Extras! 09 May 2014

Welcome to The Extras! A daily dose of all the smaller movie related news, clips and just plain cool stuff that you might have missed!

• Did you check out the new trailer for Seth MacFarlane’s A Million Ways To Die in the West? Did you also find it as gut-bustingly hilarious as we did? Actually, don’t answer that. Clearly your opinion on this movie doesn’t carry much water around here. No, what we need are to hear the only opinions of the only group that counts when it comes to foul mouthed, raunchy, grossly violent, Western-comedies: Old people.

• And I hope you like comic book movies, because there’s a lot of news about to come your way. First up, Fox’s Fantastic Four reboot has officially added The Wire and House of Cards actor Reg E. Cathey to star as Dr. Franklin Storm, father to superheroes Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) and Sue Storm (Kate Mara). And before you ask: yes, he’s black.

So here’s how I figure this will play out: Franklin Storm will have Johnny (who is now black, much to a large portion of the internet’s ire) first, then possibly marry Sue Storm’s mother, making him her foster stepfather. So mixed races, but still siblings. That should calm the internet down, right? RIGHT??!!

• Despite a start rockier than Ben Grimm’s face, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has had a cracking run of late, ever since the events in Captain America: The Winter Soldier shook up their status quo. Whether as a result of this much improved form, or the fact that ABC and Marvel are both owned by Disney (I’m just saying), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has now officially been renewed for a second season.

On top of that ABC has also ordered to series Agent Carter to series. The show is a spinoff from Captain America: The First Avenger, having Hayley Atwell reprise her role as the WWII secret agent who eventually becomes a founding member of S.H.I.E.L.D. Here’s the show’s official blurb:

It’s 1946, and peace has dealt Peggy Carter a serious blow as she finds herself marginalized when the men return home from fighting abroad. Working for the covert SSR (Strategic Scientific Reserve), Peggy must balance doing administrative work and going on secret missions for Howard Stark all while trying to navigate life as a single woman in America, in the wake of losing the love of her life – Steve Rogers.

• Poster of the Day: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., because why not?

• And keeping things Marvel-lous… With the massive success that the comic book company’s film studio arm has been having, even traditionally genre-averse screen legends like Robert Redford are clamoring to star in their movies. But (I’m guessing) in some weird effort to prove that he’s not Robert Redford, Aaron Taylor-Johnson apparently didn’t want to play Quicksilver in Joss Whedon’s Avengers: Age of Ultron.

“[Joss Whedon] said to me, ‘Do you want to be in AVENGERS 2? There is a super hero I’m thinking of for you.’ The thing for me was for him, ‘Why add any more super heroes to this thing?’ He said, ‘No, there are these two characters that I want to bring in to like f*ck with the Avengers and not be just an add on.’ He told me a little bit about the writing and I said that the only reason I would want to do it is if it is a character that can still stand out.” “You know, you’ve got five of the most awesome super heroes, ten I suppose, there are about ten Avengers now, and they are all movie stars. You’ve got such a huge cast, what the hell difference is it going to make if I come on the scene? So it was the character and that took about a year of going back and forth about it. It took a while but I’m super happy to be in that one.”

• Okay, one last bit of comic book related news for today, as we have the first official still image for NBC’s Constantine adaptation, which shows Welsh actor Matt Ryan as the titular chain smoking, trenchcoat enthusiast magic man, and Lucy Griffiths as Liv, a girl who can somehow see the supernatural nasties that normally stay hidden for most folks.

• So a caveman and a samurai walk into a robot movie… That’s not the start of a bad joke though, as director Michael Bay has revealed that veteran actors John Goodman and Ken Watanabe will be voicing Autobots in the upcoming Transformers: Age of Extinction.

• Ladies and gentlemen and Darryn, it’s official: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is the first Spider-Man film to be rated as Rotten. Yes, that’s right: Spider-Man 3 was more well liked. Let that one sink in for a bit.

(Also, I may lied about that whole “last comic book related piece of news” thing)

• Zac Efron broke his hand grabbing Dave Franco’s balls. There simply is no tactful way to say this.

• While Matt Damon is still busy flip flopping worse than a hippy’s footwear on whether or not he’ll return to the franchise, the sequel to the Jeremy Renner led spinoff, The Bourne Legacy, just got a major update. According to THR, The Fast and Furious franchise’s Justin Lin has been tapped to direct the new flick, while Andrew Baldwin – who’s worked on WB’s upcoming Logan’s Run remake – will be scripting.

On top of his current highly advanced secret agent skillset, expect Renner’s Aaron Cross to suddenly develop an affinity for street racing cars with lots of lights and bright paintjobs and a total disregard for the laws of physics.

• Dear ANC and DA, if these two mortal enemies can become friends, then why can’t you?

• One week from today sees Godzilla, the King of Monsters, making his first trip back to the big screen since the days when Matthew Broderick was still relevant. Based on the early buzz, the new Godzilla differs greatly from Roland Emmerich’s 1994 version, mainly through the way director Gareth Evans shows, or more accurately, barely shows the monster on-screen. This is a technique employed most recently to great effect in Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield, a movie I rewatched just a few weeks ago and still enjoy immensely.

But just because I like a movie, doesn’t mean people aren’t going to make fun of it (Waterworld, anyone?). So enter the guys at CinemaSins with their video of Everything Wrong With Cloverfield In 8 Minutes or Less.

If you have anything you would like to contribute to Extras, whether it be interesting stories, funny videos, or artistic photos of yourself in morally questionable poses, feel free to drop a mail to kervyn@themovies.co.za.

Last Updated: May 9, 2014