Culture

In the game known as the streaming wars, Disney+ came out swinging, bringing with it a massive library of movies and TV shows—with new ones being added all the time. Watched everything on Netflix? Disney+ has a seemingly endless selection of Marvel movies and plenty of Star Wars and Pixar fare too. Problem is, there’s so much stuff that it’s hard to know where to begin. WIRED is here to help. Below are our picks for the best films on Disney+ right now.

Last week, just hours after exploding pagers and two-way radios killed dozens of people in Lebanon and injured hundreds more, a peculiar new show appeared on podcast apps. Pager Protocol isn’t about the attacks aimed at Hezbollah members or the Israeli operatives believed to be behind them. It’s an ongoing AI-generated 10-part series created to rapidly turn those unprecedented events into a fictional podcast.

Launched September 18, the day of the walkie-talkie explosions, Pager Protocol is akin to an audiobook. Each episode consists of what amounts to about a chapter, or 10 to 12 minutes, of material. In the two episodes that have dropped so far, an AI-generated narrator tells the story of the director of a fictional intelligence agency, one of his globe-trotting agents, and a CIA analyst, all of whom are hot on the trail of a large order of pagers purchased by the devious (but thinly described) Crescent Shield terrorist organization. The names of the countries involved have been changed—Tel Aviv is now Zion City, for instance—but it’s fairly easy to glean who everyone is supposed to be.

“Goodbye Meta AI” is the most recent Facebook copypasta to go viral online. A chunky wall of text pasted against a hazy orange-yellow gradient background, it’s complete with all the trend’s hallmarks: vague references to the legal system and unilateral declarations of personal protection. It almost feels nostalgic, a blast from the compulsory chain-email past. But, unfortunately, posting an image on Facebook, Instagram, or any social media platform is not how you actually opt out of having your posts be fed to AI models.

Nintendo, after nearly four decades, is taking The Legend of Zelda somewhere new. With Echoes of Wisdom, the video game company not only builds on the experimentation of its last Switch release, Tears of the Kingdom—it also does something no other Zelda title has done before: Give the princess power that was previously afforded to only Link.

“They gave Zelda a sword” has been the refrain for Echoes of Wisdom since it was announced back in June. But that isn’t the entirety of what makes the game unique. Rather, it’s part of a top-down 2D series for the franchise, one with a different look and feel than Tears of the Kingdom that still utilizes the freedoms that players got with previous games—like the ability to create everything from Korok prisons to giant mechs.

Disney+, if you didn’t know, isn’t just for kids. With its ownership of the Lucasfilm brand and the Marvel titles, the streaming service offers plenty of grown-up content in its bid to compete with Netflix and Amazon—and we’re not just talking movies. Since launching the service, Disney has used the name recognition of Star Wars and Marvel to launch scores of TV shows, from The Mandalorian to Loki. In the list below, we’ve collected the ones we think are the best to watch, from those franchises and beyond.

The director for my final [Game of Thrones] episode is Jack Bender. As soon as I find out, I Google him. We’ve not met, but I try to second-guess how he’ll work. If this is to be an epic scene, I need to get it spot-on. His past accolades tell me what I need to know: He’s an old hand, a longtime director on the 1980s hit TV series Falcon Crest. The Sopranos is also in his back catalog. My hope is that he’ll draw out the best in me.

Mapping the Marvel universe is not the kind of thing one can do just by snapping their fingers.

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For starters, there are many Earths out there in the multiverse; there are also all kinds of mystical dimensions and other weird locations. But even on just one version of Earth there are many points of interest, from the hometowns of fan-favorite heroes to fictional nations that exist only in comic books. Trying to find every Marvel-ous hangout in New York City? Fuggedaboutit.

Creed is having a moment. Actually, if we’re being precise, it’s having innumerable moments, over and over again, all across the internet.

On Instagram, the band has been repurposed as a comedic device for dunking on President Joe Biden; on TikTok, shitposters imagined what it would be like to explain the butt rock legends to an alien race; and on X, Creed is an easy punchline for commenting on political theater. All the while, those memes are collectively accumulating millions of likes, views, and shares.

On June 4th, Rachel Kelly and Matt Saunders set off on the adventure of a lifetime: driving the Pan American Highway. The couple from a small town in Surrey, England, went to the same school but matched on Tinder during the pandemic lockdowns. On their third date, Saunders planted the idea of driving from Alaska to Argentina, and Kelly was sold. After saving £20,000 each, they flew out to Canmore, Alberta, to pick up a pop-top camper they got for £4,000. It broke down just four days into their trip. Further camper and car mishaps ensued, costing them £15,000 in repairs and replacements.

The new animated Transformers movie is ostensibly about the early lives of the characters from Hasbro’s 1980s toy line, but it also may be about a class uprising and civil rights. I think Transformers One even takes a jab at former president Donald Trump. Actually, it takes two: Main villain Sentinel Prime (voiced convincingly by Jon Hamm) says, twice, that the truth is what he says it is.

All of which is to say, Transformers One isn’t exactly as hokey as it looks. Sure, it’s basically a kids’ movie, but much like the Transformers cartoons of the ’80s, it does have a message.