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The last time Amazon gave a blank check to the director of a Best Picture winner, it was for the Small Axe series, and that turned out out pretty well. Now it’s Barry Jenkins’ turn.

The Oscar-winning writer and director of Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk has turned Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-decorated novel The Underground Railroad into a limited series. It follows “Cora Randall’s desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. After escaping a Georgia plantation for the rumored Underground Railroad, Cora discovers no mere metaphor, but an actual railroad beneath the Southern soil,” according to the official plot description. Randall is played by Thuso Mbedu, while the rest of the cast includes Damon Herriman, William Jackson Harper, Chase W. Dillon, Amber Gray, Lily Rabe, and Joel Edgerton. “We are Africans in America. Something new to the history of the world,” a voiceover says in the trailer over clips from the series.

Jackson Harper, who played Chidi on The Good Place, hopes The Underground Railroad makes people “look into themselves and see who they would be in these scenarios because not everyone would be the protagonist, not everyone would be the person that’s fighting against this injustice… It’s my hope that people can watch this and really connect with the story and get angry. I would also hope that people would take that time to examine who they would be in that world.”

The Underground Railroad premieres on Amazon Prime Video on May 14.

The Utah Jazz exist in a spot that traps a lot of teams: they’ve been good for a long time but have never felt like a real contender. Breaking free from that position is an incredibly difficult task and changing the public perception of your franchise is, arguably, even harder.

And yet, at 26-6, 3.5 games clear of the Clippers for first in the West and fresh off of demolishing the shorthanded Lakers on Wednesday night, the Jazz seem determined to make people believers. It’s usually impossible to do so in the regular season, as a team with repeated postseason failures is judged by that past until they show something different in the playoffs, but if there were ever a formula for doing so before then, Utah is following it.

They lord over the three-point line in a way we’ve never seen before, shooting (and making) more threes than anyone else in the league. This season, Utah leads the NBA in makes (17) and attempts (42.6) per game from deep and is third in three-point field goal percentage (39.9 percent). On the other end of the floor, the Jazz do not let teams score via triples — Utah gives up the second-fewest three-point attempts in the NBA (31.4) and the third-lowest opponent three-point percentage (34.7 percent), ushering opponents inside the line and into the waiting arms of Rudy Gobert. The 59.7 two-point attempts allowed per game are the most in the NBA, but teams are shooting just 49.1 percent from two, the second-lowest mark in the league.

All of this is to say, the most important real estate on the basketball court is where they are dominating on both ends, and, unsurprisingly, that’s a very good recipe for success. Other teams have tried similar strategies, but the Jazz really are uniquely constructed to any team you might compare them to in the recent past that has dominated in the regular season but fallen short come playoff time.

The 2014-15 Hawks, a team for which Quin Snyder was an assistant, shot threes at a similar efficiency (38 percent as a team) but not at the same rate (26.2 attempts per game), and the defense had a polar opposite strategy of selling out to protect the rim first and meaning to give up the three (25.8 opponent attempts per game that season was the most in the NBA). The 2017-18 Rockets were similarly focused on bombing threes and taking away the three-point line, but didn’t have the caliber of shooters around James Harden (36.2 percent from three as a team) and didn’t have an interior presence as capable as Gobert, allowing opponents to shoot 51.9 percent from two. The 2018-19 Bucks dominated defensively at the rim, but gave up 36.3 three-point attempts a game and only shot 35.3 percent as a team from deep.

All of this is to say, whatever team in that group you’re thinking this Jazz team reminds you of, you aren’t totally wrong. They have pieces of each, but a one-to-one comparison is really hard to find. In terms of a statistical profile is, as blasphemous as it may seem, the 2014-15 Warriors are actually closer than any of those other squads. The first Golden State title team of this century exploded on the scene by hoisting 27 threes a game, fourth-most in the NBA, and hitting them at a ludicrous 39.8 percent clip. Defensively, they were seventh in three-point attempts allowed (21.4), fifth in opponent three-point percentage (33.7), forced the third-most two-point attempts (65), and were the best in the league at forcing two-point misses (45.8 opposing two-point percentage).

Now, to be clear, they are some stark differences there as well. Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson carried the load on that Golden State team in terms of shooting, taking 15.2 of their 27 three-point attempts per game. The Jazz have a much more egalitarian approach, as six players take four or more threes per night, double the number on that Golden State team. Defensively, the Warriors were one of the most versatile teams we’d seen to that point, particularly with their small-ball “Death Lineup” that featured Draymond Green at the five, Andre Iguodala and Harrison Barnes on the wing, and the Splash Brothers at guard. That switchability and athleticism all on the floor at once, combined with their shooting ability, was something the NBA had yet to see and didn’t have counters for yet.

The Jazz, meanwhile, are far more tied to their two-time DPOY in Gobert, and when he’s off the floor, it’s Derrick Favors manning the middle. That, more than the shooting, is where the questions will lie for this Jazz team come playoff time. The playoffs haven’t always been as kind to Gobert in the past, as teams have more time to figure out how to draw him away from the rim and attack the Utah defense. If a team finds a formula to exploit their reliance on him, there isn’t really a good Plan B to counter that. It’s the concern they have to have against the other top teams in the West, chiefly the Lakers and Clippers when they go to Anthony Davis or Serge Ibaka at center lineups.

Still, this is a team that, in the same vein as all of the aforementioned regular season juggernauts, demands that you be at your best to beat them on any given night, testing your ability to execute on both ends of the floor. The Utah offense is truly something to behold right now, with the way they move and flow, all connected and seemingly always on time — it is obvious that this is a team that has placed a premium on continuity, with even their main free agent acquisition this past offseason (Favors) being someone who knows Snyder’s system. They apply so much pressure to a defense with the way they pounce on any miscommunication, missed or late rotation, or poorly timed help.

Take this play against the Lakers, as Jordan Clarkson drives under the rim and gets walled off by three Lakers. He skips it to the top of the key to Donovan Mitchell, who sees Alex Caruso closing out and notices that both Marc Gasol and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope have stayed with Clarkson, leaving Favors wide open for a dunk before either can rotate back.

They are, seemingly always, one pass away from a bucket and see every opportunity a defense presents them. Against Charlotte, with the clock winding down in the quarter, Mitchell set up for what looked to be another high pick-and-roll with Gobert. As the Hornets try to anticipate what Charlotte wants to do, the soon-to-be weakside help strays up floor to trap Mitchell before he’s even gone, abandoning Joe Ingles in the corner.

Playing the Jazz right now is the best test in the league for how well a team is executing on defense, because they are so consistent at running their stuff that, eventually, they tend to break you down. You might hang around for awhile, a quarter or maybe even three, but for the most part, teams simply haven’t been able to match their constant execution for four quarters. Sometimes the barrage comes early, as it did against the Lakers. Sometimes it’s not until late, like against Charlotte, but it almost always comes, because whenever the opposing squad makes a mistake, they capitalize.

Their starting and closing lineup almost always has four players capable of putting the ball on the floor and initiating the offense, while also being elite catch-and-shoot players. Conley is back to being his best self after scuffling to start last season and learning his new team, and Mitchell has continued to grow as a more efficient scorer and, more importantly, a creator for others, becoming a bonafide star in the process. One of Ingles and Bojan Bogdanovic is almost always on the floor, and they are two of the best spot-up shooters in the game who can also be secondary creators (or in Ingles case, a primary one with the second unit). Royce O’Neale has developed into an elite 3-and-D forward, giving them the wing defender they desperately need while becoming a tremendous three-point shooter, allowing him to stay on the floor for their best offensive lineups as well.

And then you have Clarkson, who has the Sixth Man of the Year award locked up at this point. Clarkson has the greenest light to shoot off the bench this side of 2012-13 J.R. Smith, and he boasts the best efficiency marks of his career to boot. He has given them an extra dimension offensively, something they’ve craved since Mitchell burst onto the scene. For the first three years of Mitchell’s career, the biggest issue for Utah’s offense is figuring out who else can create for themselves. Conley gives them that with the starting unit, but it’s what Clarkson has done with the bench that, in my mind, has really separated this Jazz team so far this season. There aren’t the let-offs you get with most every other team in the league when the star sits, because Clarkson to this point has been one of the best individual scorers in the NBA.

The Jazz will need this to continue into the postseason and that is, of course, at the center of every major question they face. Can Clarkson still do this in the playoffs? Can Gobert be this impactful on defense in a playoff series with either of the L.A. teams? Will they be able to win a game or two when they inevitably have an off shooting night and have to find buckets in a different manner? Is O’Neale capable of taking on the elite wings of the West defensively every night in a series and continue to shoot at this level?

Those aren’t going to go away, and they aren’t the only team facing these questions. The Clippers, Bucks, and 76ers are also all in “prove it in the playoffs” situations, where nothing they do this regular season can quiet doubters. Maybe the 2020-21 Jazz will end up being remembered right along with the Hawks and Rockets and Bucks teams that were top seeds that fell short of the Finals. They play in a stacked conference with two teams led by players who have been to that mountaintop in a way they never have, capable of overpowering just about every other team. Health pending, the unfortunate reality is that nothing the Jazz do between now and the playoffs will change perception of most as to their stature as a “true” title contender.

So while it’s natural to look ahead, this is also a regular season to celebrate in the moment. This Jazz team dismantles opponents and does so with some historic shooting. We’ve seen teams shoot nearly 40 percent for a season and we’ve seen teams shoot 40-plus threes a night, but never together. They are an incredibly well constructed team that has gotten just the right combination of mining the free agent market for gems along with some development and Draft luck (or skill, depending on your outlook).

It’s natural to be skeptical of a team without one of the elite stars in the league, proven as such in the playoffs, but as someone who covered that 2014-15 Hawks team, let me tell you, it’s far more fun to embrace the moment and just believe. Because for as many words that will be spilled between now and the summer trying to parse whether this team is legit, none of them will really matter until we can see it in action. So enjoy the ride, and we’ll see how it ends later.

Unofficially, we’ve seen a lot about the new Mission Impossible movie Tom Cruise is currently filming. There’s been lots of discussion about on-set safety conditions amid a pandemic, with Cruise vocally admonishing those not following the rules to keep production going. You can, in fact, see a lot of images of Cruise and company working in Rome.

There are plenty of car stunts, filming on top of trains and other set pieces that are sure to make Mission Impossible 7 just as big a spectacle as the other MI films. But what we haven’t really seen until this week are any official images from the movie. On Thursday, screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie shared an image on Instagram of what appears to be a first look at the new Mission Impossible movie. Though, quite hilariously, it revealed about as little a possible when it comes to a “first look.”

Cast in smoke and shadows, the image looks a lot like Tom Cruise in a suit, sprinting down a darkened hallway. It’s a fairly iconic Mission Impossible trope, of sorts, though you can’t really even tell for sure if it’s Cruise. Technically, it’s far from an official promotional material release and McQuarrie has shared other photos, likely from Mission Impossible, like what appears to be the inside of an airplane.

But plenty of Instagram commenters gave the filmmaker credit for sharing a very shrewd teaser image for the upcoming movie without actually revealing much of anything.

An awesome side effect of being successful and popular is that once you reach a certain level of fame, you can leverage your social media following for serious income opportunities. For example, it was reported in 2019 that Kim Kardashian earned $1 million per branded Instagram post, while the same year, Kylie Jenner was apparently raking in $1.2 million per post. That seems like an easy way to make a ton of money, and today, it appears Lil Wayne shared a sponsored post of his own while putting in as lil effort as possible.

This morning, at 8 a.m. PT on the dot, Wayne tweeted, “Sourdough @BurgerKing #AD.”

Here’s the tweet:

And here’s a screenshot of the tweet in case this work of art gets taken down:

Back in 2018, Burger King introduced the Sourdough King sandwich, which was only available for a limited time. Today, it was reported that the sandwich is making a return in a variety of iterations, but just until April 19. Wayne conveyed none of this information, which is presumably what his ad was meant to be about. Based on his tweet and without that context, one could infer that the rapper was trying to start a conversation about bread with the burger chain and Anthony Davis, or perhaps he was demanding that BK “ad” sourdough bread to their menu.

Criticism aside, while Wayne’s ability to get his point across could be questioned here, we probably wouldn’t be talking about Burger King right now if Wayne had tweeted a more conventional ad. It’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, so congrats to Wayne for being a genius marketer.

Songwriters Melina Duterte and Ellen Kempner have already made a name for themselves in the indie spotlight as the vocalists of their respective projects Jay Som and Palehound, both of which released excellent 2019 LPs. Now expanding on their sound, Kempner and Duterte have joined forces to blend their songwriting and explore themes of queerness and lust with their newly formed band Bachelor.

Alongside the announcement of the new musical project, Bachelor shared the bass-heavy single “Anything At All.” Each of the songwriter’s distinct styles can be heard on the track, combining playful elements with the anxious tension of screeching guitars.

In a joint statement, the two musicians said, “We’re so excited to finally share this song with y’all and announce our new band! We’ve been dear friends and huge fans of each other for years and were lucky enough to get to work together in January 2020 before quarantine. We feel that ‘Anything At All’ is an even blend of our tastes and writing styles and to release it feels very hopeful and joyous to us.”

Echoing their statement, Kempner praised Duterte’s in a heartfelt post to Instagram. “‘Anything At All’ is out today and we could not be happier to share it with y’all,” she wrote. “I have been Jay Som’s number one fan since I first heard ‘Ghost’ years ago, Melina inspires me with everything she does and is one of my closest friends who i feel a deep connection with, both personally and musically.”

Listen to “Anything At All” above.

Rappers often make braggadocious claims about their lives from before they picked up the mic. In fact, it could be argued that these claims are a large part of why many rap fans enjoy the genre, whether or not those big fish tales turn out to be true (Jadakiss’ 360-degree walls have become a favorite water cooler talking point on Twitter). However, every so often rappers say these things outside the context of their music, which somehow makes their boasts all the more outrageous and, in some cases, borderline problematic.

One of the kings of such statements is Freddie Gibbs. As a rapper whose primary inspiration seems to be his uninhibited, drug-dealing days in Gary, Indiana, Gibbs’ raps are often packed with shootouts, shady deals, and the sort of details that make US Prosecutors salivate at the thought of introducing lyrics in court (fortunately, they can’t). But during his appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast yesterday, Gibbs casually makes a claim that has fans doing double-takes.

“It’s a crackhead, back in the day,” he recalls. “I shot that n**** nine times with a TEC-9 and he kept running down the alley.”

It’s the sort of story that both begs more context and utter and absolute silence from the storyteller because as badly as we all want to know more, that’s exactly the sort of narrative that should remain on wax — not in a podcast, which isn’t protected by the same rules. Of all the questions that arise from Gibbs cavalier recollection, the one that hovers over the proceedings the lowest might just be:

On top of the slew of content announced for Paramount+, an all-new Beavis and Butt-Head movie is coming to the streaming service. While there’s no release date or plot details for the animated film as of yet, the dim-witted characters did make an “announcement video” where it’s clear they haven’t changed much since the ’90s. The two still do their “huh huh” laugh, smack each other around, and note that their new streaming home as the word “mount” in it.

The new movie will presumably be in addition to the Beavis and Butt-Head revival that’s still on track for Comedy Central. Announced back in July 2020, the new series is being written and produced by creator Mike Judge who also voices the new metalhead. In fact, HBO recently passed on two shows from Judge who is reportedly tied up bringing Beavis and Butthead back to life. “It seemed like the right time to get stupid again,” Judge said in a statement announcing the revival. Via Deadline:

“We are thrilled to be working with Mike Judge and the great team at 3 Arts again as we double down on adult Aanimation at Comedy Central,” said McCarthy. “Beavis and Butt-Head were a defining voice of a generation, and we can’t wait to watch as they navigate the treacherous waters of a world light-years from their own.”

While the iconic duo don’t look they’ve aged a day in the announcement video for their new movie, the new series sounds like it might go a different route and focus on an older, more mature Beavis and Butthead. If that’s even possible. Here’s how McCarthy described the news series to Vulture shortly after it was announced: “The story that we’re talking about working with Mike is: What happens if they grow up? And what happens if they have kids?”

Wait a minute. Beavis and Butt-Head scored? Huh huh that can’t be right.

(Via Comedy Central)

The Muppet Show is now available on Disney+, so if you’ve ever wanted to see Elton John sing “Crocodile Rock” with a bunch of crocodiles, I would suggest signing up immediately. It’s five seasons of silly chaos, with slapstick humor, celebrity guests, and Statler and Waldorf absolutely roasting Fozzie. The Muppet Show making its way onto Disney’s streaming service has also, unfortunately, inspired ever-dreaded #discourse about cancel culture and the left wanting to “destroy” Kermit, or whatever. It’s exhausting and ought to be avoided at all costs — the Muppets should unite us, not tear us apart.

There’s only one acceptable Muppets debate and that’s: which Muppet is the best Muppet? Actually, it’s not even a debate, because with all due respect to Kermit, Miss Piggy, Lew Zealand, Rizzo (he might be #1 if he had a better restaurant), Uncle Deadly, and Scooter (lol no one respects Scooter), the answer is Rowlf. Let me explain why.

1. Kermit is the most well-known Muppet, but he wasn’t the first Muppet to “reach national stardom.” That honor belongs to Rowlf, who made his debut in a 1962 dog food commercial (Hugh Grant would be proud) before appearing weekly on The Jimmy Dean Show as the host’s “ol’ buddy.” Here he is meeting Lassie (“May I hold your paw?”), rehearsing his own spin-off show, and wearing a Santa beard and singing a sincere cover of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” If you can make it through that without crying, well, you can’t. It’s impossible. Rowlf was a sensation, receiving thousands of fan letters every week, and it’s easy to see why in the clips from the variety series that are online: he was witty, charismatic, and playful. He was (and is) a Very Good Boy.

2. But he could also be a wise-cracking son of a bitch. Literally.

The Muppets are a family-friendly Disney brand now, but don’t forget, Jim Henson, who performed Rowlf until his death in 1990, was a “naughty troublemaker” at heart, a subversive rascal who made things like The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence and The Land of Gorch, the bawdy recurring sketch during the first season of Saturday Night Live that the show’s writers famously hated. Not unlike Wu-Tang Clan, the Muppets are for the children, but they have also always been for the adults, too. Rowlf has thrived in both worlds, something most of his fellow Muppets aren’t able to. Can you imagine Kermit the Frog ever saying the word “bitch,” like Rowlf did on The Arsenio Hall Show? (Volume on to hear the dog pound lose their freaking minds.) I can’t, and frankly, I don’t want to.

Rowlf is all things for all people — and dogs.

3. The only Muppet that comes close to Rowlf is Gonzo. Whether he’s playing the trumpet at the end of The Muppet Show‘s opening credits, narrating The Muppet Christmas Carol as Charles Dickens, or flirting with his lady friend chicken, I love that “whatever.” He’s proudly weird (and a LGBT+ icon). But he’s also the star of the worst Muppet movie, Muppets in Space, and Muppet Treasure Island isn’t much better (outside of the soundtrack — “Cabin Fever” is a quarantine anthem). The Muppets went Gonzo crazy in the 1990s and he suffered, however slightly, from overexposure; he’s to the Muppets as Taz is to the Looney Tunes, minus the baggy pants. But there’s no such thing as “too much” Rowlf, and therefore, no one ever got tired of him.

I will admit that Gonzo is the bigger style icon.

4. Musical numbers are as much a Muppets trademark as explosions (get you a Muppet who can do both). Rowlf has provided many of the most memorable song-and-dance numbers in Muppets history: “Tit Willow” from The Muppet Movie (there’s that Henson naughtiness), “I Hope That Somethin’ Better Comes Along” from The Muppet Movie (it’s a spoken line, but “it’s not often you see a guy that green that has the blues that bad” is one of the all-time great Muppet quotes), and a personal favorite, “I’m Gonna Always Love You” from The Muppets Take Manhattan. My man kills it on the piano in that one.

AND LOOK AT THE ADORABLE TUXEDO HE WEARS IN “SOMETHING SO RIGHT.”

I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention Ol’ Brown Ears Is Back, Rowlf’s solo album in which he covers “New York State of Mind” and sings “Eight Little Notes,” a song about Beethoven. Not the dog, but the composer. I understand the confusion, but it’s easy to remember: Rowlf the dog > Beethoven the human > Beethoven the dog.

5. But the main reason why Rowlf is the best Muppet is because he was closest to the Muppet god himself, Jim Henson (I genuinely can not think of a cooler title than “Muppet god”). Here’s author Brian Jay Jones, who wrote the definitive Jim Henson biography, on Henson’s close connection with Rowlf: “Rowlf is the one closest to Jim, more so than even Kermit. We like to think of Jim and Kermit as intertwined and interchangeable, but I think Rowlf is the one that’s closest to Jim.” Along the same lines, Jim’s son Brian called Kermit his “father’s best-known character, but a lot of people think he was more like Rowlf in real life… except he couldn’t play the piano as well.”

Following Henson’s death, Rowlf was unofficially retired until 1996, when Bill Barretta took over. He’s appeared sporadically in Muppet projects since, including Jason Segel’s Oscar-nominated The Muppets, Weezer’s “Keep Fishin’” music video, and ABC’s short-lived The Muppets series, where he owned his bar, Rowlf’s Tavern. But post-Henson, Muppets Studio hasn’t quite known what to do with him. I’m predicting a Rowlf renaissance, though, once more people watch (or re-watch) The Muppet Show. It might already be happening.

Rowlf might not be the flashiest Muppet, but he’s a floppy-eared, piano-playing, joke-cracking, beer-drinking, sophisticated-but-silly dog who sounds like Tom Waits. What’s not to love? But if you’re somehow still not convinced:

Like I said, the best Muppet.

LA rapper Blxst is in the midst of a huge breakout after bubbling on the city’s underground scene for the past few years. With the release of his debut tape, No Love Lost, and its star-studded deluxe edition, Blxst has become a household name on the West Coast, with designs on expanding his popularity to the national stage in short order.

To help with that, he’s enlisted the aid of Angyil, a Red Bull Dance Your Style World finalist, to put her own interpretation on the latest single from Blxst’s breakout album. The “No Love Lost” dance video puts Angyil on the picturesque Dakar coast, which provides a beautiful backdrop for her electrifying moves.

Blxst’s highly visual approach to his debut project is part of the reason for its success. Beginning with the video for “Overrated,” several of the videos from the original project tell an overarching narrative that describes a night of LA-style troublemaking, as Blxst and his boys “run a play,” forcing Blxst’s girl to stay up late worrying about him. The narrative concludes in the video for “Pressure,” resolving the plot and establishing Blxst as a master storyteller — which is the biggest part of his appeal.

Watch Blxst’s “No Love Lost” dance video above.

Tony Hawk is not the same as other athletes. Not because he’s a pro skater, or has a game named after him, or has created multiple tricks, or is in many ways considered the father of the sport becoming mainstream. Rather, the difference stems from the way he carries himself.

Every athlete has a certain level of competitiveness in them, one where they feel that they can do anything they put their mind to. It’s part of what makes them the all-time greats that they are. However, when speaking to Hawk before an Pacifico event where he needed to set a high score in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2, he didn’t give a response that you expect from an athlete with his kinds of credentials.

“I can tell you right now, there will be plenty of people watching that will be like, ‘I can get 10 times the score. What is the deal?’ and that is because they have a lot more time than I do to play it,” Hawk told Uproxx. “And I applaud them. I’m not making excuses. I totally applaud them. Yes, they are better than me. I’ve seen the best players, like I mean literally the best players in the world. I would never get to their level no matter how much time I spent on it.”

This is the person Hawk is, someone who is comfortable with himself in a way that is rare for even the most famous of athletes. This is how someone like him can so freely laugh at the idea of people not recognizing him, an experience that has become common enough to be a regular feature on his Twitter account. Make no mistake, people know who Tony Hawk is, these are just small little snippets into funny moments of his life.

“I think the misconception is that somehow I’m never recognized and I’m always complaining about it and that’s not at all why I share those stories.” said Hawk. “Those are just the ones usually, after the fact that I realized how funny they were or how ridiculous it was and so they’re all true. I guess that’s the bottom line is like you can follow me around for at least two days and you can follow me around for a couple of days and at least one or two times that sort of thing will happen.”

It’s the partial recognition, the idea that he looks like Tony Hawk, but isn’t him that is especially funny. Maybe it’s that fans of a certain age remember a younger Tony Hawk, the one who made history with a 900 in competition, or that younger fans know him chiefly from the video game that bears his name. Hawk said he’d been practicing for the event and was going to need that practice because there are people that live and die with the Pro Skater franchise. People have been waiting for ages for the franchise to return, one that, according to Hawk, was sort of a congruence of events.

“I would say I was the one who planted the seed.” said Hawk. “I was having lunch with the president of Activision, who I’ve known for a long time. We were about to do a 20th-anniversary concert celebration and the concert benefited my skate park foundation, The Skate Park Project. And so I have lunch with him only because I needed to get his blessing to use the name of the game in the event. He was talking about how they’ve had good luck with other remasters and reboots of other franchises. And I said you have no idea how many people ask me. ‘When are you going to remaster the first game?’ And that was it. That’s exactly how it started.”

There have, of course, been attempts to revive the franchise before the remaster of the originals. Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 and Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD are two notable attempts that didn’t work out, but something about Pro Skater 1+2 is different. It’s the feeling of the game. The developers nailed it perfectly. While it doesn’t play the exact same way as the original two games, it makes the player feel like it does. The first time someone drops into Warehouse it feels like they’re being teleported back to when the original game came out.

That feeling that the Pro Skater franchise has is so incredibly important. Games like Pro Skater are entirely reliant on feeling and flow. It’s why a trophy exists for getting 10 million points, because when the game flows together perfectly, and if the player is skilled enough, then they can hit that 10 million mark. It’s a feeling that Hawk, a member of the one million club himself, strived to achieve when providing his input into the game.

“In the past, I was very involved because I had to give the developers a crash course in skateboarding and skateboard culture and tricks and everything else,” Hawk says. “So those first four years I was hands-on the whole time. I didn’t have to be so much in the later games because they already understood it and then this time around it was more about capturing that actual gameplay from the first two. So the input I had beyond say trick names and things like that was more about the feeling of the tricks and how they react and how they look in the air because there was still a lot of work, but we did have a great foundation to start from.

Trick names in particular are something that Hawk had quite an impact on in Pro Skater 1+2. He played a role in the change of the “Mute grab” now known as the “Weddle Grab.” The reason for the change was because the trick creator, Chris Weddle, was deaf and not mute. It had always bothered Weddle, and with the Pro Skater series being where so many people learn trick names from, then why not change it?

“I didn’t have some great master plan,” said Hawk. “I realized, especially when we release this new remastered version of the first two games, that I could affect change because a lot of people know the skate names of tricks through our video games. And so if there was ever a change to be made that would be a huge catalyst for it. … I didn’t think like I was taking some great stance. It was more like I wanted Chris to be excited about it.”

For Hawk, it was never about making a statement or being seen as someone trying to make a change in the culture of skateboarding. He just felt it was the right thing to do and he did it, a personality trait that fits right into the culture of skateboarding as a whole these days. The sport is more diverse than ever, and you can see it across the many new skaters that Vicarious Visions and Hawk worked to put into Pro Skater 1+2.

“[Skateboarding culture] has evolved greatly in terms of well for one acceptance and two just how diverse it is and how inclusive it is,” said Hawk. “I think that’s probably the biggest change. It was always a place for outcasts but these days it’s much more of a level playing field. Anyone can participate, everyone’s welcome, and you’re only judged on your style of skating. You know what I mean? You’re not judged on your race or your background or your nationality. It’s more like, ‘let’s see what you got,’ and I love that. I’ve loved that and I loved that about skateboarding all along. But the fact that now there are more parks than ever. There is more opportunity than ever. It’s more diverse than ever because of that.”

Tony Hawk has been the face of skating culture for so long that it’s not surprising that with an ambassador such as himself, who tries to be welcoming and carries himself not too seriously, that this is where skateboarding has come. It’s become a place that everyone can be. For many, it’s a home. A place they can be themselves. Hawk is still extremely connected with the sport today. He’s a regular on the broadcast at X-Games events and he still skates all the time. Even at 52, he can still hit a 720. For him, skateboarding is his daily exercise. While the average person may go for a run he’s out there skating.

Hawk never did hit a million during his event for Pacifico. He topped out at 871,000, but there was a moment during it where that classic competitive spark came back. The producer’s off-camera told him that he had time for one more run. He told them he would do two more, but those runs didn’t meet his satisfaction. Then, just like when he was attempting the 900 back in 1999, he gave himself one more run. That competitive spirit never does go away. Hawk just carries it differently. He carries it like a skater.