There are a lot of ways that filmmakers and storytellers have reworked real history with an alternate version of that history over the years. Often it’s a re-imagining of major events like wars, but sometimes it’s a smaller bit of history, like Quentin Tarantino did with Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
I love these kinds of movies and TV shows because it’s always interesting to wonder “what if?” things went differently in key moments in time. This list is a celebration of any kind of alternate history, from shows about Kings ruling America to the Soviets winning the race to the moon and everything in between.
(Image credit: Apple TV+)
For All Mankind
streamer Apple TV+, the Soviets win the race, but the US keeps pushing to get ahead somehow.
Inglourious Basterds isn’t my favorite Tarantino movie. Some people argue that his re-imagining of the death of that terrible man with the little mustache was killed by an elite group of US soldiers, instead of what actually happened, is his best movie. I don’t even think it’s his best alternate history movie. Christoph Waltz is amazing, though.
adapted from a book by Stephen King, stars James Franco as a man who finds himself traveling back in time to Dallas on November 22nd, 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Of course, he tries to figure out a way to change the future, but is thwarted by fate each time. Technically, this is more of an example of history not changing, but it feels very much like the rest of these movies.
Watchmen envisions a future when a superhero named Doctor Manhattan (Billy Crudup) has ended the Vietnam War in the United States’ favor. That propels Richard Nixon to multiple terms as President (he’s in his 5th term in 1985, when the movie is set), and the Cold War escalated even more than it did in real life. Watchmen is a superhero movie, sure, but it fits perfectly on this list.
John Travolta and Harry Belafonte, reverses the races in America, making African-Americans the dominant race. Yeah, it’s tricky, and it could have been a disaster. It’s not a total mess, but it’s far from perfect.
best movies about the Navy is The Final Countdown. It stars Kirk Douglas as the captain of an aircraft carrier that accidentally travels through a time portal and finds itself in 1941. The crew quickly realizes that they have the opportunity to stop the attack on Pearl Harbor, but doesn’t the future still changes two passengers on the ship are marooned in 1941, but use that to their advantage in the future.
Ian McShane as the king of a country that was basically the United States (called Gilboa on the show) and Sebastian Stan as his heir-apparent. There was a ton of palace intrigue, and the show could have gone in so many interesting directions had it found a bigger audience.
ranking of MCU movies), it’s also a different version of history, with World War II essentially being won for the Allies by Captain America. That’s not what really happened, so that’s why I’m counting it. I don’t want to hear any arguments!
fans were in an uproar. That’s always a good sign, and it’s easy to see why its audience loved it so much. It’s really more of a fantasy series, but the history in it, following Lady Jane Grey in the 1500s, is purposefully set in an alternative timeline.
Alex Garland’s Civil War from 2024 is set more or less in the present day. It is, however, a very different reality, with the United States at war with itself over politics. For a lot of people, it was among the best movies released in ’24, and it certainly lays out a scary look at how bad things could get if politics continues to get uglier and uglier.
Ben Affleck’s character in the Battle of Britain, on Oahu during the attack on Pearl Harbor, and as part of the Doolittle raid is complete fantasy, so for me, this is definitely alternative history.
Andrew Garfield, and Keira Knightley. It’s a lot less bombastic than most of the movies on this list, and the plot, which is partly centered around humans having discovered the cure for death, is really a romance in a love triangle.
(Image credit: BBC)
SS-GB
The BBC show SS-GB is another example of a show based on the Germans coming out victorious over the Allies in World War II. This time, it’s set in London in 1941, and the U.K. has already lost the war. Like others on this list, the show is really a murder mystery-turned-political thriller that is well worth your time, if you love British television shows as I do.
(Image credit: ABC)
Amerika
Surprisingly, there aren’t a lot of examples in this genre of the U.S. losing the Cold War to the USSR, but at the height of that cold conflict in 1987, ABC produced Amerika, starring Kris Kristofferson as a politician living in a conquered America, having been overrun by the Soviets. I won’t give away the ending, but it’s easy to guess who wins in the end, given the timing of the miniseries.
(Image credit: Apple TV+)
Hello Tomorrow!
Hello Tomorrow! draws inspiration from shows like The Jetsons and other retrofuturistic shows, and tells the story of a man (played by Billy Crudup) selling property on the Moon. It’s a decent show, though not as good as some other offerings from Apple TV+, like For All Mankind.
(Image credit: YouTube)
LOLA
LOLA, from director Andrew Legge, is a “found footage” movie about two girls in German-occupied England who invent a device that can pick up radio waves in the future. It’s a low-budget indie that can be tough to find, but is really well done, even if you’re not into the found footage genre.
(Image credit: BBC)
An Englishman’s Castle
Way back in 1978, a British TV show called An Englishman’s Castle explored what life would be like if Germany had won World War II and the country was ruled by a collaborationist government in 1940. That is the backdrop for the show as the main character discovers more and more about the truth of what is really going on.
(Image credit: Warner Bros. Pictures)
Wild Wild West
Wild Wild West is often derided for how bad it is, and…it’s not great. However, it definitely belongs on this list. As much as I love the idea of a steampunk version of history, this movie could have been so much cooler if it had been done right. Will Smith and Kevin Kline are good, and the production design is awesome. There’s just something lacking from the story. It feels way too forced to fit the design of the movie.
(Image credit: Freeform)
Motherland: Fort Salem
This one is unique because the diverging timeline begins after the Salem witch trials in the 17th Century. Motherland: Fort Salem is a TV show set in the present day, but with a very different history, making witches powerful members of society.
Law & Order: SVU is less than two months away from returning to NBC in the 2025 TV schedule for Season 27, and attentive fans have known for a while that cast changes are coming. Kelli Giddish is returning to play Amanda Rollins as a series regular again, but two regulars were also cut: Octavio Pisano as Velasco and Juliana Martinez as Silva. Now, a behind-the-scenes video of Season 27 reveals that one of those cut stars will be back after all, but I expected somebody different.
The video features most of the returning cast members, including Peter Scanavino, Kevin Kane, Aimé Donna Kelly, and of course Mariska Hargitay to the tune of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Lockjaw.” (Ice-T is missing from the video, but he confirmed his “Fd up” return for Season 27 on X.) Take a look at the surprise addition to the returning regulars:
E! News confirms that he’s just coming back to wrap up Velasco’s arc in the Season 27 premiere. Ultimately, it seems that SVU is giving Velasco the same treatment as Kat (Jamie Gray Hyder) and Garland (Demore Barnes) when they were cut between Seasons 22 and 23. Both actors returned for the Season 23 premiere. Somewhat ironically, Octavio Pisano’s Velasco was brought in as Kat’s replacement.
While NBC has not yet released any teases for what exactly the Season 27 premiere will be about with Velasco in the mix, the network did recently reveal the premiere date: Thursday, September 25 at 9 p.m. ET. The first episode of the season follows the milestone Season 25 premiere of Law & Order, which will air without Mehcad Brooks after his departure at 8 p.m. ET, and Law & Order: Organized Crime in its return to NBC at 10 p.m. ET.
This isn’t a case of Organized Crime being renewed for Season 6 and brought back to its old slot with new episodes after SVU, but rather NBC airing episodes that already released on Peacock. Perhaps it’s a good sign that OC is still in the running for a Season 6 renewal. In the remaining weeks before Law & Order Thursdays return, you can revisit earlier episodes streaming with a Peacock subscription.
Chances are that if you fell in love with a dance sequence in a major movie over the past four decades, it was because of Kenny Ortega. The choreographer/director has worked on some of the best ’80s classics, like Dirty Dancing and, of course, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. John Hughes’ classic high school hooky comedy was actually Ortega’s first “directing assignment” in his early career.
Part of those duties included calming a nervous Matthew Broderick before filming the big Chicago parade sequence. So clearly the pressure was coming from a pretty relatable place. When Kenny Ortega sat down with ET to discuss some of the his most notable achievements, he described those concerns, and how they were eventually settled, as follows:
Matthew, the first day I laid eyes on him was in a rehearsal. He was in a pair of sweats and a T-shirt, and he was a nervous wreck. He was like, ‘I’ve never danced before,’ and I was like, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’re gonna figure this out together.’ And he was the most charming, wonderful, sweet man to work with.
Paramount+ subscription) were fairly early in this still burgeoning career. Keep in mind, by that point his major claims to fame were the films WarGames and Ladyhawke.
movie moment to feature The Beatles’ cover of “Twist and Shout” not only needed Matthew Broderick to lip-sync and dance, he had to do it on an actual parade float in a sequence that needed to be nailed in one take.
Kenny Ortega, who was directing the second unit on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with 12 cameras in an actual Chicago parade, certainly had his work cut out for him on his end too. The results speak for themselves, as you’ll see in the clip below, featuring what’s now regarded as one of the best ‘80s movie music moments:
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off | Twist and Shout (Parade Scene) | Paramount Movies – YouTube
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Ferris Bueller may not be one of the “real heroes in ‘80s movies,” but he sure knew how to cut a rug. Landing the moment that saw Matthew Broderick helping to prove that 1986 was the best year for movies, Mr. Ortega’s skills would go on to land even more dancing feats, with Hocus Pocus and High School Musical awaiting him down the line. For those achievements and more, I think we all have to admit once again that Kenny Ortega is a righteous dude,
James Gunn, the co-head of DC Studios, has assured fans on more than one occasion that Robert Pattinson’s Batman will never appear in the DC Universe. This means that there is no chance of him ever crossing paths with David Corenswet’s Superman, who will have his own Batman to fight alongside (or against) at some point.
Because I do love the idea of Matt Reeves’ take on the Dark Knight existing in its own continuity, and for Gunn to have the freedom to create Elseworlds stories outside of the DCU, I have fully accepted that these two new iterations of DC Comics’ most iconic characters will never share the screen. However, that does not change the fact that I absolutely want to see them together in an upcoming DC movie. Allow me to explain…
(Image credit: DC / Warner Bros.)
Their Mismatched Dichotomy Would Make For A Fun Buddy Movie
common complaint about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is that the film makes the characters too tonally similar.
new 2025 movie, Superman, has been praised for depicting the title hero as far more hopeful and optimistic than more recent cinematic incarnations, while 2022’s The Batman was noted for presenting just about the darkest, moodiest Dark Knight yet. If I am not mistaken, throwing together two people with dramatically differing personalities is the formula for the best buddy cop movies ever, and this could likely be no exception.
(Image credit: DC / Warner Bros.)
Pattinson’s Batman Could Learn From Corenswet’s Optimism
An important point to keep in mind is that Robert Pattinson’s Batman and David Corenswet’s Superman share the same goal of making the world a better place, just with drastically different ways of going about it (and not just because one of them is not human). Bruce Wayne even realizes in The Batman’s ending that he would better serve Gotham as a symbol of hope instead of vengeance.
You know who could give Bats some great pointers on being more hopeful? You guessed it! Clark Kent, who even goes through a similar stage of disappointment as Batman in Superman when he discovers his parents may not have been who he thought they were, but comes out of it stronger than ever. As someone curious to see a “Battinson” who holds his head a little higher, I’d say a run-in with Supes might be in order.
(Image credit: DC / Warner Bros.)
I’m Curious To See Pattinson’s Batman Fight Something Otherwordly With Superman
One reason why The Batman is actually my all-time favorite live-action Batman movie is that unlike most of the Caped Crusader’s cinematic adventures, it is an old-fashioned detective story set in a gritty and astonishingly realistic world. That being said, because I love Robert Pattinson’s portrayal so much, I think it would also be really fun to see him take on some of the stranger foes in his rogues gallery, like Killer Croc or Poison Ivy, or even something from beyond Earth.
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As I see it, the best way to make sense of seeing this Batman in a fight of unusual circumstances is to have it start off as Superman’s problem. Then, through a series of incidents that involve Lex Luthor’s interdimensional portal, he would accidentally bring the action to Matt Reeves’ Gotham, where Supes and Bats would join forces and rely on each other’s best assets (the Dark Knight’s strategist skills and the Man of Steel’s… well, everything) and stop it once and for all. Honestly, that could be the plot of a great World’s Finest movie.
Then again, I’m sure I’ll have fun with whatever James Gunn and Peter Safran actually do end up coming up with for a World’s Finest adventure in the main DCU continuity. I also have faith in them to select a great choice for their official Batman (though it better be Alan Ritchson). Maybe, if not an upcoming superhero movie, Pattinson’s Batman and Corenswet’s Superman could cross paths in a decent fan film or one-shot comic book, which might be close enough for me.
The Legend of Vox Machina brought Critical Role’s first Dungeons & Dragons game to animation for anybody with a Prime Video subscription back in 2022, and now the company of voice actors are bringing their second campaign to the small screen before the end of the 2025 TV schedule. Called The Mighty Nein, a new sneak peek shows that a similar animation style doesn’t mean that this will be Legend of Vox Machina 2.0. As somebody without much background on the Mighty Nein campaign other than what I gleaned while researching Tusk Love, I’m pretty sure I already have a favorite.
(Image credit: Prime Video)
Prime Video’s The Mighty Nein
Major updates on The Mighty Nein were announced as part of Critical Role’s Prime Video panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2025, including a big treat for fans of the campaign who have been waiting years for the animated adaptation. The series will premiere Season 1 on November 19, and the reveals confirm that The Legend of Vox Machina wasn’t the only show from the company that could recruit big names as guest stars.
Alan Cumming, Tim McGraw, Anika Noni Rose, Ming-Na Wen, Auli’i Cravalho, Rahul Kohli, Robbie Daymond, and Jonathan Frakes. With guests like country superstar Tim McGraw and Disney movie musical vets Anika Noni Rose and Auli’i Cravalho, I have to wonder if The Mighty Nein has found ways to include original songs without having a bard on the team, like Vox Machina’s Scanlan (Sam Riegel). The misfits join forces to try and save the realm when The Beacon, a powerful arcane weapon, falls into the wrong hands.
true to LOVM style – voicing many, many characters.. Now, if I was picking my favorite character based on nothing but name, I’d probably have to go with Mollymauk Tealeaf, but the sneak peek has me choosing somebody else on more substance than a whimsical name.
Take a look:
The Mighty Nein – S1 Sneak Peek | Prime Video – YouTube
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I’m not sure if this is a snippet from an episode of The Mighty Nein or an in medias res opening to the series similar to what Critical Role did with The Legend of Vox Machina in a tavern, but I do know who made me laugh the most and therefore became my favorite character.
(Image credit: Prime Video)
I Already Love Caleb Widogast
Have I magically picked up all the background info about the Mighty Nein – or Sensual Seven – based on less than two minutes of a sneak peek, which doesn’t even feature Ashley Johnson’s Yasha? I have not, and the cast is showing off a variety of different accents than their Vox Machina characters. It is definitely enough for me to understand why there was so much of Jester involved in the packaging of Tusk Love, but my favorite? That would be Caleb.
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Characters like Jester and Nott seem like they’ve been set up to be the most comedic characters, but the one who actually got me to laugh out loud was Caleb. I think that Liam O’Brien may be speaking real-life German rather than an original language to Critical Role, but I’m also pretty confident that Caleb isn’t going to spend the whole series speaking in subtitles.
A seemingly straight man character speaking a different language just to avoid interrogation while goofier characters cause a scene? I’m in. Plus, if that is real German, the group’s name basically means “Mighty No,” which is also funny.
Will I still favor Caleb when The Mighty Nein premieres? Only time will tell, but Critical Role fans can look forward to the new series before the end of the year, while The Legend of Vox Machina Season 4 won’t arrive until 2026. Mark your calendars for Wednesday, November 19 to see the Mighty Nein in action!
Shark Week is that time of year when viewers will tune into Discovery in droves to learn about sharks and/or see scientists have fun with them, a la Dancing with Sharks with Tom Bergeron in the 2025 TV schedule. Forrest Galante is a regular contributor, and he was back with the latest Alien Sharks installment this year, but that wasn’t all on Discovery for July 2025. He also hosted a new three-part series called Animals on Drugs. According to Galante when speaking with CinemaBlend, he has a lot more animals in mind to continue for a second season.
I tuned in for the three episodes of Animals on Drugs, which all aired on Discovery on July 28 and are available streaming now with an HBO Max subscription. As somebody who was always fascinated by the tale of Pablo Escobar’s cocaine hippos in Colombia and a regular viewer of Forrest Galante’s attempts to find alien sharks each year (even when orcas pose a problem), the show was a natural fit for me. When I spoke with the host, he explained what sets Animals on Drugs apart and makes it important beyond a somewhat sensationalist title:
I’ve done a lot of series at Discovery at this point. A lot of different specials, and this one’s really impactful because it’s loud, it’s silly in title, it’s very fun and Discovery-esque. But the reality of it is it breaks down a really large problem, which is human-wildlife conflict in a pharmaceutical conflict way, which is our drugs going down the toilet, our booze getting left out for bears to get into. Literally, the cocaine trade, inspiring in the world’s largest and most deadly invasive species. I mean, it’s a crazy, actually scientific show, and I’m excited for people to understand that side of it, the animal side of it, and our human consequences of what we do and how it affects the environment.
Shark Week special called Cocaine Sharks a couple years ago, also available streaming now on HBO Max.)
(Image credit: Warner Bros. Discovery)
This year’s installment of Alien Sharks proved that he definitely hasn’t run out of sharks to cover in his recurring series of specials focusing on very specific, lesser known shark species that are often in danger from human encroachment. With 2025’s Alien Sharks: Death Down Under taking him to the waters of Australia and involving the host injecting himself with shark venom, I had to ask: is it ever hard to find a new angle for a series of species? He explained:
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With over 500 incredible shark species on the planet, it’s not hard at all. What’s hard is getting Discovery to understand how we can keep showcasing more and more unique, unbelievable species. And it’s not that hard, because they keep doing it and I keep doing it, so it’s a great partnership, and I love it. I think Alien Sharks is just so wonderful because it allows us to bring these less recognized species of elasmobranch to the screen.
If you missed the wild ride of Shark Week 2025 or Animals on Drugs, you’re in luck with them all available on HBO Max. I went in not knowing what to expect from Animals on Drugs, interested but not really expecting that there could be more than those three species so affected by human pharmaceuticals that a full Discovery special could be focused on them. That just goes to show what I knew about… well, animals on drugs! Perhaps Galante will have the chance to cover more of those sixteen species he has in mind.
