“In Norse mythology, Ragnarök is a series of future events, including a great battle, foretold to ultimately result in the death of a number of major figures (including the gods Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr, Heimdallr, and Loki), the occurrence of various natural disasters, and the subsequent submersion of the world in water.”
While Thor: Ragnarök still is a while away, there have been several updates recently, all following rumors of some hiccups in production. Around the beginning of the year we reported about the rumored, now confirmed, casting of Cate Blanchett as Hela the Goddess of Death. Mark Ruffalo is also confirmed as he reprises his role as Bruce Banner.
Kevin Smith is about to make everyone’s greatest desire a reality. Well, as long as that desire is to see Buckaroo Banzai and the Hong Kong Cavaliers finally take on the World Crime League. Yes, the promise that was made to all of us in 1984 will finally be fulfilled: Buckaroo Banzai is returning!
With those words, the first trailer to the Independence Day sequel had geeks hyperventilating in barely-suppressed “I told you so!” gasps. Fat fingers ached in trying to keep up sharing the video fast enough on social media. As of this writing, Independence Day: Resurgence has garnered over 16M views and 72k+ in likes on YouTube.
Since we are on the eve of the Roland Emmerich release of White House Down/Olympus Has Fallen 2.0/Die Hard 5.2/White House Explodes Yet Again, however you want to call the movie, it’s ample time to address the ID4 sequel. The director has been getting questions about the sequel and who’s coming back, who’s not, and the major news has come out: Will Smith will NOT be return to defend planet Earf.
According to Emmerich via the Hollywood Reporter, Will Smith won’t be coming back for the sequels ID ForeverPart I and Part II (get it, ID FORever, that’s so 2 Fast 2 Furious) and not because After Earth crapped its pants commercially and critically (seriously, why do a movie where Will Smith has to dial his charisma from a 10 back down to a 2), but because he’s too big. That’s right, he priced himself out of the action movie franchise that made him. According to Emmerich, the story concentrates on the younger generation that must learn to defend themselves from the alien reinforcements that come back to conquer Earth. Of course, that meant a concentration of younger (read: cheaper) stars for the movie so having Will Smith for a smaller role apparently meant the money wasn’t worth it to overshadow whoever else decided to come aboard. Which is understandable, and Will Smith wouldn’t agree to a smaller role most likely, seeing as he’s pretty picky about his roles, as evidenced with theDjango Unchained casting of Jamie Foxx. Regardless, Emmerich decided that he’s too much of a marquee name and it would be “too much”. Yes, because Roland Emmerich movies are usually defined by their subtlety.
However, who will be coming back is your favorite bicycle-riding, computer tech guy know-it-all, Jeff Goldblum and terrific speech giver and fighter pilot President Bill Pullman. According to Vulture, these dudes will be making a return because they need to cover rent. That and I imagine if that if my President was one of the fighter pilots that brought down one of the ships, he deserves a mention in the next few movies. That and I’m sure Goldblum will have some sort of speech about the environment and nuclear deterrents that will provide a subtle message about mistreating planet Earth. Or they just bridge the 20 year gap between the sequels. Who knows. It would be interesting if they bring back Mae Whitman (her?) to reprise her role as the President’s daughter. Heck, just bring back Adam Baldwin and I’d be perfectly content with that.
Regardless, this sequel is coming and I’m sure we’ll see more fun stuff get destroyed. Although I guess since the aliens destroyed everything the first time around, we’ll just have to wait and see on July 3rd, 2015 if they get to destroy the recreations of major landmarks. Just because it’s starting to get really redundant in seeing the White House destroyed over and over again… Bonus though, courtesy of YouTube user CinemaSins, you can experience ID4 all over again…now with glaring errors and commentary!
The MIB duo of Agent Jay and Agent Kay are back in action. When the world is threatened by an evil alien, Agent Jay travels back in time to 1969, where he teams up with the younger Agent Kay to stop an evil villain named Boris from destroying the world in the future.
Independence Day is a movie I genuinely adored as a kid, and ironically love as an adult. It’s got all the best ingredients of a ’90s blockbuster – Will Smith, explosions, aliens and a dog jumping out of a fireball. Sure, there are some Grand Canyon-sized plot holes and, well, everything mentioned here, but it certainly is fun to watch aliens blow up cities.
Movies are art!
Gamma Squad reports that Roland Emmerich has been working on scripts for two back-to-back sequels to ID4 since 2009, and in that time Fox has been trying to wrangle Smith into returning to his old role, though Big Willie hasn’t been very receptive to their offers:
“Fox started working on structuring a deal to sign him back in early 2009, but the world’s last bankable action star was seeking $50 million to shoot both ID2 and ID3 back-to-back, and Fox balked at so large a price tag in combination with Emmerich’s own hefty salary demands to direct.”
While no one’s ready to give up on The Fresh Prince yet, Fox has stated they’re willing to go through with production with our without Smith, and that the two sequels will be able to function as standalone movies.
All of this is irrelevant, of course, unless they can bring back Jeff Goldblum…
Grizzly Bomb 