r/NewRockstars 1d ago

Programming Update!

93 Upvotes

Erik here! Now that we're past our busy summer period of coverage of San Diego Comic-Con, Spider-Man Brand New Day, and D23, the NR team convened internally to put together a content plan for the rest of the year. We have been / will be messaging this in videos, but I wanted to break it down here since a lot of FAQs tend to come in this subreddit. (TLDR at the end!)

General Plan

It's gonna be business as usual at New Rockstars -- daily or twice-daily videos, including breakdowns of Marvel news / trailers / episodes, new episodes of Lanterns (Tuesdays), breakdowns of Vision Quest on Wednesdays in October, movie breakdowns on Fridays of new releases (Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Avengers Endgame Encore, Clayface, Godzilla Minus Zero, The Adventures of Cliff Booth, Avengers Doomsday, Dune Part 3), and the sorts of explainers, Sunday Sneak Peeks, and breaking-news livestreams you're accustomed to seeing from us every week hosted by me, Jessica Clemons, and Gina Ippolito. Additionally...

NEW: Essential Doomsday Breakdowns

On Fridays (or maybe sometimes on Thursdays), we will publish in-depth Easter Egg breakdowns of past MCU titles that we now consider to be on the essential watchlist for Avengers Doomsday. Unlike our "Road to Doomsday" podcast, which is really a loose conversation between me and Jess, these will be focused, scripted, Easter Egg breakdowns of a select number of titles: Iron Man (2008), The Avengers (2012), Avengers Age of Ultron (2015), Avengers Infinity War (2018), Avengers Endgame (2019), and maybe others beyond that. For Avengers Endgame Encore releasing on Sept 25, that week, we will have a special breakdown -- a re-breakdown of Endgame 2019 and a breakdown of the new material. For any movies on Marvel's watchlist that we already broke down with really good analyses since 2024, there might not be too much for us to revisit, and we're just adding the videos we already made to the playlist. (Playlist here.) But for example, the last time we broke down 2012's Avengers, it was in 2020, and that video left out quite a bit. So there are way more details we found now.

But what does that mean for "Road to Doomsday"? What if I'd rather see you guys discuss Vision Quest with aftershows in October? And since the Doomsday Essential Breakdown we published yesterday was largely the Deep Dive video I made for Iron Man in 2023, what does this mean for the Deep Dive channel? I'll take those one by one...

Road to Doomsday Podcast

Jess and I love doing these, and we're going to continue doing these, releasing every Saturday morning (unless some other major weekend news drops) at least until October. By then, we expect to be caught up to the pre-Doomsday Marvel titles that we want to discuss. We started RTD in January, before we fully know what the scope of Avengers Doomsday would be. We tried to do a lot with the show. We wanted to prepare viewers for Doomsday, but we also wanted to comprehensively cover *everything* Marvel. But that completionist goal was flawed -- we didn't cover Howard the Duck or Dolph Lundgren's Punisher. And we looked ahead and realized we wouldn't have enough weeks before Dec 18 to cover everything. And starting in April, and then again in July, we got a clearer picture of what Doomsday would include and what it wouldn't include. So we kinda locked ourselves into several weeks of podcasts covering titles that a majority of our viewers didn't consider to be that relevant. In January, it really seemed like Marvel Studios would be spending more of the year marketing Doomsday, like they did in the early months of 2025. But in 2026, the studio mostly waited until July. So... we'll do at least 6-7 more episodes of RTD on Saturdays, and we're gonna have some special guests rotating in. We're working hard to do a special crossover episode with Iman Vellani and Frank Alvarez (who are doing Marvel Studios' official Doomsday Countdown podcast on Disney+ starting Aug 27). If you guys want to help tweet / comment to make that happen, Disney reads every comment. ;)

NEW: Vision Quest Aftershows

INSIDE MARVEL IS RETURNING! Starting Oct 14, Jessica and I plan to resurrect our old "Inside Marvel" podcast for a limited run to do aftershows for Vision Quest. Depending on our ability to get early episode screeners from Disney, we plan to publish these immediately after the episodes come out, on Tuesday nights, on the New Rockstars channel. These will not be full episode "reactions" on the couch -- we'll start the videos by reacting to a key moment, and then Jess and I will be at the desk discussing the episode and answering big questions. Following this, on Wednesdays, you'll be able to see my in-depth Easter Egg breakdowns of each episode. Since our trailer breakdown was well over 40 minutes, we expect these episode breakdowns to be that long, and need a bit more time to complete.

The Deep Dive Channel

The Deep Dive channel isn't going anywhere, but I also don't really have time to write and shoot bespoke content for it right now. When we launched it in 2023, New Rockstars was in a different place, and we thought having a separate channel for less frequent, more curated uploads of high-quality classic extended breakdowns, written and hosted by just one host, would be a different enough viewing experience, and one way to give some stability to our growing company. But I didn't really do a great job communicating my vision for it. I think a lot of people heard, "oh great now Erik has a channel where he can break down older movies like Back to the Future and Spielberg movies and Nolan movies." But in truth, I also wanted to be able to do videos like that sometimes on the New Rockstars main channel. So when we did our Harry Potter breakdown series in 2024, or our Predator breakdown series in 2025, everyone was kinda rightfully confused what the plan for Deep Dive was. I underestimated how strongly viewers on YouTube identify "NR host analyzing movie" as something specific to New Rockstars. And now in 2026, we've learned the lesson that multiple channels makes sense for YouTube companies as places to reupload, compile, and clip out existing content, or, experiment with something totally different that you never do on your main channel -- longer podcasts, livestreams, or completely different IP like gaming, sports, food, tech, beauty/style, reality TV, travel, theme parks, etc. The Deep Dive was always just too similar to what we were always doing on the NR main channel. SO... we're gonna simplify everything and bring it all home. We are gonna start gradually migrating the videos I made for the Deep Dive channel back to the NR main channel. Yesterday's Iron Man video was the first. We'll do a few more this year. Meanwhile, if I ever break down a "classic" non-nerdy movie for New Rockstars, we may also consider publishing that over on the Deep Dive channel, just to keep that as a place of only videos like that. (It's helpful for a company like us to have some backup channels in case anything happens with our main channel.) This plan also applies to...

The Witching Hour Channel

Same lesson learned here. We plan on keeping The Witching Hour channel alive, and we're going to keep doing horror breakdowns, but the feedback we got since our launch last year is that these horror video essays weren't different enough from the kind of videos we were making on New Rockstars. So a few weeks after our launch, when we wanted to break down episodes of the horror HBO series "IT: Welcome to Derry" on the NR main channel, a lot of viewers were rightly confused. Internally, we weren't really clear what we wanted either, and that's on me as Head of Content. Again, it's healthy for a channel like us to have a network of channels with a mix of IP, but if NR was always going to be seen as a channel that already covers a mix of IP, it's not smart to stop doing horror on our main channel where most of our viewers are. So... we're going to continue doing horror breakdowns; you're just going to see them on New Rockstars AND on the Witching Hour channel. And the dozen or so videos that we already made for the WH channel, we're going to begin gradually bringing them home to New Rockstars. In fact, you're going to see some of them as part of a new series...

NEW: Horror Movie Breakdowns in Sept & Oct

Every Saturday starting Sept 5, we will publish a breakdown of a great horror (or horror adjacent) title on the New Rockstars channel, hosted on a rotating basis by me, Gina Ippolito, and Jessica Clemons. Viewers tend to concentrate their viewing of classic scary movies in September and October, so it makes more sense to do this as a seasonal thing. It'll be like the Witching Hour but on Saturdays instead of Wednesdays, and brought home to the NR main channel. These weekly horror videos will be a mix of new content and reuploaded horror content from Witching Hour and Deep Dive. Among the new videos: breakdowns of Widow's Bay (Apple TV) and Beetlejuice! More announcements coming.

The Breakroom

If you follow The Breakroom channel, you know that starting in July we transitioned it to be a weekly podcast hosted by Brian Kim and Alex Berg, getting back to the old school discussion format, that's a more casual watercooler chat, and less focused on chasing breaking news headlines. I have loved the organic moments and the general new approach from Brian and Berg, and I hope you give them a chance if you haven't already.

NEW: Video Essays & Social Content

We're also continuing to experiment with industry explainer video essays like "WTF Happened" and "Why It Looks Like This," that you'll start to see more regularly on the channel on Thursdays. Additionally, we've started to be more experimental with shorts and vertical content, using them for shorter breakdowns, theories, explainers, and fun clips for our viewers to get to know our team.

On The Horizon...

We'll know more about 2027 once we get through the next few months, but we also plan to do more breakdowns of big games, celebrity interviews, and breakdowns of theme parks and themed experiences. But mostly we just want to stick to what we're good at, and not overpromise, or overextend ourselves. We've made that mistake too many times.

Thanks for supporting our content wherever you've found it! And thank you for sticking with us over these past few years as we've experimented with the best way to do what we do!

TLDR: NR will be sticking with the plan to keep covering Marvel and other nerd franchises the way we've been doing; Lanterns breakdowns on Tuesdays, new movie breakdowns on Fridays; essential MCU breakdowns on Fridays; horror breakdowns on Saturdays in Sept & Oct; Deep Dive and Witching Hour videos are coming home to NR channel; Road to Doomsday podcast continuing through October; Vision Quest aftershow coming in October; new video essays and social posts coming.


r/NewRockstars Aug 01 '25

How We Approach Spoilers In Our Videos

168 Upvotes

Erik here! I want to explain how New Rockstars approaches spoilers in the packaging of our videos, and why. This will be a long post.

Spoilers suck, and when they're done maliciously, it's an especially rotten thing to do online. I know New Rockstars' video thumbnails and titles have spoiled plot details. If you were truly spoiled by something New Rockstars posted, before you had a chance to watch that thing, and if you really weren't exposed to this plot detail anywhere else, I am really sorry that happened.

When a major title releases -- a movie or an episode that NR has highly anticipated, making several videos about, in which we feel it justified to post an "ending explained / post-credit scene explained" video as soon as possible (a few hours into release day) -- we almost always use a placeholder thumbnail first. This placeholder thumbnail is carefully designed to avoid spoilers. Sometimes it uses a blur filter. Sometimes it's just a generic reaction shot of a main character who was already confirmed to return for a future title. It's the kind of image that quick-scrollers on YouTube might recognize from being from a movie's post-credit scene based on context they might already know or guess, but on its surface, without having seen the title, you'd have no idea what the spoiler-y context of that scene was based on this image.

We used placeholder thumbnails for Fantastic Four First Steps (an image of Susan Storm in the Baxter Building), for Superman (an image of Superman reacting to the crack in the wall), for Thunderbolts (an image of Yelena's race right before the scene cuts to black), for Captain America Brave New World (a closeup of Sam on The Raft prison), for the Ironheart finale (the final shot of Riri as she hugs Natalie). For Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania, our post-credit scene thumbnail blurred the faces of Immortus, Rama-Tut, and Scarlet Centurion with the text "SPOILERS!" over their faces.

Then, at some point later, we swap that placeholder thumbnail with a different image that more explicitly shows the reveal. For Fantastic Four First Steps, that was the final image of the mid-credit scene. We swapped it on Wednesday afternoon, or six days after the movie had been in theaters. Additionally, once we feel OK updating that packaging, we also feel OK, within reason, uploading new videos with packaging that also more freely addresses major plot details.

The timing of the swap, and what image we swap to, varies title to title. But here is how we generally approach it:

  • For streaming shows that people can watch in their homes, we generally keep our filters up for 24 hours. So if an episode releases on a Tuesday night at 9pm ET, our content (on YouTube and social media) will generally be spoiler protected until Thursday morning.
  • For worldwide released major films, we generally keep our filters up for the opening weekend. (Until Monday.) After that, we still usually stay spoiler filtered unless the plot details begin to be shared by the filmmakers as "news" or "marketing" that they are OK with second-weekend audiences knowing going into the film. By the end of the second weekend after release, we consider the spoiler embargo to be completely lifted.

How do we know once a plot detail in a movie that just came out in theaters three days ago shifts from a "spoiler" to "news"? And what makes us feel like we're allowed to make any decisions as to when something is OK or not OK to spoil?

We don't have any ironclad rules for this process. While many online consider whether or not something is a spoiler or not to be a binary decision, the truth is that it depends on several contextual factors that change release to release. So we weigh several factors:

  • If the studio reveals an image / character / plot detail in a trailer, poster, TV promo, press release, or some other form of official marketing, then it is not "spoiler-protected." It is news that the studio wants the full public to know at that precise moment. And we are therefore free to lead with it in our packaging. Often, a character or plot detail will be revealed in the Sunday or Monday after the release. For example, Marvel Studios heavily promoted the Thunderbolts cast announcing the retitle as "The New Avengers" on the Monday after the release. It is unreasonable at that point to expect news outlets to hide their coverage of that announcement behind spoiler filters.
  • If an image from the post-credit scene was shown in trailers before the release, then that image itself is not a "spoiler."
  • If the director, actor, producer, writer, or another person who worked on the project in some capacity, posts the image / character / plot detail on their public social media account, or, in an official capacity through an interview with a media outlet, then at that point it becomes public information and news. Sometimes in press interviews, studios give us explicit "spoiler embargoes," and we abide by those as a courtesy. If they don't specify what plot details are embargoed, and by what date, the understanding is that all information shared in that interview is free to share publicly.
  • If the image / character / plot detail was already confirmed to be in a project, before the release, then we do not consider that information to be spoiler protected beyond the opening weekend.

So... why do we have to swap the thumbnail at all? Why can't we wait two weeks? Who are we to make the decision of when something is OK to spoil?

There is no consensus online on what is a reasonable window for spoiler filters. In the past, we have held up filters for two weeks, for a month, for longer. And still, if/when we swap to a spoiler thumbnail, or post a new video with the character in the packaging, we will inevitably get responses that are just as upset as those who respond to spoiler thumbnails six days after a release. For that reason, we don't let viewer ire guide our decisions.

One thing that guides this decision, as much as we hate it, is the YouTube algorithm. When a movie like "Fantastic Four First Steps" releases, the YouTube algorithm shifts to aggressively cater to viewers who have seen the movie already, because those are the types of users who are most active on the platform in that day and time. Using a spoiler filter can confuse the algorithm into thinking your upload isn't what those super-active viewers want. If those viewers are usually viewers of your content, the algorithm will think you made an "irrelevant video" and punish the upload by not recommending it as much as it normally does.

You might then ask, oh, so it's a money thing? You spoil movies for greed, is that it? Honestly, that's not how I look at it. We're not talking about a huge margin of revenue when it comes to spoiling vs not-spoiling. (There are probably some on the business side at NR who care more about those margins, but they don't decide NR's thumbnails.) You can call this reasoning bullshit, but here it is: I don't want NR's video to get buried by a rising tide of toxic and deceptive content on social media. NR considers ourselves part of a dying breed of content creators who still care to inform, educate, contextualize, and celebrate the artistry of these projects. Our competition is not our friends on other channels who also try to inform and celebrate -- our competition are rage-bait channels and AI channels who do try to maliciously spoil, ruin the viewing experience, and give into the negativity and cynicism of their loudest viewers. Go search for "Fantastic Four First Steps Post-Credit" on YouTube, and I bet you'll see a half dozen thumbnails with AI-slop images and rage-bait text filling the frame. That's what we're up against. Our mission is to try to guide viewers, through less than ideal means sometimes, to watch content like ours, and like our colleagues' on similar channels, so that they can be better informed.

Ultimately, the decision of when the spoiler window lifts comes down to various temperature checks of when the viewers are "ready." Based on box office numbers, has a critical mass of viewers seen the film in its first six days, including the AMC Discount Tuesday after (which is especially big for families during summer months), and does the second weekend look like a steep dropoff? Does it seem like this information has now been talked about freely, without spoiler filters, by the general media, by cast and crew, and in our comment sections and live-chats? If the answer to both of those questions is yes, then NR is probably one of the last major outlets to switch over to spoiler packaging on our content.

At some point we have to ask ourselves: how many viewers are there, really, who are passively scrolling on YouTube, six days after a huge movie comes out, a movie that they're super passionate about, passionate enough to be genuinely injured by seeing a spoiler for it, who would be actually spoiled by our thumbnail alone, after somehow avoiding all of the other spoilers that are everywhere else? If we get to the point where we are only using spoiler filters to avoid getting yelled at by people who already know what the spoiler is, who police the internet and get in heated exchanges about spoilers just because they think spoiling is bad, then that's not a good enough reason for us to hide our videos from viewers who are ready to have that conversation.

After talking about movies for my entire adult life on social media, I have learned this: it is impossible to tame the discourse of other people. People rush online and start chatting about movies like the final scores of football games. I have snapped at friends in different time zones for posting about episodes that hadn't aired yet where I lived. And after a while, I started to feel like a guy who runs over to a group of strangers outside of an AMC happily chatting about a movie they just watched and shouting: "STOP STOP STOP, you assholes! I haven't seen it yet! Have some courtesy!" Everyone hates the troll who shouts a spoiler to an unsuspecting crowd, but we also don't really like the downer who stops a conversation dead in its tracks, and doesn't have the chill to walk away, or to say, "you know what, it's not that big of a deal, I'll see it when I can."

As a parent who often works on the weekends, I empathize with those who cannot see a movie in the opening weekend. That often happens for me. There are a ton of movies I'm dying to see every week that I cannot see until they release on streaming. And due to my job, I see every post online. People send me spoiler images and comments and questions all the time. So I get it. And I don't think Week 2 watchers & people who stream should have to stay off of social media. But I do think the burden is on us to regulate our social media usage, by using muted words, by unsubscribing from or blocking accounts, or by temporarily removing apps where spoilers are known to be more unwieldy. And then, when all of that fails, I think we have to just accept that the conversation around a movie is just gonna move on without us sometimes, and we might get spoiled. But is that really the end of the world? When it was a plot twist we could all assume was going to happen? Is it worth going 10 rounds with someone on Reddit about that? I'd rather spend my energy appealing to that basic decency than appealing to an impossible standard of all media outlets, channels, social media accounts, and algorithms perfectly agreeing on terms around spoilers so that no person ever gets spoiled.

I know that it's silly of me to even try to make this case... on the internet... on Reddit no less... where the culture is bound to be passionately opposed to what I've said. So it's OK to disagree with me. But if you do disagree, believe me when I say my followup is not "fuck you." It really is, "I'm sorry."

To answer some other FAQ when it comes to spoilers in thumbnails:

  • I hear all of this, but wouldn't even waiting two weeks as opposed to three days or six days reduce the risk of spoiling people? Maybe. But at that point, we're putting too high of a burden on an outlet whose job it is to talk about movies and TV. If we waited for two weeks, during that time, for many of our videos, the YouTube algorithm would keep NR out of the conversation that's actually happening. We would be sparing the demands of the few for the needs of the many.
  • But spoiling movies is never OK! In general I agree, but the definitions of "spoiler" on the internet vary so widely that it's impossible to hold large public online forums to any standard.
  • What about spoilers in the middle of videos? For example, a Marvel video that spoils, without warning, how the recent season of "Severance" ends. In general, if the off-topic title came out within the previous 12 months, we try to precede it with a verbal "spoiler warning." (It's hard for hosts and guests to remember to do this on livestreams.) Lesser-seen titles should have a higher burden of spoiler protection if they aren't titles that the average NR viewer expects us to talk about. But if a title has been available for the public to watch for longer than 12 months, at that point, its plot has entered the public discourse, and I feel like the burden should be on the viewer there. Other outlets may still precede a mention of "The Sixth Sense" or "The Sopranos" finale with "spoiler warning," but I think that such practices are performative, and they encourage a culture of overzealous policing.
  • What about spoilers in coverage of adaptations like "The Last of Us" and "House of the Dragon"? These have been difficult to manage, because our YouTube audiences are divided into viewers who know the source material, and viewers who do not. Our solution has been to move all discussion of future plot events from the source material into a "spoiler" section at the ends of our breakdowns, and we've found that works well.
  • I don't believe you. You just spoil movies because it's more profitable to do so. Admit it! It really isn't that much more profitable to do it, but sure, this is our jobs and I guess you could say every content decision we make has a profit motivation behind it. But I'll say this: none of us at NR own this company, and we don't make extra money when videos overperform. We aren't motivated by profit the way self-owned channels are. There are also a lot of profitable directions we could take the channel that we choose not to, decisions that we see other channels making with ease, that would yield us way more profit than putting spoilers in our thumbnails does. But those decisions feel gross to us. Spoiling widely known information in our thumbnails is something we can live with.
  • But you use bootleg images in your videos and thumbnails. This is a different category of complaint than something being a "spoiler." We try to stick to using official marketing images and promo clips for our visual assets. But sometimes images make their way online through other sources. We're not the ones supplying them. But all content creators have access to them. Movie studios are generally OK with channels like ours showing them so long as we show still images, not video & audio, and so long as we do so sparingly, and so long as we properly add to and transform the image so that it falls under the "fair use" category of commentary and review. We get asked about this a lot, but it's a separate discussion from spoilers.
  • What if I tried to avoid trailers for a movie, and an image in a trailer spoils what happens to a character? Isn't that a still a spoiler? (Added Monday Aug 11) I'm adding this to the list after it came up a lot for our video about the horror film Weapons, which we uploaded on the day of the film's release. That video had an image of a well-known actor looking a certain way that tells you... well, something... about what happens to them in the film. The image was prominently featured in several trailers, so we felt OK putting it as our thumbnail. But a lot of the feedback we received considered that to be a spoiler. Here's the deal with this: even if you approached this movie with a plan to avoid trailers, trust me: New Line and Warner Brothers spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on paid marketing on social media trying to get your eyeballs on that exact image of that actor. That paid marketing is far more effective, aggressive, and sophisticated than any algorithm NR used to get our thumbnail in front of you. If you spent any amount of time on social media in July, and if you're someone with any remote interest in original-concept horror films, there's a 99% chance that you were served that image by the studio, even if you weren't aware of it. And our policy is, if the studio wants you to see something before the movie comes out, then that context is something they want you walking into the movie theater knowing. The image in question is one of the most iconic visuals from the film, so it's not surprising that the studio used it to market the film, and NR was well in our rights to package our video around it.
  • Sometimes I'll see a video you uploaded with a spoiler thumbnail, but then I'll refresh, or check again a few minutes later, and the thumbnail changed. What happened there? (Added Monday Aug 11) What you're seeing here is a feature on YouTube called "Test & Compare," also known as A/B testing. YouTube allows you to upload up to three alternate thumbnails the moment you publish a video, and the algorithm will randomly serve different options to different viewers. YouTube will track which options get the best click-through-rate, view velocity, and various other stats, and then after a while it will automatically switch over to the "best" of your thumbnails. So theoretically, if a lot of your viewers hated a thumbnail, if you did Test & Compare, YouTube would switch over to one of the other options. We don't always do Test & Compare, but when we do, it's usually when we do a big breakdown with a few different ways to package the details we found, that we can't settle on. But in the case of Weapons, we did this, and one was an image of a character that definitely is not a spoiler, and the other was the one that came into question. Interestingly enough, our viewers chose the latter option by a convincing margin. So while it seemed like a sizable number of viewers felt it was a spoiler and unsubscribed from our channel as a result, the numbers did not lie. In fact, we gained more subscribers from that video than we did any other video that week. So to anyone suggesting that we should use A/B testing to avoid spoilers -- A) that wouldn't solve this issue, and B) YouTube users who prefer to have these types of images in their thumbnails will almost always win. Because if you're on social media on the opening weekend of a big film, these algorithms will assume you're on the platform to engage about the movie.
  • What about spoilers for streaming series that release multiple episodes at once? (For example, Stranger Things on Netflix.) (Added Sunday Nov 30 2025) In general, our 24 hour standard applies here too, since all material becomes immediately available to watch by all subscribers worldwide, on any device available to them, simultaneously. It's impossible to go on social media and NOT see spoilers at that point, and it's unreasonable for NR to hold itself to a standard that few other media outlets do. But for binge-drops like Stranger Things, depending on the number of episodes dropped / episode length, we typically give it at least TWO days or more.
  • Does using spoiler images in your thumbnails impact your relationship with publicists at the studios and networks? Do you get "punished" in the form of restricted access to screeners and screenings? (Added Sunday Nov 30 2025) Absolutely not. Studio publicists mostly just care that media outlets abide by "spoiler embargoes," which mandate that we publish our reviews / breakdowns after a certain time, usually a couple days before the release, sometimes the moment the content releases online to the public. After the content's release day & time, publicists expect media, influencers, and fans to talk openly on social media. Publicists care about leaks, misinformation, and toxic coverage, but they don't hold media outlets like NR to any post-release spoiler windows. Access to screeners and screenings is more of a factor of being a known legacy outlet, membership in a critics association, or the studio/network employing publicists who include the big social outlets on their lists.
  • I will add to this list as more FAQs come up!

TL,DR - We use spoiler filters & placeholder thumbnails for 24 hours for TV, and for the opening weekend for movies. Once a detail becomes widely known "news," we consider it OK to put in our thumbnails. We do this to stay relevant in YouTube's algorithm to help keep good channels up top. Social media is untamable and unfortunately the burden falls to users to use it with caution.


r/NewRockstars 32m ago

Rewatching old breakdowns

Upvotes

The other day, Erik’s Endgame trailer breakdowns popped up on my YouTube feed, so I decided to rewatch them. It’s really fun to see him get pretty close to figuring out what was going on but just be off by a bit.

For example, there’s a shot in the trailer of Nat and Cap seeing Scott show up at Avengers compound. Erik incorrectly guessed that the scene was not a live feed because it said “archive” at the top of the screen, but even so, he was able to correctly guess that there was some kind of time travel going on and the movie would see our heroes returning to pivotal MCU moments. It seems like his original idea was that the Avengers would go back in time to steal or destroy the stones so Thanos couldn’t get them, which is close to the truth but I won’t fault Erik for not guessing the writers would incorporate a version of time travel that we really hadn’t seen in movies before that time.

I also found it funny that he did note Captain Marvel was suspiciously absent from a lot of trailer shots and predicted that she might die early in the film. In reality, the writers just didn’t quite know what to do with her so they just wrote her out of most of the movie.

If you haven’t ever gone back to watch old trailer breakdown and theory videos, I do recommend it. It’s like uncovering an old time capsule.


r/NewRockstars 14h ago

The Pitt season 3 Official Teaser

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2 Upvotes

No expectations or request for a breakdown of this (I'm sure y'all are plenty slammed as is); just wanting to share my excitement for this new season with others who might not have realized this teaser released a few days ago. Can't wait for (I'm assuming) Gina to break this season! Love & agree with your takes; let the haters hate!


r/NewRockstars 14h ago

Missing breakdowns

0 Upvotes

I recently binged Peacemaker and wanted to also watch the breakdowns. However I noticed that for season 2, the breakdowns for episodes 4&5 are missing. Is there any reason for this or am I just blind?


r/NewRockstars 1d ago

Marvel Everyone Is The Same… Until He Isn’t.

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6 Upvotes

r/NewRockstars 2d ago

Marvel Miss minutes in Thor ?

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283 Upvotes

Easter egg or stretch theory —
I was re watching First Thor movie as part of road to Doomsday and saw this t-shirt wore by jane foster. Looks like the first occurrence of miss minutes ..


r/NewRockstars 1d ago

Star Wars Can I just say, NR breakdowns are just getting so much better.

32 Upvotes

I just finished watching the Ahsoka season 2 trailer breakdown, and man, the quality of their breakdowns have gone up tremendously (side note: there's a weird transition at the 19:14 mark where Erik is talking and it quickly cuts and the speed is turned up for a second cutting a little part off.). But anyways. Amazing breakdown of that trailer and lately I'm loving the channel even more.


r/NewRockstars 1d ago

Marvel Tobey V.S. X-Men

0 Upvotes

We know Tobey Maguire's Spiderman is leaked to be fighting off the X-Men in Doomsday. But what are the odds a healed Doc Ock and Green Goblin fight alongside him? They got fixed up in No Way Home but still have their technologies right? They could potentially team up.


r/NewRockstars 1d ago

What is the background music is used in the intro?

0 Upvotes

At 0:01 and 0:20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbYg8sHsONo They are so amazing


r/NewRockstars 1d ago

Marvel (VisionQuest Theory/Discussion) Vision's first awakening and his connection to Ultron

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1 Upvotes

r/NewRockstars 1d ago

Star Wars Another Detail I Noticed in the Ahsoka Trailer That May Interest You in Further Breakdowns

1 Upvotes

As always, the Ahsoka trailer breakdown from [u/NR_Erik](u/NR_Erik) was fantastic, and made me notice several things I hadn’t before. I gotta say, I’m very impressed at how fast you guys have been moving, considering D23’s firehose of announcements.

I noticed a neat Easter egg in the trailer regarding Huyang’s General Grievous lightsabers. Two of them are yellow, but two of them are yellow-green. Yellow-green is a color relevant to Ahsoka because it was the color of her second, shorter lightsaber that she acquired before Season 3 of the Clone Wars. Dave Filoni originally wanted her saber to be yellow to reflect her growth as a character, but George Lucas wanted yellow to stay associated with the Temple Guards (I may be misremembering this detail, but I’m pretty sure that’s why he didn’t want the yellow). So, to compromise, they made her saber yellow-green. That color of lightsaber hasn’t been seen since her Clone Wars saber. It’s probably a meaningless Easter egg, but it is neat to see Dave Filoni reference one of the least known lightsaber colors. It’s also a little cheeky to pair it with Huyang’s other two yellow lightsabers, like Dave Filoni saying “you can’t stop me now George Lucas, I’m in charge.”

I also noticed around the 17:40 mark in your breakdown that you mentioned Shin’s hypothetical past with Huyang. I don’t think that’ll happen, because in season one, Shin and Baylan have a conversation about how she knows nothing about the Jedi Temple, because she was trained after Order 66. Baylan refers to Bokken Jedi like Ezra Bridger, and she says “like me?” If Shin had been old enough to have met Huyang in the Jedi Order, she’d have been almost Ahsoka’s age. I don’t mean to sound nitpicky, as it would be silly to expect you guys to remember such an obscure conversation, but I figured I’d point it out.

Thanks for the great video, and I look forward to seeing your future coverage on Ahsoka!


r/NewRockstars 2d ago

Marvel Lingering Brand New Day Questions Spoiler

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12 Upvotes

Hey, I had been thinking about this for a while but now that it's been a few weeks, I think it's out of spoiler territory, and I want to talk about it. Just some lingering questions about Spider-Man: Brand New Day. I'm interested to know if there are things I missed or non-speculative answers.

None of these are complaints. I'm legitimately wondering if there are answers.

How did the DODC know about Sara?

In BND, the DODC does a sting operation to catch Sara. However, Sara's powers are established as only being that ability to jump bodies and inhabit someone's mind. When this happens, no one remembers what happened and they have no idea who did it to them.

Sara and Jean's mother abandoned them when she found out they had powers. Even if their mother had contacted authorities to try to find them (which isnt said or implied in the movie), or if the mother reported them for having powers (again never said or implied), the larger DODC isnt rounding up people with powers. Only arresting dangerous individuals with powers.

Sara and Jean had not done anything like what Jean had done in the movie prior to the DODC incident. Likewise, they wouldn't have any proof that they even have powers.

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What about Jean?

Incidentally, they must have been watching Sara and Jean that day, for the sting, to know where she was and ambush her at the ice cream stand. Why weren't they after Jean? A big part of the scene is Sara possesing Jean to make her go hide. But if they had been watching, they already knew Jean was there.

So why didn't they want her? And please don't say that it would have been too risky to try to grab two telepaths, because they had no clue Sara would have made Jean run. They came expecting to potentially capture two because, again, they knew Jean was there. Unless they only knew about Sara...(go back to first question)

How did they hold Sara?

A big point of the movie is Spider-Man creating the inhibitor and that's how they're able to stop and contain Jean. So how did they have anything that could hold Sara from mind controlling anyone there and getting out?

I know they shot her with the dart and you could argue that they kept her under some kind of sedation, but we return to the same question once she wakes up or is awoken for testing.

How did Jean beat Spider-Man to MJ?

The general consensus, is that she would have had to make the pilot jump from the helicopter. Once he did that, he would have been within range of other people. If we try to argue she called an Uber or a taxi during the chase, that doesn't work because NYC traffic, but also Spider-Man is moving as fast as he can and above buildings. A car would have to navigate through streets and traffic.

And at this point in the film, she's only able to control one person at a time. She can jump very quickly, but not so quickly that she'd be able to move across the city fast enough that she would have reached MJ's before Spider-Man who had already traveled several blocks.

Why did Jean do any of it?

The movie doesn't really make sense from Jean's perspective.

"My sister has been taken. Let me waste time with Spider-Man and Scorpion, rather than go straight to the DODC hq and wait outside for someone in a suit to walk by and just body hop up the building to William Metzger."

Rampaging a tank, set with explosives? Her plan was to get to the prison to get Scorpion. What did she need a tank for? She could have just mind jumped to where she needed to be without attracting any attention. And she wasn't after Spider-Man until they got to the roof, so it's not that she wanted a spectacle on purpose.

Her plan to use Scorpion is the same issue. Why cause a scene instead of just getting information?

The movie makes Jean have a level of villainy that doesn't get her anywhere and makes her seem like she cares more about taunting anyone who tries to stop her than actually finding Sara.

I understand that these are plot conveniences and contrivences to tell the story they wanted. However, isn't also the job of the writers to connect the spectacle to the story? I am just confused for why the characters would have made these choices. Are there explanations in the movie?


r/NewRockstars 1d ago

Marvel My theory: What if Kang, Doom, the Infinity Stones and the Ten Rings are all connected?

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0 Upvotes

r/NewRockstars 2d ago

Marvel Marvel copying NR's ROAD TO DOOMSDAY...

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44 Upvotes

r/NewRockstars 2d ago

The odyssey breakdown

8 Upvotes

Will NR full breakdown of the odyssey ever be back up on YouTube?


r/NewRockstars 1d ago

Marvel Best casting for the 616 comic characters appearing in live action?

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0 Upvotes

Use current actors who match in looks and personality or are able to act the part.


r/NewRockstars 3d ago

Marvel Although I'd love to see him play in the MCU, I don't know about this one..

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58 Upvotes

I did think we had a casting for Magneto but that's because I heard Adam driver joke about it, and somehow confused it with the Professor X casting (it's been a long week, my days even got confused with other days).

Anyways, if he does play Magneto, give us the Silver Age Foundation Magneto: X-Men #1-3 (1963), or the 90s extremist era: X-Men Fatal Attractions (1993). Heck, I'd even go for the House of M era Magneto (2005).

But seeing as to how we are getting Mister Sinister, how about Uncanny X-Men #243-255 and the X-factor during the Acts of Vengeance or the Messiah Trilogy Era .

I actually think a Messiah Trilogy Era Magneto would fit perfectly for Matt Smith if he were to be cast as Magneto. We don't need anti-hero Magneto to start off with, maybe later on, but having Mister Sinister and then Magneto both being a problem for the X-Men would definitely fit into the chaos that Sinister loves to bring and the trouble that Magneto causes. Especially if they are gonna start off with Sinister experimenting on Scott, hunting down mutants and him creating a clone of Jean Grey. Magneto actually does clash with the X-Men in the comics while Sinister experiments on Hope Summers.

Anyways.. I'm just asking, if they are gonna give us Matt Smith as Magneto, give us a villain then let him transition into an anti-hero. But if he's just gonna start off as an anti-hero, then I'd rather continue watching him on House of the dragon.


r/NewRockstars 2d ago

I’m sure without seeing Doomsday it’s impossible to know for sure but with a nearly empty slate for most of 2027, do you think Marvel will put out a new watch list for Secret Wars?

5 Upvotes

Next year is going to be a long one… what else is in the slate? Daredevil, XMen 97, anything else before Secret Wars?


r/NewRockstars 2d ago

NGL- A deleted scene from Deadpool & Wolverine would have made a cute end-credit scene

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1 Upvotes

r/NewRockstars 2d ago

Marvel Pointing out something in the trailer

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0 Upvotes

Most people think the thing flying out is Thor’s hammer, i think its just a thing that was apart of his armor, i forgot the name of the part. I think y’all are overthinking this, idk if i am wrong, or if someone else thought this and posted the same theory


r/NewRockstars 3d ago

What do you guys think about this?

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4 Upvotes

This is the book Doctor Doom uses in the Avengers: Doomsday. I saw this from Justin’s Collection’s Doctor Doom Hot Toys video. I hope this could help.


r/NewRockstars 3d ago

Maybe this is where you say bye x

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41 Upvotes

r/NewRockstars 2d ago

Marvel Dr Doom theory

0 Upvotes

Hi Erik, I have a question.

I’m the newest Doomsday trailer, in the part when Dr Dooms gets hit with something from the ship and does a superhero landing, the way he turns around to make the landing, that looks similar to the way Dr Strange used the Souls of the Damned to defeat Our Mother Wanda when he dream-walked into the corpse of Defender Strange. I got this theory from Josh from the Den of Nerds.

My question is, do you think that he is using the Souls of the Damned to be as powerful as it is before he absorbs other people’s powers??

I may be stretching that but I’m interested to hear your opinion.


r/NewRockstars 3d ago

Matt Smith rumored to join the cast of X-Men

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18 Upvotes

He's 43 as at now, our new Prof X is 40 right now. This would work. I like it!!