Home Entertainment Extras! Bill Nighy didn't want to be The Doctor, Vin Diesel talks Groot, John McClane is bored with explosions, Batman is Spider-Man, Spike Lee didn't get permission for Oldboy, and The Emperor strikes back?! Plus much more!

Extras! Bill Nighy didn't want to be The Doctor, Vin Diesel talks Groot, John McClane is bored with explosions, Batman is Spider-Man, Spike Lee didn't get permission for Oldboy, and The Emperor strikes back?! Plus much more!

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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!

There are many reasons why you shouldn’t buy bootleg DVD copies of movies. Now here is a new one to add to the list: Batman Begins may not quite be the story we all know and love. At least according to a hilariously bad plot synopsis seen on a Chinese bootleg of Chris Nolan’s first Batman film. One so bad, that the internet just had to turn it into a video.

BatmanBeginsChineseSynopsis1375630890-0

Right, hands up everybody that can’t look at clowns or play with freckled dolls anymore, because back in the 80’s and 90’s, Hollywood thought it would be cute to turn kid-friendly things into the stuff of nightmares? Don’t know what I mean, then check out this list of 9 Horror Movies That F–ked Us Up For Life.

Ooh, looks like somebody’s been a naughty boy. Or naughty Oldboy, to be precise. Spike Lee did an AMA on Reddit recently, and was asked about his English-language remake of Park Chan-Wook’s Oldboy and whether or not they they faced any pressure with remaking such a fan-favourite film. Lee revealed that they did, and actually wanted to get Park’s go-ahead first, and well….

“Before we started the shoot, Josh Brolin went to Park Chan-wook and asked for his blessing. He told Josh “you and Spike make your own film, don’t remake ours.” And that’s what we did.”

Speaking of Oldboy, here are a couple of new pics from the film that prove that Josh Brolin can grow a crazier beard than you.

Creative Screenwriting has a great and rather lengthy interview with Mark Bomback and Scott Frank, the two writers who were brought in consecutively to rewrite Chris McQuarrie’s script for The Wolverine. They discuss what the process is when rewriting another writer’s work, and also what it’s like to be rewritten or have some of their ideas get tossed out. Like, for example, Bomback actually wanted Rogue to feature quite a bit in The Wolverine. Also, old man Yamada was supposed to have her powers?

“I love Rogue and I just think that there’s something about this idea that Rogue is tremendously empathetic but incapable of safe human contact. That always moved me and I thought that’s what really got to the heart of what makes the X-Men franchise so unique. So I was trying to do something with Rogue in the script. I even had a set of ideas that the old man possessed a version of Rogue’s power and that was going to be indicated by a white stripe in his hair. Eventually it became very goofy, and I threw it out because I started realizing throughout the script that it became more problematic than cool. It’s no accident to me that in the first X-Men film the first two mutants that you really see who have a connection are Wolverine and Rogue. There’s something special between them, so I was trying to bring Rogue into it, but it just didn’t get there. I regretted there wasn’t a way to figure it out, but when I look at the film now, it would have stuck out if we tried to shoehorn her in there just because it was another character from the universe.”

Good call, Bomback. The Wolverine already has one completely superfluous mutant lady in Viper.

Are you suffering from a salt deficiency and need to take a whole lot of it urgently? Well then you might as well do it while reading this latest Star Wars: Episode VII rumour. This time we’re talking Ian McDiarmid’s Emperor Palpatine, who according to Latino Review’s sources, will be making a return in the new film. For those of wondering how the Emperor overcame his rather pesky death, well in the classic Expanded Universe comic, Star Wars: Dark Empire, it’s revealed that the Emperor had several clones of himself ordered before he bought it. But that’s apparently not how this rumour rolls:

“Palpatine comes back as a Force Ghost..like Obi Wan. (Sith Lords learned similar techniques, which in some cases allowed them to physically interact with their environment.)”

The source also indicates that it will be revealed that Palpatine had a secret Sith apprentice. Like I said, salt. Take it.

These new pics from Anchorman: The Legend Continues is kind of a big deal. Yes, I’m reusing that line from the last time I posted pics for Anchorman: The Legend Continues. Yes, I’m probably going to use it again in the future.

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Well, it’s kind of official now: Vin Diesel will definitely be playing a tree in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Diesel confirmed the heavily hinted news that he’ll be voicing the CG character of Groot, a member of a race of living trees, in the upcoming film when he spoke to LA Times about choosing the unconventional role.

“I’m an actor, [N]ot everything has to be the most obvious choice. And sometimes, the best thing you can do — as far as Steven Spielberg and his advice — is to defy expectations. So if everybody thinks you’re going to go for this one thing and you flip it entirely and go for the strangest Marvel character, it’s interesting. And when something is interesting, it’s inspiring.”

Diesel also said that despite the fact that he let the alien-tree-cat out the bag earlier than he was supposed to, he still has a good relationship with Marvel.

“The last thing they are is mad. I’m pretty open, but I have been secretive about this. I went to Comic-Con and I got blasted while I was on the Hall H panel for ‘Riddick.’ Someone asked a Marvel question. I couldn’t say anything because of that secrecy.”

With the insane amount of popularity it garners, it could be argued that the lead role in BBC’s Doctor Who, the longest running (and greatest) sci-fi show in Earth history, is the most coveted gig in British entertainment. Especially since people like recently cast 12th Doctor, Peter Capaldi, and the 10th Doctor, David Tennant, list the show as one of the reasons they started acting in the first place. But yet, not everybody wants the role, much to Capaldi’s advantage it seems, as it turns out that the role was first offered to Bill Nighy, who actually turned it down.

“I will say that I was approached. But I didn’t want to be the Doctor. No disrespect to ‘Doctor Who’ or anything, I just think that it comes with too much baggage.”

“[Peter Capaldi] is a marvelous actor. He’ll be very good as the Doctor. He’ll bring a lot of wit and dry humor. He’s elegant and he looks great.”

Damn. Now I really want to know what Nighy as the Doctor could have been like. Two things though: 1) Nighy is nearly a decade older than Capaldi, which means that the BBC really wanted to go mature for this incarnation of the Doctor, which is awesome. 2) Nighy, much like Capaldi, had also previously played a prominent role in an earlier episode (Nighy was the Van Gogh museum curator in Vincent and the Doctor).

I think pretty much everybody has at some point in time had a dream of them falling. Usually, it’s kind of scary. But that’s probably just because your dreams don’t have John Murphy’s “In The House, In A Heartbeat” as a soundtrack, making it as cool as this supercut from Plot Point Productions titled Gravity: A Falling Montage.

Bruce Willis has been acting kind of off lately. First there was that weird interview he gave while promoting RED 2, and then last week he apparently tried to nickel ‘n dime  Sylvester Stallone (okay, a whole lot of nickel ‘n dimes) on The Expendables 3. So what’s the deal? New brand of bath salts? Nope, he’s just bored with this whole action movie thing apparently.

“Explosions are one of the most boring parts of my job. When you have seen a few fireballs, it’s not exciting anymore. I know part of my audience enjoys the explosions, but to be honest, I’m a bit bored of it now.”

“I am very clear with who I am. I work in all sorts of films, but the action movies are the ones that generate the most revenue. I like to earn lots of money from those, but I do all types: small productions, megaprojects, medium sized, even science fiction.”

You know how Jim Carrey was all upset about the level of violence in Kick-Ass 2? Yeah, Warren Ellis, acclaimed comic book writer and friend of Mark Millar (on whose comic Kick-Ass is based) disagrees. Which is why he has gone and written an essay on Why We Need Violent Stories.

If you’re an old school gamer, then this last clip of the day is going to make you sad. But only because an 8-bit RPG version of classic sci-fi film Blade Runner doesn’t really exist. Damn you, Cinefix’s 8-bit Cinema, for getting my geeky hopes up!

Last Updated: August 15, 2013

5 Comments

  1. Hey Kervyn,

    Did you hear that Will Ferrell is also writing a book, as Ron Burgundy, which will be a tell-all about his life as a high class reporter? Titled “Let me off at the top! My classy life and other musings”, and it’ll release November 19th 2013.

    Reply

    • Kervyn Cloete

      August 15, 2013 at 20:09

      I did. Actually plan to have it in tomorrow’s Extras.

      Reply

      • Brian Murphy

        August 15, 2013 at 20:49

        Haha, awesome man, sorry for the spoiler then 🙂

        Reply

  2. Skyblue

    August 15, 2013 at 18:19

    I want that Blade Runner game to be real dammit.
    WTF is Bruce Willis smoking?

    Reply

  3. RinceThisandholiday

    August 15, 2013 at 18:32

    Another great write! Missed reading your stuff man!

    Reply

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