

Show the savings: If that dialect frees even half a sprint, fluency has paid for itself.

Beyond the Component Library

We’re not managing design systems anymore—we’re cultivating design languages. Languages that grow with their speakers. Languages that develop accents without losing meaning. Languages that serve human needs over aesthetic ideals.

The warehouse workers who went from 0% to 100% task completion didn’t care that our buttons broke the style guide. They cared that the buttons finally worked.

Your users feel the same way. Give your system permission to speak their language.

Today’s web is not always an amiable place. Sites greet you with a popover that demands assent to their cookie policy, and leave you with Taboola ads promising “One Weird Trick!” to cure your ailments. Social media sites are tuned for engagement, and few things are more engaging than a fight. Today it seems that people want to quarrel; I have seen flame wars among birders.  

These tensions are often at odds with a site’s goals. If we are providing support and advice to customers, we don’t want those customers to wrangle with each other. If we offer news about the latest research, we want readers to feel at ease; if we promote upcoming marches, we want our core supporters to feel comfortable and we want curious newcomers to feel welcome. 

In a study for a conference on the History of the Web, I looked to the origins of Computer Science in Vienna (1928-1934)  for a case study of the importance of amiability in a research community and the disastrous consequences of its loss. That story has interesting implications for web environments that promote amiable interaction among disparate, difficult (and sometimes disagreeable) people.

The Vienna Circle

Though people had been thinking about calculating engines and thinking machines from antiquity, Computing really got going in Depression-era Vienna.  The people who worked out the theory had no interest in building machines; they wanted to puzzle out the limits of reason in the absence of divine authority. If we could not rely on God or Aristotle to tell us how to think, could we instead build arguments that were self-contained and demonstrably correct? Can we be sure that mathematics is consistent? Are there things that are true but that cannot be expressed in language? 

The core ideas were worked out in the weekly meetings (Thursdays at 6) of a group remembered as the Vienna Circle. They got together in the office of Professor Moritz Schlick at the University of Vienna to discuss problems in philosophy, math, and language. The intersection of physics and philosophy had long been a specialty of this Vienna department, and this work had placed them among the world leaders.  Schlick’s colleague Hans Hahn was a central participant, and by 1928 Hahn brought along his graduate students Karl Menger and Kurt Gödel. Other frequent participants included philosopher Rudolf Carnap, psychologist Karl Popper, economist Ludwig von Mises (brought by his brother Frederick, a physicist),  graphic designer Otto Neurath (inventor of infographics), and architect Josef Frank (brought by his physicist brother, Phillip).  Out-of-town visitors often joined, including the young Johnny von Neumann, Alfred Tarski, and the irascible Ludwig Wittgenstein. 

When Schlick’s office grew too dim, participants adjourned to a nearby café for additional discussion with an even larger circle of participants.  This convivial circle was far from unique.  An intersecting circle–Neurath, von Mises, Oskar Morgenstern–established the Austrian School of free-market economics. There were theatrical circles (Peter Lorre, Hedy Lamarr, Max Reinhardt), and literary circles. The café was where things happened.

The interdisciplinarity of the group posed real challenges of temperament and understanding. Personalities were often a challenge. Gödel was convinced people were trying to poison him. Architect Josef Frank depended on contracts for public housing, which Mises opposed as wasteful. Wittgenstein’s temper had lost him his job as a secondary school teacher, and for some of these years he maintained a detailed list of whom he was willing to meet. Neurath was eager to detect muddled thinking and would interrupt a speaker with a shouted “Metaphysics!” The continuing amity of these meetings was facilitated by the personality of their leader, Moritz Schlick, who would be remembered as notably adept in keeping disagreements from becoming quarrels.

In the Café

The Viennese café of this era was long remembered as a particularly good place to argue with your friends, to read, and to write. Built to serve an imperial capital, the cafés found themselves with too much space and too few customers now that the Empire was gone. There was no need to turn tables: a café could only survive by coaxing customers to linger. Perhaps they would order another coffee, or one of their friends might drop by. One could play chess, or billiards, or read newspapers from abroad. Coffee was invariably served with a glass of purified spring water, still a novelty in an era in which most water was still unsafe to drink. That water glass would be refilled indefinitely. 

In the basement of one café, the poet Jura Soyfer staged “The End Of The World,” a musical comedy in which Professor Peep has discovered a comet heading for earth.

Prof. Peep: The comet is going to destroy everybody!

Hitler:  Destroying everybody is my business.

Of course, coffee can be prepared in many ways, and the Viennese café developed a broad vocabulary to represent precisely how one preferred to drink it: melange, Einspänner, Brauner, Schwarzer, Kapuziner. This extensive customization, with correspondingly esoteric conventions of service, established the café as a comfortable and personal third space, a neutral ground in which anyone who could afford a coffee would be welcome. Viennese of this era were fastidious in their use of personal titles, of which an abundance were in common use. Café waiters greeted regular customers with titles too, but were careful to address their patrons with titles a notch or two greater than they deserved. A graduate student would be Doktor, an unpaid postdoc Professor.  This assurance mattered all the more because so many members of the Circle (and so many other Viennese) came from elsewhere: Carnap from Wuppertal, Gödel from Brno, von Neumann from Budapest. No one was going to make fun of your clothes, mannerisms, or accent. Your friends wouldn’t be bothered by the pram in the hall. Everyone shared a Germanic Austrian literary and philosophical culture, not least those whose ancestors had been Eastern European Jews who knew that culture well, having read all about it in books.

The amiability of the café circle was enhanced by its openness. Because the circle sometimes extended to architects and actors, people could feel less constrained to admit shortfalls in their understanding. It was soon discovered that marble tabletops made a useful surface for pencil sketches, serving all as an improvised and accessible blackboard.

Comedies like “The End Of The World” and fictional newspaper sketches or feuilletons of writers like Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig served as a second defense against disagreeable or churlish behavior. The knowledge that, if one got carried away, a parody of one’s remarks might shortly appear in Neue Freie Presse surely helped Professor Schlick keep matters in hand.

The End Of Red Vienna

Though Austria’s government drifted to the right after the War, Vienna’s city council had been Socialist, dedicated to public housing based on user-centered design, and embracing  ambitious programs of public outreach and adult education. In 1934 the Socialists lost a local election, and this era soon came to its end as the new administration focused on the imagined threat of the International Jewish Conspiracy. Most members of the Circle fled within months: von Neumann to Princeton, Neurath to Holland and Oxford, Popper to New Zealand, Carnap to Chicago. Prof. Schlick was murdered on the steps of the University by a student outraged by his former association with Jews.  Jura Soyfer, who wrote “The End Of The World,” died in Buchenwald.

In 1939, von Neumann finally convinced Gödel to accept a job in Princeton. Gödel was required to pay large fines to emigrate. The officer in charge of these fees would look back on this as the best posting of his career; his name was Eichmann.

Design for Amiability

An impressive literature recounts those discussions and the environment that facilitated the development of computing. How can we design for amiability?  This is not just a matter of choosing rounded typefaces and a cheerful pastel palette. I believe we may identify eight distinct issues that exert design forces in usefully amiable directions.

Seriousness: The Vienna Circle was wrestling with a notoriously difficult book—Wittgenstein’s Tractus Logico-Philosophicus—and a catalog of outstanding open questions in mathematics. They were concerned with consequential problems, not merely scoring points for debating. Constant reminders that the questions you are considering matter—not only that they are consequential or that those opposing you are scoundrels—help promote amity.

Empiricism: The characteristic approach of the Vienna Circle demanded that knowledge be grounded either in direct observation or in rigorous reasoning. Disagreement, when it arose, could be settled by observation or by proof. If neither seemed ready to hand, the matter could not be settled. On these terms, one can seldom if ever demolish an opposing argument, and trolling is pointless.

Abstraction: Disputes grow worse when losing the argument entails lost face or lost jobs. The Vienna Circle’s focus on theory—the limits of mathematics, the capability of language—promoted amity. Without seriousness, abstraction could have been merely academic, but the limits of reason and the consistency of mathematics were clearly serious.

Formality: The punctilious demeanor of waiters and the elaborated rituals of coffee service helped to establish orderly attitudes amongst the argumentative participants. This stands in contrast to the contemptuous sneer that now dominates social media.  

Schlamperei: Members of the Vienna Circle maintained a global correspondence, and they knew their work was at the frontier of research. Still, this was Vienna, at the margins of Europe: old-fashioned, frumpy, and dingy. Many participants came from even more obscure backwaters. Most or all harbored the suspicion that they were really schleppers, and a tinge of the ridiculous helped to moderate tempers. The director of “The End Of The World” had to pass the hat for money to purchase a moon for the set, and thought it was funny enough to write up for publication.

Openness: All sorts of people were involved in discussion, anyone might join in. Each week would bring different participants. Fluid borders reduce tension, and provide opportunities to broaden the range of discussion and the terms of engagement. Low entrance friction was characteristic of the café: anyone could come, and if you came twice you were virtually a regular. Permeable boundaries and café culture made it easier for moderating influences to draw in raconteurs and storytellers to defuse awkward moments, and Vienna’s cafés had no shortage of humorists. Openness counteracts the suspicion that promoters of amiability are exerting censorship.

Parody: The environs of the Circle—the university office and the café—were unmistakably public. There were writers about, some of them renowned humorists. The prospect that one’s bad taste or bad behavior might be ridiculed in print kept discussion within bounds. The sanction of public humiliation, however, was itself made mild by the veneer of fiction; even if you got a little carried away and a character based on you made a splash in some newspaper fiction, it wasn’t the end of the world.

Engagement: The subject matter was important to the participants, but it was esoteric: it did not matter very much to their mothers or their siblings. A small stumble or a minor humiliation could be shrugged off in ways that major media confrontations cannot.

I believe it is notable that this environment was designed to promote amiability through several different voices.  The café waiter flattered each newcomer and served everyone, and also kept out local pickpockets and drunks who would be mere disruptions. Schlick and other regulars kept discussion moving and on track. The fiction writers and raconteurs—perhaps the most peripheral of the participants—kept people in a good mood and reminded them that bad behavior could make anyone ridiculous.  Crucially, each of these voices were human: you could reason with them. Algorithmic or AI moderators, however clever, are seldom perceived as reasonable. The café circles had no central authority or Moderator against whom everyone’s resentments might be focused. Even after the disaster of 1934, what people remembered were those cheerful arguments.

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.

Build a Business AI Can’t Replace written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode: Overview Most conversations about AI focus on tools, workflows, and competitive advantage. This episode goes deeper. John Jantsch sits down with Derek Rydall, bestselling author of A Whole New Human, to explore a question that rarely gets asked: what happens to the human being while the tools are getting smarter? Rydall […]

Write Press Releases That Generate Real Media written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode:

Overview

Most small businesses have written off the press release as a relic. They should not have. In this episode, John Jantsch sits down with Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases, to make the case that earned media is more valuable now than it has been in decades — and that AI is changing how smart businesses write press releases, but not in the way most people think.

Kennedy draws on over 25 years of press release distribution to explain why 97% of press releases fail to generate a single article, and what the other 3% have in common. The conversation covers story arc, the contrarian angle, using surveys to manufacture news, and why putting the spotlight on a customer often works better than talking about your own product.

The AI component here is practical and specific. Kennedy walks through a paragraph-by-paragraph approach to using AI as a writing tool — not a strategy tool — and explains why letting AI decide what to write about is where most people go wrong. If you are a small business owner who has dismissed PR as too expensive or too complicated, this episode will change that.

About Mickie Kennedy

Mickie Kennedy is the founder of eReleases, a press release distribution service he launched in 1998 after watching small businesses get priced out of PR agencies charging $20,000 minimums. eReleases gives small businesses and entrepreneurs access to the same national newswire infrastructure used by major corporations, at roughly a quarter of the cost. He has worked with more than 32,000 clients and distributes around 10,000 press releases per year. He teaches PR strategy through a free masterclass at ereleases.com/plan.

Key Takeaways

• Syndication links are not earned media. Getting your press release replicated on 200 subdomains means nothing if no journalist wrote an article about you. The only metric that matters is whether a human being covered your story.
• AI is changing the value of earned media. Search engines and AI tools lean on credible industry publications as sources. One article in the right trade publication now carries more weight than it ever did.
• 97% of press releases fail to generate coverage. The ones that do share common patterns: a story arc, stakes, a contrarian angle, or a data-backed finding from an original survey.
• Do not let AI decide what to write about. Use AI to structure and write the press release once you have a strong strategic idea. The idea itself has to come from you.
• Build press releases paragraph by paragraph with AI. Ask for structure first, then headline options, then opening paragraph variations. The whole process takes about 12 minutes and produces far better results than a single prompt.
• Find an enemy or a blind spot. The carpet company that called out big box home improvement stores got picked up in every major flooring trade publication. Nobody had said it before. That is the opportunity.
• Put the spotlight on a customer, not yourself. A story about a company that was losing money for three years and turned profitable using your software is more interesting than a feature list.
• Surveys manufacture news in any industry. Partner with a smaller trade association, run a survey, find the most surprising result, and build the release around that finding.
• The contrarian position is less crowded. Journalists outside of politics want balance. If everyone in your industry agrees on something, being the thoughtful voice of dissent gets you quoted every time the topic comes up.

Timestamps

[00:01] — Opening hook: the press release is not dead, but there is a catch when AI is involved.

[01:30] — How PR and press releases have changed since the web arrived, and why syndication feeds created a false sense of results.

[03:51] — Earned media vs. owned media, and why AI is pushing earned media back to the top of the priority stack.

[06:15] — The waste management client who got one article and landed $30 to $40 million in contracts from Australia.

[08:27] — How to find a newsworthy angle when you are not naturally in a newsworthy business.

[10:13] — The carpet company in New Jersey that called out Home Depot and Lowe’s and got picked up everywhere.

[12:05] — Why blasting a media database is killing your chances with journalists and what to do instead.

[14:47] — How to use AI to write press releases the right way: structure first, headlines second, paragraphs third.

[18:28] — Using AI for deep research and brainstorming contrarian ideas by industry.

[19:09] — Why the contrarian position is strategically underused and how it gets you recurring media mentions.

Memorable Quotes

“When a journalist writes an article about you, it’s an implied endorsement. Someone has transformed the press release into a written article.”

“You have to take what you want, and that’s the pill. Sometimes you’ve got to put it in cheese to get the journalist to swallow it.”

“AI is very good at writing the press release. The ideas behind it — it’s not very good at that. It’ll make a press release like you see out there, and you’re like, this is as good as that one. Well, that one probably didn’t get any pickups either.”

“The contrarian position is a much easier place because fewer people are competing for that spot.”

---

Learn more at ereleases.com. Mickie’s free PR strategy masterclass is at ereleases.com/plan.

Write Press Releases That Generate Real Media written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode: Overview Most small businesses have written off the press release as a relic. They should not have. In this episode, John Jantsch sits down with Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases, to make the case that earned media is more valuable now than it has been in decades — and that AI […]

Write Press Releases That Generate Real Media written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode:

Overview

Most small businesses have written off the press release as a relic. They should not have. In this episode, John Jantsch sits down with Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases, to make the case that earned media is more valuable now than it has been in decades — and that AI is changing how smart businesses write press releases, but not in the way most people think.

Kennedy draws on over 25 years of press release distribution to explain why 97% of press releases fail to generate a single article, and what the other 3% have in common. The conversation covers story arc, the contrarian angle, using surveys to manufacture news, and why putting the spotlight on a customer often works better than talking about your own product.

The AI component here is practical and specific. Kennedy walks through a paragraph-by-paragraph approach to using AI as a writing tool — not a strategy tool — and explains why letting AI decide what to write about is where most people go wrong. If you are a small business owner who has dismissed PR as too expensive or too complicated, this episode will change that.

About Mickie Kennedy

Mickie Kennedy is the founder of eReleases, a press release distribution service he launched in 1998 after watching small businesses get priced out of PR agencies charging $20,000 minimums. eReleases gives small businesses and entrepreneurs access to the same national newswire infrastructure used by major corporations, at roughly a quarter of the cost. He has worked with more than 32,000 clients and distributes around 10,000 press releases per year. He teaches PR strategy through a free masterclass at ereleases.com/plan.

Key Takeaways

• Syndication links are not earned media. Getting your press release replicated on 200 subdomains means nothing if no journalist wrote an article about you. The only metric that matters is whether a human being covered your story.
• AI is changing the value of earned media. Search engines and AI tools lean on credible industry publications as sources. One article in the right trade publication now carries more weight than it ever did.
• 97% of press releases fail to generate coverage. The ones that do share common patterns: a story arc, stakes, a contrarian angle, or a data-backed finding from an original survey.
• Do not let AI decide what to write about. Use AI to structure and write the press release once you have a strong strategic idea. The idea itself has to come from you.
• Build press releases paragraph by paragraph with AI. Ask for structure first, then headline options, then opening paragraph variations. The whole process takes about 12 minutes and produces far better results than a single prompt.
• Find an enemy or a blind spot. The carpet company that called out big box home improvement stores got picked up in every major flooring trade publication. Nobody had said it before. That is the opportunity.
• Put the spotlight on a customer, not yourself. A story about a company that was losing money for three years and turned profitable using your software is more interesting than a feature list.
• Surveys manufacture news in any industry. Partner with a smaller trade association, run a survey, find the most surprising result, and build the release around that finding.
• The contrarian position is less crowded. Journalists outside of politics want balance. If everyone in your industry agrees on something, being the thoughtful voice of dissent gets you quoted every time the topic comes up.

Timestamps

[00:01] — Opening hook: the press release is not dead, but there is a catch when AI is involved.

[01:30] — How PR and press releases have changed since the web arrived, and why syndication feeds created a false sense of results.

[03:51] — Earned media vs. owned media, and why AI is pushing earned media back to the top of the priority stack.

[06:15] — The waste management client who got one article and landed $30 to $40 million in contracts from Australia.

[08:27] — How to find a newsworthy angle when you are not naturally in a newsworthy business.

[10:13] — The carpet company in New Jersey that called out Home Depot and Lowe’s and got picked up everywhere.

[12:05] — Why blasting a media database is killing your chances with journalists and what to do instead.

[14:47] — How to use AI to write press releases the right way: structure first, headlines second, paragraphs third.

[18:28] — Using AI for deep research and brainstorming contrarian ideas by industry.

[19:09] — Why the contrarian position is strategically underused and how it gets you recurring media mentions.

Memorable Quotes

“When a journalist writes an article about you, it’s an implied endorsement. Someone has transformed the press release into a written article.”

“You have to take what you want, and that’s the pill. Sometimes you’ve got to put it in cheese to get the journalist to swallow it.”

“AI is very good at writing the press release. The ideas behind it — it’s not very good at that. It’ll make a press release like you see out there, and you’re like, this is as good as that one. Well, that one probably didn’t get any pickups either.”

“The contrarian position is a much easier place because fewer people are competing for that spot.”

---

Learn more at ereleases.com. Mickie’s free PR strategy masterclass is at ereleases.com/plan.

The 1980s were a golden age for animated television, especially when it came to unforgettable opening sequences. Long before binge-watching or streaming, a show’s intro had to grab attention instantly, and many of them succeeded through catchy theme songs and striking visuals.

In quite a few cases, those openings became more iconic than the episodes themselves. Backed by rock-inspired tracks or bold narration, these intros left a lasting impression that still resonates decades later. Most of these shows faded from memory, but their memorable openings remained, living on through nostalgia, reruns, and countless revisits online.

The post ’80s Cartoon Intros Everyone Remembers Better Than the Show appeared first on Den of Geek.

If you’ve spent any time at all on the internet, you’ve probably seen the most infamous moment from the 1997 bomb, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. A woman in purple strides onto the screen to take her place between two ninjas standing in fight positions. When a young lady below says, “Mother… you’re alive,” the camera cuts to a close up on the purple person. “Too bad YOU… will DIE!” she declares with an ostentatious point.

That bit of dialogue occurs just four minutes into the film, and for nearly 30 years, it solidified fans’s opinion that Annihilation represented a serious step-down in quality from its 1995 predecessor, directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. Yet, when revisited three decades later, just as the latest big-budget and very respectful Mortal Kombat II is about to hit theaters, anyone watching the scene has to ask: What, exactly, would be the realistic way for a benevolent queen of a perfect realm, now corrupted by the magic of a pan-universal conqueror, to tell her daughter that she lives and now plans to conquer our realm, with the help of a four-armed lady and some centaur/dragon guy?

Without question, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is goofy, plotted with indifference, and filled with effects that looked cheap in 1997 (despite having a $30 million budget, higher than the first film’s $20 million). But now that we have two respectful and impressive Hollywood films to look at, Annihilation can remind us that maybe there’s something deeply silly about the franchise that gave the world Noob Saibot.

A Test of Might

Directed by John R. Leonetti, from a script credited to Brent V. Friedman and Bryce Zabel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation begins right where the previous film ended: the victory of the Earthrealm heroes gathered by the thunder god Raiden—Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage—over the sorceror Shang Tsung in the Mortal Kombat tournament meant nothing. Shao Kahn (Brian Thompson), emperor of the Outworld still plans to invade Earthrealm, with the help of his generals: Queen Sindel (Musetta Vander), Sheeva (Marjean Holden), Smoke (Ridley Tsui), Ermac (John Medlen), and Motaro (Deron McBee).

Despite the strict continuity in plot, the end of Mortal Kombat and the start of Annihilation look very different. Robin Shou and Talisa Soto still play Liu Kang and Kitana, but James Remar is Raiden instead of Christopher Lambert, Sandra Hess has replaced Bridget Wilson as Sonya, and Chris Conrad takes Linden Ashby’s place as Johnny Cage, at least for the five minutes he’s on screen, before Shao Khan snaps his neck. Later, Red Williams joins the cast as Sonya’s partner Jax, replacing Gregory Williams, who portrayed the character in a brief cameo in the first movie.

It’s not really the cast changes that mark a difference between the two films. The original has all of the features that people love/hate in Anderson’s later movies, manifested in a goofy performance by Lambert and some shoddy plotting. The second film has all those problems, only more so. Characters such as Sub-Zero and Scorpion pop in and then disappear from the story, Thompson, who has an otherworldly presence in The X-Files and Cobra, feels like a regular dude than a great conqueror, and a giant CGI-monster fight in the climax is both nonsensical and ugly. B-movie king Remar seems half-asleep while delivering his lines, and Williams is asked to do little more than shout slang as Jax.

Not Flawless, Still a Victory

Yet, the corniness of Annihilation matches the corniness that’s always been present in the games, even when it was freaking out parents and legislators in the mid-’90s. The spine-ripping always has more Looney Tunes to it than Faces of Death, and no series that includes babalities and “Toasty!” can have too many pretensions. Nor can a series that built half of its roster out of palette swaps complain about any filmmaker’s frugality.

If Annihilation treated those strange aspects to Mortal Kombat with derision, then it would deserve the fan’s ire. But instead, the movie seems to lean into the silly parts of the games. We see this with the introduction of new characters Nightwolf (Litefoot) and Baraka (Dennis Keiffer). Neither character arrives with the best effects, as Nightwolf transforms from a wolf to a person with all the prestige of an Animorphs cover and Baraka’s giant head and flailing arms make him look more like a confused high school magic than a blade demon. But look at how unabashedly Keiffer throws himself into playing Baraka, or how Litefoot delivers the clunker “Cool, huh? It’s my animality.” with conviction. These guys are clearly having fun.

One gets the same feeling watching the pay off of the animality plot, when Lui Kang becomes a dragon and Shao Kahn becomes a gorgon thing. It looks horrible, and the mechanics of the fight make no sense, especially when Lui Kang’s dragon—a famously flying creature with giant wings—gets scared about falling off a cliff. At the same time, you have to respect the filmmakers for trying to do a big kaiju battle at the climax of their movie, even if it looks janky.

In fact, all the clunky visuals now come off as charming instead of irritating. The shots of Jax punching toward the camera aren’t as cool as a middle-distance shot of him actual grappling with a monster, but they have their charm. The endless shots of ninjas twirling through the sky recall a ’90s screensaver, in a way that feels nostalgic now.

Even the infamous introduction of Sindel ages better because of the silly visuals. Her line delivery is ridiculous, but actor Musetta Vander puts everything into it. And all the actors around her are just as over-the-top, standing there with the dukes up and making mean, growly faces… just like the models in the games’ character selection screens.

Friendship!

To be clear, this isn’t to say that Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is good, nor does it mean that all of the flaws have become charming. For as much as their co-stars pour themselves into their roles, Remar and Reiner Schöne, who plays Elder God Shinnok, don’t quite have the same gusto. Nor can anyone claim that the martial arts action is as clean and propulsive as the first film.

But we still have that first film to provide the cleaner martial arts action. Moreover, we’ll soon have two classy, expensive, and mostly respectful (give or take a Cole Young) Hollywood takes on the franchise.

With those other entries in place, Annihilation can now be praised for retaining the series’ silly, janky, and altogether embarrassing side. When examined from that perspective, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is not too bad at all.

Mortal Kombat II will get over to theaters on May 8, 2026.

The post Mortal Kombat: Annihilation’s Goofiness Has Aged Perfectly appeared first on Den of Geek.

There are a few ways one might look at this past weekend’s chic box office win for The Devil Wears Prada 2. As an observer who never gilds the lily, one can imagine Meryl Streep’s Ms. Priestly coolly stating, “A legacy sequel hitting big? In May? Groundbreaking.” Yet we, and probably most of the industry, […]

The post The Devil Wears Prada 2 Box Office Reminds Blockbusters Need Not Lean on Young Male-Skewing Action appeared first on Den of Geek.

If you’ve spent any time at all on the internet, you’ve probably seen the most infamous moment from the 1997 bomb, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. A woman in purple strides onto the screen to take her place between two ninjas standing in fight positions. When a young lady below says, “Mother… you’re alive,” the camera cuts to a close up on the purple person. “Too bad YOU… will DIE!” she declares with an ostentatious point.

That bit of dialogue occurs just four minutes into the film, and for nearly 30 years, it solidified fans’s opinion that Annihilation represented a serious step-down in quality from its 1995 predecessor, directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. Yet, when revisited three decades later, just as the latest big-budget and very respectful Mortal Kombat II is about to hit theaters, anyone watching the scene has to ask: What, exactly, would be the realistic way for a benevolent queen of a perfect realm, now corrupted by the magic of a pan-universal conqueror, to tell her daughter that she lives and now plans to conquer our realm, with the help of a four-armed lady and some centaur/dragon guy?

Without question, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is goofy, plotted with indifference, and filled with effects that looked cheap in 1997 (despite having a $30 million budget, higher than the first film’s $20 million). But now that we have two respectful and impressive Hollywood films to look at, Annihilation can remind us that maybe there’s something deeply silly about the franchise that gave the world Noob Saibot.

A Test of Might

Directed by John R. Leonetti, from a script credited to Brent V. Friedman and Bryce Zabel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation begins right where the previous film ended: the victory of the Earthrealm heroes gathered by the thunder god Raiden—Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage—over the sorceror Shang Tsung in the Mortal Kombat tournament meant nothing. Shao Kahn (Brian Thompson), emperor of the Outworld still plans to invade Earthrealm, with the help of his generals: Queen Sindel (Musetta Vander), Sheeva (Marjean Holden), Smoke (Ridley Tsui), Ermac (John Medlen), and Motaro (Deron McBee).

Despite the strict continuity in plot, the end of Mortal Kombat and the start of Annihilation look very different. Robin Shou and Talisa Soto still play Liu Kang and Kitana, but James Remar is Raiden instead of Christopher Lambert, Sandra Hess has replaced Bridget Wilson as Sonya, and Chris Conrad takes Linden Ashby’s place as Johnny Cage, at least for the five minutes he’s on screen, before Shao Khan snaps his neck. Later, Red Williams joins the cast as Sonya’s partner Jax, replacing Gregory Williams, who portrayed the character in a brief cameo in the first movie.

It’s not really the cast changes that mark a difference between the two films. The original has all of the features that people love/hate in Anderson’s later movies, manifested in a goofy performance by Lambert and some shoddy plotting. The second film has all those problems, only more so. Characters such as Sub-Zero and Scorpion pop in and then disappear from the story, Thompson, who has an otherworldly presence in The X-Files and Cobra, feels like a regular dude than a great conqueror, and a giant CGI-monster fight in the climax is both nonsensical and ugly. B-movie king Remar seems half-asleep while delivering his lines, and Williams is asked to do little more than shout slang as Jax.

Not Flawless, Still a Victory

Yet, the corniness of Annihilation matches the corniness that’s always been present in the games, even when it was freaking out parents and legislators in the mid-’90s. The spine-ripping always has more Looney Tunes to it than Faces of Death, and no series that includes babalities and “Toasty!” can have too many pretensions. Nor can a series that built half of its roster out of palette swaps complain about any filmmaker’s frugality.

If Annihilation treated those strange aspects to Mortal Kombat with derision, then it would deserve the fan’s ire. But instead, the movie seems to lean into the silly parts of the games. We see this with the introduction of new characters Nightwolf (Litefoot) and Baraka (Dennis Keiffer). Neither character arrives with the best effects, as Nightwolf transforms from a wolf to a person with all the prestige of an Animorphs cover and Baraka’s giant head and flailing arms make him look more like a confused high school magic than a blade demon. But look at how unabashedly Keiffer throws himself into playing Baraka, or how Litefoot delivers the clunker “Cool, huh? It’s my animality.” with conviction. These guys are clearly having fun.

One gets the same feeling watching the pay off of the animality plot, when Lui Kang becomes a dragon and Shao Kahn becomes a gorgon thing. It looks horrible, and the mechanics of the fight make no sense, especially when Lui Kang’s dragon—a famously flying creature with giant wings—gets scared about falling off a cliff. At the same time, you have to respect the filmmakers for trying to do a big kaiju battle at the climax of their movie, even if it looks janky.

In fact, all the clunky visuals now come off as charming instead of irritating. The shots of Jax punching toward the camera aren’t as cool as a middle-distance shot of him actual grappling with a monster, but they have their charm. The endless shots of ninjas twirling through the sky recall a ’90s screensaver, in a way that feels nostalgic now.

Even the infamous introduction of Sindel ages better because of the silly visuals. Her line delivery is ridiculous, but actor Musetta Vander puts everything into it. And all the actors around her are just as over-the-top, standing there with the dukes up and making mean, growly faces… just like the models in the games’ character selection screens.

Friendship!

To be clear, this isn’t to say that Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is good, nor does it mean that all of the flaws have become charming. For as much as their co-stars pour themselves into their roles, Remar and Reiner Schöne, who plays Elder God Shinnok, don’t quite have the same gusto. Nor can anyone claim that the martial arts action is as clean and propulsive as the first film.

But we still have that first film to provide the cleaner martial arts action. Moreover, we’ll soon have two classy, expensive, and mostly respectful (give or take a Cole Young) Hollywood takes on the franchise.

With those other entries in place, Annihilation can now be praised for retaining the series’ silly, janky, and altogether embarrassing side. When examined from that perspective, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is not too bad at all.

Mortal Kombat II will get over to theaters on May 8, 2026.

The post Mortal Kombat: Annihilation’s Goofiness Has Aged Perfectly appeared first on Den of Geek.

The 1990s produced an endless stream of television, from massive global hits to smaller shows that quietly disappeared after a short run. Some series stayed in syndication for years, while others seemed to vanish the moment they ended. Yet certain forgotten titles live on in memory, remembered vividly by the people who watched them at just the right time. Here are fifteen people sharing the ’90s show they’re convinced only they remember.

The post 15 People Share the ’90s Show They’re Convinced Only They Remember appeared first on Den of Geek.

If you’ve spent any time at all on the internet, you’ve probably seen the most infamous moment from the 1997 bomb, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. A woman in purple strides onto the screen to take her place between two ninjas standing in fight positions. When a young lady below says, “Mother… you’re alive,” the camera cuts to a close up on the purple person. “Too bad YOU… will DIE!” she declares with an ostentatious point.

That bit of dialogue occurs just four minutes into the film, and for nearly 30 years, it solidified fans’s opinion that Annihilation represented a serious step-down in quality from its 1995 predecessor, directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. Yet, when revisited three decades later, just as the latest big-budget and very respectful Mortal Kombat II is about to hit theaters, anyone watching the scene has to ask: What, exactly, would be the realistic way for a benevolent queen of a perfect realm, now corrupted by the magic of a pan-universal conqueror, to tell her daughter that she lives and now plans to conquer our realm, with the help of a four-armed lady and some centaur/dragon guy?

Without question, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is goofy, plotted with indifference, and filled with effects that looked cheap in 1997 (despite having a $30 million budget, higher than the first film’s $20 million). But now that we have two respectful and impressive Hollywood films to look at, Annihilation can remind us that maybe there’s something deeply silly about the franchise that gave the world Noob Saibot.

A Test of Might

Directed by John R. Leonetti, from a script credited to Brent V. Friedman and Bryce Zabel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation begins right where the previous film ended: the victory of the Earthrealm heroes gathered by the thunder god Raiden—Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage—over the sorceror Shang Tsung in the Mortal Kombat tournament meant nothing. Shao Kahn (Brian Thompson), emperor of the Outworld still plans to invade Earthrealm, with the help of his generals: Queen Sindel (Musetta Vander), Sheeva (Marjean Holden), Smoke (Ridley Tsui), Ermac (John Medlen), and Motaro (Deron McBee).

Despite the strict continuity in plot, the end of Mortal Kombat and the start of Annihilation look very different. Robin Shou and Talisa Soto still play Liu Kang and Kitana, but James Remar is Raiden instead of Christopher Lambert, Sandra Hess has replaced Bridget Wilson as Sonya, and Chris Conrad takes Linden Ashby’s place as Johnny Cage, at least for the five minutes he’s on screen, before Shao Khan snaps his neck. Later, Red Williams joins the cast as Sonya’s partner Jax, replacing Gregory Williams, who portrayed the character in a brief cameo in the first movie.

It’s not really the cast changes that mark a difference between the two films. The original has all of the features that people love/hate in Anderson’s later movies, manifested in a goofy performance by Lambert and some shoddy plotting. The second film has all those problems, only more so. Characters such as Sub-Zero and Scorpion pop in and then disappear from the story, Thompson, who has an otherworldly presence in The X-Files and Cobra, feels like a regular dude than a great conqueror, and a giant CGI-monster fight in the climax is both nonsensical and ugly. B-movie king Remar seems half-asleep while delivering his lines, and Williams is asked to do little more than shout slang as Jax.

Not Flawless, Still a Victory

Yet, the corniness of Annihilation matches the corniness that’s always been present in the games, even when it was freaking out parents and legislators in the mid-’90s. The spine-ripping always has more Looney Tunes to it than Faces of Death, and no series that includes babalities and “Toasty!” can have too many pretensions. Nor can a series that built half of its roster out of palette swaps complain about any filmmaker’s frugality.

If Annihilation treated those strange aspects to Mortal Kombat with derision, then it would deserve the fan’s ire. But instead, the movie seems to lean into the silly parts of the games. We see this with the introduction of new characters Nightwolf (Litefoot) and Baraka (Dennis Keiffer). Neither character arrives with the best effects, as Nightwolf transforms from a wolf to a person with all the prestige of an Animorphs cover and Baraka’s giant head and flailing arms make him look more like a confused high school magic than a blade demon. But look at how unabashedly Keiffer throws himself into playing Baraka, or how Litefoot delivers the clunker “Cool, huh? It’s my animality.” with conviction. These guys are clearly having fun.

One gets the same feeling watching the pay off of the animality plot, when Lui Kang becomes a dragon and Shao Kahn becomes a gorgon thing. It looks horrible, and the mechanics of the fight make no sense, especially when Lui Kang’s dragon—a famously flying creature with giant wings—gets scared about falling off a cliff. At the same time, you have to respect the filmmakers for trying to do a big kaiju battle at the climax of their movie, even if it looks janky.

In fact, all the clunky visuals now come off as charming instead of irritating. The shots of Jax punching toward the camera aren’t as cool as a middle-distance shot of him actual grappling with a monster, but they have their charm. The endless shots of ninjas twirling through the sky recall a ’90s screensaver, in a way that feels nostalgic now.

Even the infamous introduction of Sindel ages better because of the silly visuals. Her line delivery is ridiculous, but actor Musetta Vander puts everything into it. And all the actors around her are just as over-the-top, standing there with the dukes up and making mean, growly faces… just like the models in the games’ character selection screens.

Friendship!

To be clear, this isn’t to say that Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is good, nor does it mean that all of the flaws have become charming. For as much as their co-stars pour themselves into their roles, Remar and Reiner Schöne, who plays Elder God Shinnok, don’t quite have the same gusto. Nor can anyone claim that the martial arts action is as clean and propulsive as the first film.

But we still have that first film to provide the cleaner martial arts action. Moreover, we’ll soon have two classy, expensive, and mostly respectful (give or take a Cole Young) Hollywood takes on the franchise.

With those other entries in place, Annihilation can now be praised for retaining the series’ silly, janky, and altogether embarrassing side. When examined from that perspective, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is not too bad at all.

Mortal Kombat II will get over to theaters on May 8, 2026.

The post Mortal Kombat: Annihilation’s Goofiness Has Aged Perfectly appeared first on Den of Geek.

Television in the 1970s and 1980s was full of experimentation, especially when it came to spin-offs. Networks were eager to extend popular shows, sometimes in ways that felt natural, but often in ways that were surprisingly strange.

Characters were transplanted into entirely new settings, tones shifted dramatically, and familiar concepts were stretched to their limits. The result was a wave of spin-offs that ranged from slightly inspired to outright baffling. Yes, some found modest success, but most others quickly faded. These entries highlight some of the most unusual examples, where the connection to the original show seems anecdotal at best.

The post The 15 Most Bizarre ’70s and ’80s TV Spin-Offs appeared first on Den of Geek.

If you’ve spent any time at all on the internet, you’ve probably seen the most infamous moment from the 1997 bomb, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. A woman in purple strides onto the screen to take her place between two ninjas standing in fight positions. When a young lady below says, “Mother… you’re alive,” the camera cuts to a close up on the purple person. “Too bad YOU… will DIE!” she declares with an ostentatious point.

That bit of dialogue occurs just four minutes into the film, and for nearly 30 years, it solidified fans’s opinion that Annihilation represented a serious step-down in quality from its 1995 predecessor, directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. Yet, when revisited three decades later, just as the latest big-budget and very respectful Mortal Kombat II is about to hit theaters, anyone watching the scene has to ask: What, exactly, would be the realistic way for a benevolent queen of a perfect realm, now corrupted by the magic of a pan-universal conqueror, to tell her daughter that she lives and now plans to conquer our realm, with the help of a four-armed lady and some centaur/dragon guy?

Without question, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is goofy, plotted with indifference, and filled with effects that looked cheap in 1997 (despite having a $30 million budget, higher than the first film’s $20 million). But now that we have two respectful and impressive Hollywood films to look at, Annihilation can remind us that maybe there’s something deeply silly about the franchise that gave the world Noob Saibot.

A Test of Might

Directed by John R. Leonetti, from a script credited to Brent V. Friedman and Bryce Zabel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation begins right where the previous film ended: the victory of the Earthrealm heroes gathered by the thunder god Raiden—Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage—over the sorceror Shang Tsung in the Mortal Kombat tournament meant nothing. Shao Kahn (Brian Thompson), emperor of the Outworld still plans to invade Earthrealm, with the help of his generals: Queen Sindel (Musetta Vander), Sheeva (Marjean Holden), Smoke (Ridley Tsui), Ermac (John Medlen), and Motaro (Deron McBee).

Despite the strict continuity in plot, the end of Mortal Kombat and the start of Annihilation look very different. Robin Shou and Talisa Soto still play Liu Kang and Kitana, but James Remar is Raiden instead of Christopher Lambert, Sandra Hess has replaced Bridget Wilson as Sonya, and Chris Conrad takes Linden Ashby’s place as Johnny Cage, at least for the five minutes he’s on screen, before Shao Khan snaps his neck. Later, Red Williams joins the cast as Sonya’s partner Jax, replacing Gregory Williams, who portrayed the character in a brief cameo in the first movie.

It’s not really the cast changes that mark a difference between the two films. The original has all of the features that people love/hate in Anderson’s later movies, manifested in a goofy performance by Lambert and some shoddy plotting. The second film has all those problems, only more so. Characters such as Sub-Zero and Scorpion pop in and then disappear from the story, Thompson, who has an otherworldly presence in The X-Files and Cobra, feels like a regular dude than a great conqueror, and a giant CGI-monster fight in the climax is both nonsensical and ugly. B-movie king Remar seems half-asleep while delivering his lines, and Williams is asked to do little more than shout slang as Jax.

Not Flawless, Still a Victory

Yet, the corniness of Annihilation matches the corniness that’s always been present in the games, even when it was freaking out parents and legislators in the mid-’90s. The spine-ripping always has more Looney Tunes to it than Faces of Death, and no series that includes babalities and “Toasty!” can have too many pretensions. Nor can a series that built half of its roster out of palette swaps complain about any filmmaker’s frugality.

If Annihilation treated those strange aspects to Mortal Kombat with derision, then it would deserve the fan’s ire. But instead, the movie seems to lean into the silly parts of the games. We see this with the introduction of new characters Nightwolf (Litefoot) and Baraka (Dennis Keiffer). Neither character arrives with the best effects, as Nightwolf transforms from a wolf to a person with all the prestige of an Animorphs cover and Baraka’s giant head and flailing arms make him look more like a confused high school magic than a blade demon. But look at how unabashedly Keiffer throws himself into playing Baraka, or how Litefoot delivers the clunker “Cool, huh? It’s my animality.” with conviction. These guys are clearly having fun.

One gets the same feeling watching the pay off of the animality plot, when Lui Kang becomes a dragon and Shao Kahn becomes a gorgon thing. It looks horrible, and the mechanics of the fight make no sense, especially when Lui Kang’s dragon—a famously flying creature with giant wings—gets scared about falling off a cliff. At the same time, you have to respect the filmmakers for trying to do a big kaiju battle at the climax of their movie, even if it looks janky.

In fact, all the clunky visuals now come off as charming instead of irritating. The shots of Jax punching toward the camera aren’t as cool as a middle-distance shot of him actual grappling with a monster, but they have their charm. The endless shots of ninjas twirling through the sky recall a ’90s screensaver, in a way that feels nostalgic now.

Even the infamous introduction of Sindel ages better because of the silly visuals. Her line delivery is ridiculous, but actor Musetta Vander puts everything into it. And all the actors around her are just as over-the-top, standing there with the dukes up and making mean, growly faces… just like the models in the games’ character selection screens.

Friendship!

To be clear, this isn’t to say that Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is good, nor does it mean that all of the flaws have become charming. For as much as their co-stars pour themselves into their roles, Remar and Reiner Schöne, who plays Elder God Shinnok, don’t quite have the same gusto. Nor can anyone claim that the martial arts action is as clean and propulsive as the first film.

But we still have that first film to provide the cleaner martial arts action. Moreover, we’ll soon have two classy, expensive, and mostly respectful (give or take a Cole Young) Hollywood takes on the franchise.

With those other entries in place, Annihilation can now be praised for retaining the series’ silly, janky, and altogether embarrassing side. When examined from that perspective, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is not too bad at all.

Mortal Kombat II will get over to theaters on May 8, 2026.

The post Mortal Kombat: Annihilation’s Goofiness Has Aged Perfectly appeared first on Den of Geek.

After garnering positive reviews and having cracked the Nielsen Streaming Originals chart using a binge release model, something that Daredevil: Born Again hasn’t managed in either of its much-hyped weekly rollout seasons, Wonder Man will be coming back to Disney+ for a second batch of episodes in the future. Marvel doesn’t renew its live-action Disney+ […]

The post Marvel’s Oddest Show Is Staying That Way in Season 2 appeared first on Den of Geek.

If you’ve spent any time at all on the internet, you’ve probably seen the most infamous moment from the 1997 bomb, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. A woman in purple strides onto the screen to take her place between two ninjas standing in fight positions. When a young lady below says, “Mother… you’re alive,” the camera cuts to a close up on the purple person. “Too bad YOU… will DIE!” she declares with an ostentatious point.

That bit of dialogue occurs just four minutes into the film, and for nearly 30 years, it solidified fans’s opinion that Annihilation represented a serious step-down in quality from its 1995 predecessor, directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. Yet, when revisited three decades later, just as the latest big-budget and very respectful Mortal Kombat II is about to hit theaters, anyone watching the scene has to ask: What, exactly, would be the realistic way for a benevolent queen of a perfect realm, now corrupted by the magic of a pan-universal conqueror, to tell her daughter that she lives and now plans to conquer our realm, with the help of a four-armed lady and some centaur/dragon guy?

Without question, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is goofy, plotted with indifference, and filled with effects that looked cheap in 1997 (despite having a $30 million budget, higher than the first film’s $20 million). But now that we have two respectful and impressive Hollywood films to look at, Annihilation can remind us that maybe there’s something deeply silly about the franchise that gave the world Noob Saibot.

A Test of Might

Directed by John R. Leonetti, from a script credited to Brent V. Friedman and Bryce Zabel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation begins right where the previous film ended: the victory of the Earthrealm heroes gathered by the thunder god Raiden—Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage—over the sorceror Shang Tsung in the Mortal Kombat tournament meant nothing. Shao Kahn (Brian Thompson), emperor of the Outworld still plans to invade Earthrealm, with the help of his generals: Queen Sindel (Musetta Vander), Sheeva (Marjean Holden), Smoke (Ridley Tsui), Ermac (John Medlen), and Motaro (Deron McBee).

Despite the strict continuity in plot, the end of Mortal Kombat and the start of Annihilation look very different. Robin Shou and Talisa Soto still play Liu Kang and Kitana, but James Remar is Raiden instead of Christopher Lambert, Sandra Hess has replaced Bridget Wilson as Sonya, and Chris Conrad takes Linden Ashby’s place as Johnny Cage, at least for the five minutes he’s on screen, before Shao Khan snaps his neck. Later, Red Williams joins the cast as Sonya’s partner Jax, replacing Gregory Williams, who portrayed the character in a brief cameo in the first movie.

It’s not really the cast changes that mark a difference between the two films. The original has all of the features that people love/hate in Anderson’s later movies, manifested in a goofy performance by Lambert and some shoddy plotting. The second film has all those problems, only more so. Characters such as Sub-Zero and Scorpion pop in and then disappear from the story, Thompson, who has an otherworldly presence in The X-Files and Cobra, feels like a regular dude than a great conqueror, and a giant CGI-monster fight in the climax is both nonsensical and ugly. B-movie king Remar seems half-asleep while delivering his lines, and Williams is asked to do little more than shout slang as Jax.

Not Flawless, Still a Victory

Yet, the corniness of Annihilation matches the corniness that’s always been present in the games, even when it was freaking out parents and legislators in the mid-’90s. The spine-ripping always has more Looney Tunes to it than Faces of Death, and no series that includes babalities and “Toasty!” can have too many pretensions. Nor can a series that built half of its roster out of palette swaps complain about any filmmaker’s frugality.

If Annihilation treated those strange aspects to Mortal Kombat with derision, then it would deserve the fan’s ire. But instead, the movie seems to lean into the silly parts of the games. We see this with the introduction of new characters Nightwolf (Litefoot) and Baraka (Dennis Keiffer). Neither character arrives with the best effects, as Nightwolf transforms from a wolf to a person with all the prestige of an Animorphs cover and Baraka’s giant head and flailing arms make him look more like a confused high school magic than a blade demon. But look at how unabashedly Keiffer throws himself into playing Baraka, or how Litefoot delivers the clunker “Cool, huh? It’s my animality.” with conviction. These guys are clearly having fun.

One gets the same feeling watching the pay off of the animality plot, when Lui Kang becomes a dragon and Shao Kahn becomes a gorgon thing. It looks horrible, and the mechanics of the fight make no sense, especially when Lui Kang’s dragon—a famously flying creature with giant wings—gets scared about falling off a cliff. At the same time, you have to respect the filmmakers for trying to do a big kaiju battle at the climax of their movie, even if it looks janky.

In fact, all the clunky visuals now come off as charming instead of irritating. The shots of Jax punching toward the camera aren’t as cool as a middle-distance shot of him actual grappling with a monster, but they have their charm. The endless shots of ninjas twirling through the sky recall a ’90s screensaver, in a way that feels nostalgic now.

Even the infamous introduction of Sindel ages better because of the silly visuals. Her line delivery is ridiculous, but actor Musetta Vander puts everything into it. And all the actors around her are just as over-the-top, standing there with the dukes up and making mean, growly faces… just like the models in the games’ character selection screens.

Friendship!

To be clear, this isn’t to say that Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is good, nor does it mean that all of the flaws have become charming. For as much as their co-stars pour themselves into their roles, Remar and Reiner Schöne, who plays Elder God Shinnok, don’t quite have the same gusto. Nor can anyone claim that the martial arts action is as clean and propulsive as the first film.

But we still have that first film to provide the cleaner martial arts action. Moreover, we’ll soon have two classy, expensive, and mostly respectful (give or take a Cole Young) Hollywood takes on the franchise.

With those other entries in place, Annihilation can now be praised for retaining the series’ silly, janky, and altogether embarrassing side. When examined from that perspective, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is not too bad at all.

Mortal Kombat II will get over to theaters on May 8, 2026.

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