Category: Blog

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.

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.

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.

The late Wolfgang Petersen made some memorable films in his career. The German director, who first gained international acclaim with the war film Das Boot, went on to traumatize children everywhere with The Never Ending Story and then captivate audiences with movies like In the Line of Fire, Outbreak, Air Force One, and Troy. You’ll […]

The post Shattered Might Have the Most Underrated Ending Twist of the ’90s 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.

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

Nielsen has released new viewership data to mark Star Wars Day, aka May 4th, and the numbers are pretty fascinating for anyone curious about how well the franchise is doing in the streaming landscape. Largely based on 2025 data, it reveals that in the U.S. alone, viewers watched a staggering 33 billion minutes of Star […]

The post New Star Wars Viewing Data Shows a Deep Generational Divide 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.

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 […]

The post Mortal Kombat: Annihilation’s Goofiness Has Aged Perfectly 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.

In the 1950s, many in the elite running community had begun to believe it wasn’t possible to run a mile in less than four minutes. Runners had been attempting it since the late 19th century and were beginning to draw the conclusion that the human body simply wasn’t built for the task. 

But on May 6, 1956, Roger Bannister took everyone by surprise. It was a cold, wet day in Oxford, England—conditions no one expected to lend themselves to record-setting—and yet Bannister did just that, running a mile in 3:59.4 and becoming the first person in the record books to run a mile in under four minutes. 

This shift in the benchmark had profound effects; the world now knew that the four-minute mile was possible. Bannister’s record lasted only forty-six days, when it was snatched away by Australian runner John Landy. Then a year later, three runners all beat the four-minute barrier together in the same race. Since then, over 1,400 runners have officially run a mile in under four minutes; the current record is 3:43.13, held by Moroccan athlete Hicham El Guerrouj.

We achieve far more when we believe that something is possible, and we will believe it’s possible only when we see someone else has already done it—and as with human running speed, so it is with what we believe are the hard limits for how a website needs to perform.

Establishing standards for a sustainable web

In most major industries, the key metrics of environmental performance are fairly well established, such as miles per gallon for cars or energy per square meter for homes. The tools and methods for calculating those metrics are standardized as well, which keeps everyone on the same page when doing environmental assessments. In the world of websites and apps, however, we aren’t held to any particular environmental standards, and only recently have gained the tools and methods we need to even make an environmental assessment.

The primary goal in sustainable web design is to reduce carbon emissions. However, it’s almost impossible to actually measure the amount of CO₂ produced by a web product. We can’t measure the fumes coming out of the exhaust pipes on our laptops. The emissions of our websites are far away, out of sight and out of mind, coming out of power stations burning coal and gas. We have no way to trace the electrons from a website or app back to the power station where the electricity is being generated and actually know the exact amount of greenhouse gas produced. So what do we do? 

If we can’t measure the actual carbon emissions, then we need to find what we can measure. The primary factors that could be used as indicators of carbon emissions are:

1. Data transfer 
2. Carbon intensity of electricity

Let’s take a look at how we can use these metrics to quantify the energy consumption, and in turn the carbon footprint, of the websites and web apps we create.

Data transfer

Most researchers use kilowatt-hours per gigabyte (kWh/GB) as a metric of energy efficiency when measuring the amount of data transferred over the internet when a website or application is used. This provides a great reference point for energy consumption and carbon emissions. As a rule of thumb, the more data transferred, the more energy used in the data center, telecoms networks, and end user devices.

For web pages, data transfer for a single visit can be most easily estimated by measuring the page weight, meaning the transfer size of the page in kilobytes the first time someone visits the page. It’s fairly easy to measure using the developer tools in any modern web browser. Often your web hosting account will include statistics for the total data transfer of any web application (Fig 2.1).

The nice thing about page weight as a metric is that it allows us to compare the efficiency of web pages on a level playing field without confusing the issue with constantly changing traffic volumes. 

Reducing page weight requires a large scope. By early 2020, the median page weight was 1.97 MB for setups the HTTP Archive classifies as “desktop” and 1.77 MB for “mobile,” with desktop increasing 36 percent since January 2016 and mobile page weights nearly doubling in the same period (Fig 2.2). Roughly half of this data transfer is image files, making images the single biggest source of carbon emissions on the average website. 

History clearly shows us that our web pages can be smaller, if only we set our minds to it. While most technologies become ever more energy efficient, including the underlying technology of the web such as data centers and transmission networks, websites themselves are a technology that becomes less efficient as time goes on.

You might be familiar with the concept of performance budgeting as a way of focusing a project team on creating faster user experiences. For example, we might specify that the website must load in a maximum of one second on a broadband connection and three seconds on a 3G connection. Much like speed limits while driving, performance budgets are upper limits rather than vague suggestions, so the goal should always be to come in under budget.

Designing for fast performance does often lead to reduced data transfer and emissions, but it isn’t always the case. Web performance is often more about the subjective perception of load times than it is about the true efficiency of the underlying system, whereas page weight and transfer size are more objective measures and more reliable benchmarks for sustainable web design. 

We can set a page weight budget in reference to a benchmark of industry averages, using data from sources like HTTP Archive. We can also benchmark page weight against competitors or the old version of the website we’re replacing. For example, we might set a maximum page weight budget as equal to our most efficient competitor, or we could set the benchmark lower to guarantee we are best in class. 

If we want to take it to the next level, then we could also start looking at the transfer size of our web pages for repeat visitors. Although page weight for the first time someone visits is the easiest thing to measure, and easy to compare on a like-for-like basis, we can learn even more if we start looking at transfer size in other scenarios too. For example, visitors who load the same page multiple times will likely have a high percentage of the files cached in their browser, meaning they don’t need to transfer all of the files on subsequent visits. Likewise, a visitor who navigates to new pages on the same website will likely not need to load the full page each time, as some global assets from areas like the header and footer may already be cached in their browser. Measuring transfer size at this next level of detail can help us learn even more about how we can optimize efficiency for users who regularly visit our pages, and enable us to set page weight budgets for additional scenarios beyond the first visit.

Page weight budgets are easy to track throughout a design and development process. Although they don’t actually tell us carbon emission and energy consumption analytics directly, they give us a clear indication of efficiency relative to other websites. And as transfer size is an effective analog for energy consumption, we can actually use it to estimate energy consumption too.

In summary, reduced data transfer translates to energy efficiency, a key factor to reducing carbon emissions of web products. The more efficient our products, the less electricity they use, and the less fossil fuels need to be burned to produce the electricity to power them. But as we’ll see next, since all web products demand some power, it’s important to consider the source of that electricity, too.

Carbon intensity of electricity

Regardless of energy efficiency, the level of pollution caused by digital products depends on the carbon intensity of the energy being used to power them. Carbon intensity is a term used to define the grams of CO₂ produced for every kilowatt-hour of electricity (gCO₂/kWh). This varies widely, with renewable energy sources and nuclear having an extremely low carbon intensity of less than 10 gCO₂/kWh (even when factoring in their construction); whereas fossil fuels have very high carbon intensity of approximately 200–400 gCO₂/kWh. 

Most electricity comes from national or state grids, where energy from a variety of different sources is mixed together with varying levels of carbon intensity. The distributed nature of the internet means that a single user of a website or app might be using energy from multiple different grids simultaneously; a website user in Paris uses electricity from the French national grid to power their home internet and devices, but the website’s data center could be in Dallas, USA, pulling electricity from the Texas grid, while the telecoms networks use energy from everywhere between Dallas and Paris.

We don’t have control over the full energy supply of web services, but we do have some control over where we host our projects. With a data center using a significant proportion of the energy of any website, locating the data center in an area with low carbon energy will tangibly reduce its carbon emissions. Danish startup Tomorrow reports and maps this user-contributed data, and a glance at their map shows how, for example, choosing a data center in France will have significantly lower carbon emissions than a data center in the Netherlands (Fig 2.3).

That said, we don’t want to locate our servers too far away from our users; it takes energy to transmit data through the telecom’s networks, and the further the data travels, the more energy is consumed. Just like food miles, we can think of the distance from the data center to the website’s core user base as “megabyte miles”—and we want it to be as small as possible.

Using the distance itself as a benchmark, we can use website analytics to identify the country, state, or even city where our core user group is located and measure the distance from that location to the data center used by our hosting company. This will be a somewhat fuzzy metric as we don’t know the precise center of mass of our users or the exact location of a data center, but we can at least get a rough idea. 

For example, if a website is hosted in London but the primary user base is on the West Coast of the USA, then we could look up the distance from London to San Francisco, which is 5,300 miles. That’s a long way! We can see that hosting it somewhere in North America, ideally on the West Coast, would significantly reduce the distance and thus the energy used to transmit the data. In addition, locating our servers closer to our visitors helps reduce latency and delivers better user experience, so it’s a win-win.

Converting it back to carbon emissions

If we combine carbon intensity with a calculation for energy consumption, we can calculate the carbon emissions of our websites and apps. A tool my team created does this by measuring the data transfer over the wire when loading a web page, calculating the amount of electricity associated, and then converting that into a figure for CO₂ (Fig 2.4). It also factors in whether or not the web hosting is powered by renewable energy.

If you want to take it to the next level and tailor the data more accurately to the unique aspects of your project, the Energy and Emissions Worksheet accompanying this book shows you how.

With the ability to calculate carbon emissions for our projects, we could actually take a page weight budget one step further and set carbon budgets as well. CO₂ is not a metric commonly used in web projects; we’re more familiar with kilobytes and megabytes, and can fairly easily look at design options and files to assess how big they are. Translating that into carbon adds a layer of abstraction that isn’t as intuitive—but carbon budgets do focus our minds on the primary thing we’re trying to reduce, and support the core objective of sustainable web design: reducing carbon emissions.

Browser Energy

Data transfer might be the simplest and most complete analog for energy consumption in our digital projects, but by giving us one number to represent the energy used in the data center, the telecoms networks, and the end user’s devices, it can’t offer us insights into the efficiency in any specific part of the system.

One part of the system we can look at in more detail is the energy used by end users’ devices. As front-end web technologies become more advanced, the computational load is increasingly moving from the data center to users’ devices, whether they be phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, or even smart TVs. Modern web browsers allow us to implement more complex styling and animation on the fly using CSS and JavaScript. Furthermore, JavaScript libraries such as Angular and React allow us to create applications where the “thinking” work is done partly or entirely in the browser. 

All of these advances are exciting and open up new possibilities for what the web can do to serve society and create positive experiences. However, more computation in the user’s web browser means more energy used by their devices. This has implications not just environmentally, but also for user experience and inclusivity. Applications that put a heavy processing load on the user’s device can inadvertently exclude users with older, slower devices and cause batteries on phones and laptops to drain faster. Furthermore, if we build web applications that require the user to have up-to-date, powerful devices, people throw away old devices much more frequently. This isn’t just bad for the environment, but it puts a disproportionate financial burden on the poorest in society.

In part because the tools are limited, and partly because there are so many different models of devices, it’s difficult to measure website energy consumption on end users’ devices. One tool we do currently have is the Energy Impact monitor inside the developer console of the Safari browser (Fig 2.5).

You know when you load a website and your computer’s cooling fans start spinning so frantically you think it might actually take off? That’s essentially what this tool is measuring. 

It shows us the percentage of CPU used and the duration of CPU usage when loading the web page, and uses these figures to generate an energy impact rating. It doesn’t give us precise data for the amount of electricity used in kilowatts, but the information it does provide can be used to benchmark how efficiently your websites use energy and set targets for improvement.

We’ve been having conversations for thousands of years. Whether to convey information, conduct transactions, or simply to check in on one another, people have yammered away, chattering and gesticulating, through spoken conversation for countless generations. Only in the last few millennia have we begun to commit our conversations to writing, and only in the last few decades have we begun to outsource them to the computer, a machine that shows much more affinity for written correspondence than for the slangy vagaries of spoken language.

Computers have trouble because between spoken and written language, speech is more primordial. To have successful conversations with us, machines must grapple with the messiness of human speech: the disfluencies and pauses, the gestures and body language, and the variations in word choice and spoken dialect that can stymie even the most carefully crafted human-computer interaction. In the human-to-human scenario, spoken language also has the privilege of face-to-face contact, where we can readily interpret nonverbal social cues.

In contrast, written language immediately concretizes as we commit it to record and retains usages long after they become obsolete in spoken communication (the salutation “To whom it may concern,” for example), generating its own fossil record of outdated terms and phrases. Because it tends to be more consistent, polished, and formal, written text is fundamentally much easier for machines to parse and understand.

Spoken language has no such luxury. Besides the nonverbal cues that decorate conversations with emphasis and emotional context, there are also verbal cues and vocal behaviors that modulate conversation in nuanced ways: how something is said, not what. Whether rapid-fire, low-pitched, or high-decibel, whether sarcastic, stilted, or sighing, our spoken language conveys much more than the written word could ever muster. So when it comes to voice interfaces—the machines we conduct spoken conversations with—we face exciting challenges as designers and content strategists.

Voice Interactions

We interact with voice interfaces for a variety of reasons, but according to Michael McTear, Zoraida Callejas, and David Griol in The Conversational Interface, those motivations by and large mirror the reasons we initiate conversations with other people, too (). Generally, we start up a conversation because:

• we need something done (such as a transaction),
• we want to know something (information of some sort), or
• we are social beings and want someone to talk to (conversation for conversation’s sake).

These three categories—which I call transactional, informational, and prosocial—also characterize essentially every voice interaction: a single conversation from beginning to end that realizes some outcome for the user, starting with the voice interface’s first greeting and ending with the user exiting the interface. Note here that a conversation in our human sense—a chat between people that leads to some result and lasts an arbitrary length of time—could encompass multiple transactional, informational, and prosocial voice interactions in succession. In other words, a voice interaction is a conversation, but a conversation is not necessarily a single voice interaction.

Purely prosocial conversations are more gimmicky than captivating in most voice interfaces, because machines don’t yet have the capacity to really want to know how we’re doing and to do the sort of glad-handing humans crave. There’s also ongoing debate as to whether users actually prefer the sort of organic human conversation that begins with a prosocial voice interaction and shifts seamlessly into other types. In fact, in Voice User Interface Design, Michael Cohen, James Giangola, and Jennifer Balogh recommend sticking to users’ expectations by mimicking how they interact with other voice interfaces rather than trying too hard to be human—potentially alienating them in the process ().

That leaves two genres of conversations we can have with one another that a voice interface can easily have with us, too: a transactional voice interaction realizing some outcome (“buy iced tea”) and an informational voice interaction teaching us something new (“discuss a musical”).

Transactional voice interactions

Unless you’re tapping buttons on a food delivery app, you’re generally having a conversation—and therefore a voice interaction—when you order a Hawaiian pizza with extra pineapple. Even when we walk up to the counter and place an order, the conversation quickly pivots from an initial smattering of neighborly small talk to the real mission at hand: ordering a pizza (generously topped with pineapple, as it should be).

Alison: Hey, how’s it going?

Burhan: Hi, welcome to Crust Deluxe! It’s cold out there. How can I help you?

Alison: Can I get a Hawaiian pizza with extra pineapple?

Burhan: Sure, what size?

Alison: Large.

Burhan: Anything else?

Alison: No thanks, that’s it.

Burhan: Something to drink?

Alison: I’ll have a bottle of Coke.

Burhan: You got it. That’ll be $13.55 and about fifteen minutes.

Each progressive disclosure in this transactional conversation reveals more and more of the desired outcome of the transaction: a service rendered or a product delivered. Transactional conversations have certain key traits: they’re direct, to the point, and economical. They quickly dispense with pleasantries.

Informational voice interactions

Meanwhile, some conversations are primarily about obtaining information. Though Alison might visit Crust Deluxe with the sole purpose of placing an order, she might not actually want to walk out with a pizza at all. She might be just as interested in whether they serve halal or kosher dishes, gluten-free options, or something else. Here, though we again have a prosocial mini-conversation at the beginning to establish politeness, we’re after much more.

Alison: Hey, how’s it going?

Burhan: Hi, welcome to Crust Deluxe! It’s cold out there. How can I help you?

Alison: Can I ask a few questions?

Burhan: Of course! Go right ahead.

Alison: Do you have any halal options on the menu?

Burhan: Absolutely! We can make any pie halal by request. We also have lots of vegetarian, ovo-lacto, and vegan options. Are you thinking about any other dietary restrictions?

Alison: What about gluten-free pizzas?

Burhan: We can definitely do a gluten-free crust for you, no problem, for both our deep-dish and thin-crust pizzas. Anything else I can answer for you?

Alison: That’s it for now. Good to know. Thanks!

Burhan: Anytime, come back soon!

This is a very different dialogue. Here, the goal is to get a certain set of facts. Informational conversations are investigative quests for the truth—research expeditions to gather data, news, or facts. Voice interactions that are informational might be more long-winded than transactional conversations by necessity. Responses tend to be lengthier, more informative, and carefully communicated so the customer understands the key takeaways.

Voice Interfaces

At their core, voice interfaces employ speech to support users in reaching their goals. But simply because an interface has a voice component doesn’t mean that every user interaction with it is mediated through voice. Because multimodal voice interfaces can lean on visual components like screens as crutches, we’re most concerned in this book with pure voice interfaces, which depend entirely on spoken conversation, lack any visual component whatsoever, and are therefore much more nuanced and challenging to tackle.

Though voice interfaces have long been integral to the imagined future of humanity in science fiction, only recently have those lofty visions become fully realized in genuine voice interfaces.

Interactive voice response (IVR) systems

Though written conversational interfaces have been fixtures of computing for many decades, voice interfaces first emerged in the early 1990s with text-to-speech (TTS) dictation programs that recited written text aloud, as well as speech-enabled in-car systems that gave directions to a user-provided address. With the advent of interactive voice response (IVR) systems, intended as an alternative to overburdened customer service representatives, we became acquainted with the first true voice interfaces that engaged in authentic conversation.

IVR systems allowed organizations to reduce their reliance on call centers but soon became notorious for their clunkiness. Commonplace in the corporate world, these systems were primarily designed as metaphorical switchboards to guide customers to a real phone agent (“Say Reservations to book a flight or check an itinerary”); chances are you will enter a conversation with one when you call an airline or hotel conglomerate. Despite their functional issues and users’ frustration with their inability to speak to an actual human right away, IVR systems proliferated in the early 1990s across a variety of industries (, PDF).

While IVR systems are great for highly repetitive, monotonous conversations that generally don’t veer from a single format, they have a reputation for less scintillating conversation than we’re used to in real life (or even in science fiction).

Screen readers

Parallel to the evolution of IVR systems was the invention of the screen reader, a tool that transcribes visual content into synthesized speech. For Blind or visually impaired website users, it’s the predominant method of interacting with text, multimedia, or form elements. Screen readers represent perhaps the closest equivalent we have today to an out-of-the-box implementation of content delivered through voice.

Among the first screen readers known by that moniker was the Screen Reader for the BBC Micro and NEEC Portable developed by the Research Centre for the Education of the Visually Handicapped (RCEVH) at the University of Birmingham in 1986 (). That same year, Jim Thatcher created the first IBM Screen Reader for text-based computers, later recreated for computers with graphical user interfaces (GUIs) ().

With the rapid growth of the web in the 1990s, the demand for accessible tools for websites exploded. Thanks to the introduction of semantic HTML and especially ARIA roles beginning in 2008, screen readers started facilitating speedy interactions with web pages that ostensibly allow disabled users to traverse the page as an aural and temporal space rather than a visual and physical one. In other words, screen readers for the web “provide mechanisms that translate visual design constructs—proximity, proportion, etc.—into useful information,” writes Aaron Gustafson in A List Apart. “At least they do when documents are authored thoughtfully” ().

Though deeply instructive for voice interface designers, there’s one significant problem with screen readers: they’re difficult to use and unremittingly verbose. The visual structures of websites and web navigation don’t translate well to screen readers, sometimes resulting in unwieldy pronouncements that name every manipulable HTML element and announce every formatting change. For many screen reader users, working with web-based interfaces exacts a cognitive toll.

In Wired, accessibility advocate and voice engineer Chris Maury considers why the screen reader experience is ill-suited to users relying on voice:

From the beginning, I hated the way that Screen Readers work. Why are they designed the way they are? It makes no sense to present information visually and then, and only then, translate that into audio. All of the time and energy that goes into creating the perfect user experience for an app is wasted, or even worse, adversely impacting the experience for blind users. ()

In many cases, well-designed voice interfaces can speed users to their destination better than long-winded screen reader monologues. After all, visual interface users have the benefit of darting around the viewport freely to find information, ignoring areas irrelevant to them. Blind users, meanwhile, are obligated to listen to every utterance synthesized into speech and therefore prize brevity and efficiency. Disabled users who have long had no choice but to employ clunky screen readers may find that voice interfaces, particularly more modern voice assistants, offer a more streamlined experience.

Voice assistants

When we think of voice assistants (the subset of voice interfaces now commonplace in living rooms, smart homes, and offices), many of us immediately picture HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey or hear Majel Barrett’s voice as the omniscient computer in Star Trek. Voice assistants are akin to personal concierges that can answer questions, schedule appointments, conduct searches, and perform other common day-to-day tasks. And they’re rapidly gaining more attention from accessibility advocates for their assistive potential.

Before the earliest IVR systems found success in the enterprise, Apple published a demonstration video in 1987 depicting the Knowledge Navigator, a voice assistant that could transcribe spoken words and recognize human speech to a great degree of accuracy. Then, in 2001, Tim Berners-Lee and others formulated their vision for a Semantic Web “agent” that would perform typical errands like “checking calendars, making appointments, and finding locations” (, behind paywall). It wasn’t until 2011 that Apple’s Siri finally entered the picture, making voice assistants a tangible reality for consumers.

Thanks to the plethora of voice assistants available today, there is considerable variation in how programmable and customizable certain voice assistants are over others (Fig 1.1). At one extreme, everything except vendor-provided features is locked down; for example, at the time of their release, the core functionality of Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana couldn’t be extended beyond their existing capabilities. Even today, it isn’t possible to program Siri to perform arbitrary functions, because there’s no means by which developers can interact with Siri at a low level, apart from predefined categories of tasks like sending messages, hailing rideshares, making restaurant reservations, and certain others.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Home offer a core foundation on which developers can build custom voice interfaces. For this reason, programmable voice assistants that lend themselves to customization and extensibility are becoming increasingly popular for developers who feel stifled by the limitations of Siri and Cortana. Amazon offers the Alexa Skills Kit, a developer framework for building custom voice interfaces for Amazon Alexa, while Google Home offers the ability to program arbitrary Google Assistant skills. Today, users can choose from among thousands of custom-built skills within both the Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant ecosystems.

As corporations like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google continue to stake their territory, they’re also selling and open-sourcing an unprecedented array of tools and frameworks for designers and developers that aim to make building voice interfaces as easy as possible, even without code.

Often by necessity, voice assistants like Amazon Alexa tend to be monochannel—they’re tightly coupled to a device and can’t be accessed on a computer or smartphone instead. By contrast, many development platforms like Google’s Dialogflow have introduced omnichannel capabilities so users can build a single conversational interface that then manifests as a voice interface, textual chatbot, and IVR system upon deployment. I don’t prescribe any specific implementation approaches in this design-focused book, but in Chapter 4 we’ll get into some of the implications these variables might have on the way you build out your design artifacts.

Voice Content

Simply put, voice content is content delivered through voice. To preserve what makes human conversation so compelling in the first place, voice content needs to be free-flowing and organic, contextless and concise—everything written content isn’t.

Our world is replete with voice content in various forms: screen readers reciting website content, voice assistants rattling off a weather forecast, and automated phone hotline responses governed by IVR systems. In this book, we’re most concerned with content delivered auditorily—not as an option, but as a necessity.

For many of us, our first foray into informational voice interfaces will be to deliver content to users. There’s only one problem: any content we already have isn’t in any way ready for this new habitat. So how do we make the content trapped on our websites more conversational? And how do we write new copy that lends itself to voice interactions?

Lately, we’ve begun slicing and dicing our content in unprecedented ways. Websites are, in many respects, colossal vaults of what I call macrocontent: lengthy prose that can extend for infinitely scrollable miles in a browser window, like microfilm viewers of newspaper archives. Back in 2002, well before the present-day ubiquity of voice assistants, technologist Anil Dash defined microcontent as permalinked pieces of content that stay legible regardless of environment, such as email or text messages:

A day’s weather forcast [sic], the arrival and departure times for an airplane flight, an abstract from a long publication, or a single instant message can all be examples of microcontent. ()

I’d update Dash’s definition of microcontent to include all examples of bite-sized content that go well beyond written communiqués. After all, today we encounter microcontent in interfaces where a small snippet of copy is displayed alone, unmoored from the browser, like a textbot confirmation of a restaurant reservation. Microcontent offers the best opportunity to gauge how your content can be stretched to the very edges of its capabilities, informing delivery channels both established and novel.

As microcontent, voice content is unique because it’s an example of how content is experienced in time rather than in space. We can glance at a digital sign underground for an instant and know when the next train is arriving, but voice interfaces hold our attention captive for periods of time that we can’t easily escape or skip, something screen reader users are all too familiar with.

Because microcontent is fundamentally made up of isolated blobs with no relation to the channels where they’ll eventually end up, we need to ensure that our microcontent truly performs well as voice content—and that means focusing on the two most important traits of robust voice content: voice content legibility and voice content discoverability.

Fundamentally, the legibility and discoverability of our voice content both have to do with how voice content manifests in perceived time and space.

Do you remember when having a great website was enough? Now, people are getting answers from Siri, Google search snippets, and mobile apps, not just our websites. Forward-thinking organizations have adopted an omnichannel content strategy, whose mission is to reach audiences across multiple digital channels and platforms.

But how do you set up a content management system (CMS) to reach your audience now and in the future? I learned the hard way that creating a content model—a definition of content types, attributes, and relationships that let people and systems understand content—with my more familiar design-system thinking would capsize my customer’s omnichannel content strategy. You can avoid that outcome by creating content models that are semantic and that also connect related content. 

I recently had the opportunity to lead the CMS implementation for a Fortune 500 company. The client was excited by the benefits of an omnichannel content strategy, including content reuse, multichannel marketing, and robot delivery—designing content to be intelligible to bots, Google knowledge panels, snippets, and voice user interfaces. 

A content model is a critical foundation for an omnichannel content strategy, and for our content to be understood by multiple systems, the model needed semantic types—types named according to their meaning instead of their presentation. Our goal was to let authors create content and reuse it wherever it was relevant. But as the project proceeded, I realized that supporting content reuse at the scale that my customer needed required the whole team to recognize a new pattern.

Despite our best intentions, we kept drawing from what we were more familiar with: design systems. Unlike web-focused content strategies, an omnichannel content strategy can’t rely on WYSIWYG tools for design and layout. Our tendency to approach the content model with our familiar design-system thinking constantly led us to veer away from one of the primary purposes of a content model: delivering content to audiences on multiple marketing channels.

Two essential principles for an effective content model

We needed to help our designers, developers, and stakeholders understand that we were doing something very different from their prior web projects, where it was natural for everyone to think about content as visual building blocks fitting into layouts. The previous approach was not only more familiar but also more intuitive—at least at first—because it made the designs feel more tangible. We discovered two principles that helped the team understand how a content model differs from the design systems that we were used to:

1. Content models must define semantics instead of layout.
2. And content models should connect content that belongs together.

Semantic content models

A semantic content model uses type and attribute names that reflect the meaning of the content, not how it will be displayed. For example, in a nonsemantic model, teams might create types like teasers, media blocks, and cards. Although these types might make it easy to lay out content, they don’t help delivery channels understand the content’s meaning, which in turn would have opened the door to the content being presented in each marketing channel. In contrast, a semantic content model uses type names like product, service, and testimonial so that each delivery channel can understand the content and use it as it sees fit. 

When you’re creating a semantic content model, a great place to start is to look over the types and properties defined by Schema.org, a community-driven resource for type definitions that are intelligible to platforms like Google search.

A semantic content model has several benefits:

• Even if your team doesn’t care about omnichannel content, a semantic content model decouples content from its presentation so that teams can evolve the website’s design without needing to refactor its content. In this way, content can withstand disruptive website redesigns. 
• A semantic content model also provides a competitive edge. By adding structured data based on Schema.org’s types and properties, a website can provide hints to help Google understand the content, display it in search snippets or knowledge panels, and use it to answer voice-interface user questions. Potential visitors could discover your content without ever setting foot in your website.
• Beyond those practical benefits, you’ll also need a semantic content model if you want to deliver omnichannel content. To use the same content in multiple marketing channels, delivery channels need to be able to understand it. For example, if your content model were to provide a list of questions and answers, it could easily be rendered on a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page, but it could also be used in a voice interface or by a bot that answers common questions.

For example, using a semantic content model for articles, events, people, and locations lets A List Apart provide cleanly structured data for search engines so that users can read the content on the website, in Google knowledge panels, and even with hypothetical voice interfaces in the future.

Content models that connect

After struggling to describe what makes a good content model, I’ve come to realize that the best models are those that are semantic and that also connect related content components (such as a FAQ item’s question and answer pair), instead of slicing up related content across disparate content components. A good content model connects content that should remain together so that multiple delivery channels can use it without needing to first put those pieces back together.

Think about writing an article or essay. An article’s meaning and usefulness depends upon its parts being kept together. Would one of the headings or paragraphs be meaningful on their own without the context of the full article? On our project, our familiar design-system thinking often led us to want to create content models that would slice content into disparate chunks to fit the web-centric layout. This had a similar impact to an article that were to have been separated from its headline. Because we were slicing content into standalone pieces based on layout, content that belonged together became difficult to manage and nearly impossible for multiple delivery channels to understand.

To illustrate, let’s look at how connecting related content applies in a real-world scenario. The design team for our customer presented a complex layout for a software product page that included multiple tabs and sections. Our instincts were to follow suit with the content model. Shouldn’t we make it as easy and as flexible as possible to add any number of tabs in the future?

Because our design-system instincts were so familiar, it felt like we had needed a content type called “tab section” so that multiple tab sections could be added to a page. Each tab section would display various types of content. One tab might provide the software’s overview or its specifications. Another tab might provide a list of resources. 

Our inclination to break down the content model into “tab section” pieces would have led to an unnecessarily complex model and a cumbersome editing experience, and it would have also created content that couldn’t have been understood by additional delivery channels. For example, how would another system have been able to tell which “tab section” referred to a product’s specifications or its resource list—would that other system have to have resorted to counting tab sections and content blocks? This would have prevented the tabs from ever being reordered, and it would have required adding logic in every other delivery channel to interpret the design system’s layout. Furthermore, if the customer were to have no longer wanted to display this content in a tab layout, it would have been tedious to migrate to a new content model to reflect the new page redesign.

We had a breakthrough when we discovered that our customer had a specific purpose in mind for each tab: it would reveal specific information such as the software product’s overview, specifications, related resources, and pricing. Once implementation began, our inclination to focus on what’s visual and familiar had obscured the intent of the designs. With a little digging, it didn’t take long to realize that the concept of tabs wasn’t relevant to the content model. The meaning of the content that they were planning to display in the tabs was what mattered.

In fact, the customer could have decided to display this content in a different way—without tabs—somewhere else. This realization prompted us to define content types for the software product based on the meaningful attributes that the customer had wanted to render on the web. There were obvious semantic attributes like name and description as well as rich attributes like screenshots, software requirements, and feature lists. The software’s product information stayed together because it wasn’t sliced across separate components like “tab sections” that were derived from the content’s presentation. Any delivery channel—including future ones—could understand and present this content.

Conclusion

In this omnichannel marketing project, we discovered that the best way to keep our content model on track was to ensure that it was semantic (with type and attribute names that reflected the meaning of the content) and that it kept content together that belonged together (instead of fragmenting it). These two concepts curtailed our temptation to shape the content model based on the design. So if you’re working on a content model to support an omnichannel content strategy—or even if you just want to make sure that Google and other interfaces understand your content—remember:

• A design system isn’t a content model. Team members may be tempted to conflate them and to make your content model mirror your design system, so you should protect the semantic value and contextual structure of the content strategy during the entire implementation process. This will let every delivery channel consume the content without needing a magic decoder ring.
• If your team is struggling to make this transition, you can still reap some of the benefits by using Schema.org–based structured data in your website. Even if additional delivery channels aren’t on the immediate horizon, the benefit to search engine optimization is a compelling reason on its own.
• Additionally, remind the team that decoupling the content model from the design will let them update the designs more easily because they won’t be held back by the cost of content migrations. They’ll be able to create new designs without the obstacle of compatibility between the design and the content, and ​they’ll be ready for the next big thing. 

By rigorously advocating for these principles, you’ll help your team treat content the way that it deserves—as the most critical asset in your user experience and the best way to connect with your audience.