Ewan McGregor’s much-hyped return to the role of Obi-Wan has seen its first look, with the first trailer for Obi-Wan Kenobi finally dropping following a cute tweet from the show’s official Twitter account teasing something on the horizon.

Originally, the internet had been convinced that the Jedi Order’s most prolific Force user would make his long-awaited return as part of a trailer at last month’s Super Bowl. Frustratingly, the sporting event came and went without nary a whisper of the warrior-turned-hermit’s emergence, leaving fans to yet again twiddle their thumbs. The wait, however, is finally over. Check out the first-look for yourselves above.

Ewan McGregor returns as Obi-Wan, while Hayden Christensen is back as the villainous Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. A smörgåsbord of other actors have signed on for the series in unnamed roles, including Eternals‘ Kumail Nanjiani. Owen and Beru Lars have also been cast for the series, with Joel Edgerton and Bonnie Piesse reprising both roles respectively.

Obi-Wan Kenobi Poster

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Directed by Deborah Chow, whose previous credits include Mr. Robot and The Mandalorian, Obi-Wan Kenobi is set 10 years after the events of Revenge of the Sith in the aftermath of Order 66 and the fall of the Jedi. Joby Harold is confirmed as the writer for the series, having previously been executive producer on Edge of Tomorrow.

As far as overarching plot goes, the trailer doesn’t let the veil slip too much in that regard, though fans can rest assured, at the very least, that a spectacle-laden rematch between Jedi Master and Padawan is guaranteed.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is scheduled to premiere May 25, exclusively on Disney Plus.

If you’re a longtime TikTok user, by now you’ve probably liked or bookmarked someone else’s video. You may have even downloaded a particular favorite. Sharing videos is the platform’s entire point, and one way TikTok keeps its users engaged is to provide them with the ability to download a video to their phone or device’s camera roll to watch later as many times as they like. But is there any way to find out who may have downloaded one of your own videos?

If you’ve never saved a video from TikTok, it’s easy to do from any device you use the service on. And unlike many social media apps, you can download content off of TikTok without even having an existing account. Just launch TikTok, find a video you want to keep, press the “share to” button with the arrow icon, and tap save video. The should save to your camera roll or photos app.

Whether the user can tell it was you that downloaded their content? The answer is no. And you won’t be able to see if they’ve downloaded yours. Currently, TikTok does not provide its users with the name of other users who download their content. At least if a user has made that content public. Users can check their analytics on the app and can find out if their content was downloaded, but the app will not tell you what user specifically downloaded your video.

Many are perfectly fine with this arrangement. Plenty of users are perfectly happy just to be engaging users’ views and likes. After all, the basic business model of the major influencers on the app is very much based on getting as many likes and followers as possible. Some users, however, are not as happy with the anonymity other users have when dealing with personal content. If you fall towards the latter side of the argument, there are steps you can take to safeguard your videos.

To prevent random users from downloading your content, you need to turn off your download switch under your privacy settings. To do that, complete the following steps:

1. Launch the app
2. Tap on the “Profile” tab
3. Tap the three line icon at the top of the screen and select “Settings and Privacy”
4. select privacy and scroll down until you find the “Video Downloads” switch
5. Toggle the switch to the off position to prevent others from downloading your videos.

Image via Warner Bros.

It seems Matt Reeves’ new superhero drama The Batman can make a believer out of anyone – even real bats, the species that sparked the enduring storyline.

Though the three-hour flick has been met with a range of reviews, it’s a commercial success from all indications, so much so that live bats crashed the party at one unnamed movie theatre. In a viral video making the rounds on social media, the movie has been paused, ironically during a scene at Bruce Wayne’s Batcave. The lights have been turned on as the moviegoers marvel at the unexpected intruders to the DC franchise reboot. 

Naturally, the twenty-second clip has taken over the internet, sparking hilarious comments. Some joked that the video creator, @Jeremiah24_, was clearly at the 3D screening. Others claimed it was a Warner Bros. promotion ploy. There were even those that suggested that they’d swarmed in support of Pattinson’s portrayal of the Caped Crusader!

The Batman is out in cinemas now.

Film studio Lionsgate had a little fun toying with fans of The Batman, which hit theaters Friday, by releasing their own Nicolas Cage-starring parody trailer called The Matban: Uncaged.

As you might expect, the video features many clips of Cage from the film Kick-Ass as the unhinged vigilante Big Daddy, who is very much styled after and a parody of the Dark Knight, but in the more grounded, realistic universe of the 2010 film.

The trailer also featured a tongue-in-cheek clip of the newest actor to play Batman for real, Robert Pattinson, from the Lionsgate movie Twilight.

In addition, clips of the upcoming Lionsgate film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which stars a fictionalized version of Cage, was also woven into the trailer for good measure. (That film hits theaters April 22.)

It’s a fairly lighthearted nod to the comic book blockbuster currently dominating people’s weekend plans but does not mention The Batman by name, which makes us slightly confused as to why Lionsgate seemingly reversed course on publicizing the Matban parody trailer. The video is currently unlisted on YouTube.

“[H]oly nicolas it’s matban!” the studio wrote on Twitter early Friday morning while sharing the video, in a now-deleted tweet.

It’s been almost a decade since Kick-Ass 2 hit theaters back in 2013, making many fans wonder when a Kick-Ass 3 might be hitting cinema screens. Sadly, the latest update from original comic book creator Mark Millar, back in Nov. 2021, is that a third installment of the film franchise is not likely to occur at this point.

Photo by ledwell via Getty Images

TikTok runs on trends, and without a consistently fresh stock of dance crazes, sound memes, and wacky challenges, the entire business model of the video-sharing app goes stagnant. But the latest trend on the platform is one that, by design, is a bit of a head-scratcher. In fact, it’s a total troll.

Rumors have been widely circulating on TikTok that suggest that the latest trend involves users hosting brunch parties where at least one seat is reserved for an ostensibly fake skeleton. People sit, eat, and film, making sure to let viewers check out their skeletal friend, and post the resulting video.

Perhaps it sounds silly but, on a platform that has seen the Gorilla Glue girl, the Corn Cob challenge, and even the gag-inducing weirdness that was the Sleepy Chicken challenge, having a few skeletons over for mimosas isn’t exactly the weirdest trend to come down the road.

Only it isn’t happening.

Search “Skeleton Brunch” on TikTok and you won’t find any of the videos that one would expect. Users are left feeling like they missed the bus on this one because the trend is absolutely bogus.

A Twitter user going by Dr. Economy Stonks began posting photos claiming to show outraged articles warning parents of the dangerous new craze of “Skeleton Brunches” that are supposedly endangering TikTok users. Dr. Stonks’ post was probably intended as satire, as a quick Google search fails to bring up any of the articles shown. But that didn’t stop the post from snowballing its way across the internet.

Another user’s post included a DM claiming to be from former NYC mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, captioned “what the hell is going on”. In the screenshot, Giuliani appears to unintentionally invite the user to a “Skeleton Brunch”, only to quickly follow-up with “Wrong person. Ignore”, then blocking the user.

Soon, the trend began dividing social media between those who were in the know and those that don’t. Certain corners of Twitter laid out and went after the bait like April Fools had come an entire month early.

Twitter user @ProtonInspector even managed to bring (of course) Kanye’s name into the mix.

So, unfortunately, if you are looking for a nice video of epidermically challenged spooksters hovering over a few plates of eggs benedict, you’re just going to have to film your own and hope that the nice little bistro down the street will accommodate you. But, now that you’re in on the joke, you might try to pull your own online “gotcha” before the ‘trend’ goes the way of Noodle the Pug and the Bama Rush girls.

Good luck!

Image via TikTok

Sound clips are one of the most important features available on TikTok. Although the video-sharing app is by nature visual experience, a staggering amount of the trends, dance crazes, and challenges that feed the platform’s insatiable algorithm simply would not work without easy access to popular music and film clips.

TikTok is well aware of this and has a built-in clip function that allows users to save clips they want to reuse or feature as ‘favorite sounds’. So it should come as no surprise that more than a few users took to Twitter in dismay after they noticed that all of their fave clips had vanished.

If you’ve never used the favorites function on TikTok, it’s fairly easy to learn how. To save a sound clip, tap the circular icon that appears in the bottom-right corner of a post. Then just tap ‘Add to Favorites’. The clip should load into your favorites section for you to use and reuse as you wish. To access your favorites, just navigate to your profile and tap the bookmark icon. This should take you to your entire library of favorites including your favorite sounds.

That’s how it’s supposed to work anyway. A system glitch that seems to be affecting many users is causing their saved sounds to disappear. And, as yet, it remains to be seen whether or not the tracks are lost forever or if users are just being minorly inconvenienced.

This certainly isn’t the first time a glitch has affected a large number of users on the platform. Recently, users found that any emojis they used in their captions were converting back to their source code. In 2020, Screenrant reported on numerous instances of user likes and views disappearing.

So far, TikTok has not the issue on social media or via other media. Users who are experiencing the issue may just have to wait until TikTok takes care of the issue in house. However, there are a few things you can try to see if you can get your favorites to disappear.

First, just log out and then back into the app. If that doesn’t have any effect, try erasing the app’s cached data. Launch your phone’s settings and select Apps & Notifications. Tap See All Apps and select TikTok, followed by Storage & Cache. Tap on Clear Cache to erase the stored data. You can also try doing a hard reboot of your phone.

If none of these methods work, you may simply be in for a wait. When TikTok patches the issue up they should issue an update that will take care of the problem.

The Cardiff Giant. Hitler’s Diaries. The War of the Worlds. Even before the internet, the world was being fooled by manufactured hoaxes, but there’s no doubt that the lightning-fast speed of the internet combined with social media has made it so much easier to pull the wool over the public’s eyes. The latest bit of viral chicanery has some gullible TikTok users believing the all too unbelievable existence of a 399-year-old woman.

First of all, let’s get some actual facts on the table. No one in recorded history has ever lived to be 399 years old. The oldest known woman on Earth was Jeanne Chalmet, who passed away in 1997 at the age of 122. The oldest man was Jiroemon Kimura, who lived to the ripe old age of 116 before dying in 2013. The oldest person currently alive is Kane Tanaka, who recently celebrated her 119th birthday in January.

The video currently making the rounds on TikTok shows an extremely emaciated and frail person in a hospital bed. Many users, Deliberately or otherwise, have incorrectly identified the person as a woman of extraordinary age in the text in the video or in the caption. Neither, however, is true.

The person in the video is Luang Pho Ya, a Buddhist monk from Thailand. The original video, posted by his granddaughter, began to first gather views and then began to fuel wild speculation regarding the monk’s age. One video, which speculated that Luang was 163 years old, garnered 88 million views and several thousand comments. As the TikTok version of “Post Office” got further and further away from the initial post, Luang suddenly changed his gender and aged a further 300 years — which would have made Luang born around the same time as the Thirty Years’ War was fought in Europe and the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty was born, some 150 years before the USA became a country.

The speculation is nonsense, of course, but that hasn’t stopped multiple videos showing the monk from pulling down thousands and even hundreds of thousands of views across TikTok. There doesn’t seem to be any malice behind users sharing or reacting to the videos— just a great deal of credulity. It may seem odd that people are more willing to believe that a person is capable of believing a human is capable of living for four centuries, but a quick look into the history of hoaxes, internet or otherwise, shows that people are fairly willing to let themselves be fooled for the sake of an interesting story.

However, if one is looking for a feel-good story of human longevity, look no further than the actual oldest person alive, Kane Tanaka. Ms. Tanaka is a full decade older than Luang and, if all goes well, will be celebrating her 120th year birthday in January of 2023.

Ryan Reynolds is all set to provide further proof to Hollywood that he’s one of the film industry’s most bankable actors. In just over a week’s time, the Deadpool, Free Guy and Red Notice star will be joined by Zoe Saldana, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Garner and newcomer Walker Scobell in The Adam Project.

As if the subject matter, cinematography and music choice didn’t already make it painfully obvious, Netflix’s next big blockbuster is unabashedly a spin on Spielberg flicks circa 1980s sci-fi. Director Shawn Levy is clearly happy to revel in paying tribute to the legendary filmmaker at almost every turn, to the extent that we wouldn’t be surprised if a certain extraterrestrial made a guest appearance.

You can check out the frenetic trailer for yourselves above.

‘The Adam Project’ gets ’80s-style poster

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The Adam Project marks Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Garner’s first on-screen meeting in more than 18 years, with the pair collectively playing the part of Adam’s parents. Reynolds, on the other hand, plays a future version of his younger self (Scobell) who has returned to our present to combat a malicious force of technologically advanced aggressors.

What twists and turns will viewers find during the adventure? You’ll find out for yourselves when The Adam Project lands next week, March 11.

Image via TikTok

TikTok is nothing without its trends. Dance crazes, viral movie phrases, special FX, and trendy filters are what drive the video-sharing app’s business model and the latest is a far cry from learning how to moonwalk over the strains of the latest hot mashup. The online test sweeping the platform is a 38 question exam using sliding scale answers to show how the test-taker actually experiences the emotion of anger.

Unlike most of the quizzes and “tests” of dubious scientific provenance that occasionally trend on TikTok, the MAT actually has some real scientific pedigree. Developed from the research of Dr. Judith M. Siegel, currently a Professor Emerita of UCLA’s department of community health sciences, the MAT is designed to map out an individual’s anger management progress through a series of statements which the taker agrees or disagrees with on a sliding scale. Some of the statements include:

“At times, I feel angry for no specific reason.”

The test appears to be psychometrically valid. According to Dexerto, IDR labs, a provider of personality assessment tests that makes the test available to their online users, has said, “Analyses of Siegel’s work have found the test to have good psychometric properties in the form of high validity and test-retest reliability. Consequently, the test is frequently used for research purposes and in clinical settings, where it has been shown to be relevant, not just to a person’s anger, but to their physical health and stress responses as well.”

Depending on their answers, users receive a percentage score in a set of categories that include, Anger Arousal, Anger Spectrum, Hostile Outlook, External Anger, and Internal Anger, in order to receive a cumulative Total Score. These results are then compared to the national average score.

To take the test yourself, you have to visit the IDR website. Once there, answer each of the 38 questions by dragging the slider bar along the scale from “agree” to “disagree.” Once you’re finished, the site will show you your score on the results page, which you can then post to TikTok and compare with others.

Users should bear in mind that taking the quiz, while it may be enlightening, should not be taken for a legitimate diagnosis or assessment from a mental health professional. According to IDR’s disclaimer, “The results of our online multidimensional anger test are provided ‘as-is’, and should not be construed as providing professional or certified advice of any kind.”