THE EXPENDABLES Post-Release Discussion - Page 5

Just got back from it. I loved it! I felt drained after some of the fight scenes, especially the one in the basement. Carpenter wasn't really needed, although she is still damn pretty, but then again we got the basketball court, so I guess it broke even on that score.

Hey, at least I'm referring to it in a negative context for once.

As many have noticed, there's almost no language in Expendables save Willis' dick-sucking line. And just because the violence is more over-the-top doesn't necessarily make it better, for me, because it looks so cheap. If it had looked better, I might've bought it enough to forget about it. But I don't think the instantly-disappearing blood splatters that make up the majority of Expendables' after-the-fact blood is any better than the equally magical "clouds" of vanishing dust blood added to LFoDH. Since they spend so much time removing or altering blood in movie trailers, it strikes me as always the wrong way to go about it to add blood for an Unrated version as opposed to deleting blood for the PG-13 version.

Yeah but the changes in the LFODH unrated cut are so minor, it isn't even worth talking about. EXPENDABLES does kind of seem like an INBETWEENER, though. Like they started off the shoot unsure about what the rating would be and then at some point the decision came down to make it R.

I agree, the additions are stupid. Quality of the film aside, while I would have absolutely wanted them to have made an R movie from the beginning, they have to live with the fact that they made a PG-13, and there's no faking otherwise. The only real Unrated edition is one short scene where Willis says "motherfucker" like five times and a smidgen of good old-fashioned Karo syrup blood in one fucking shot. It's bullshit. But yeah, I definitely think this is basically the same bullshit. Stallone gets gonzo-ier with his additions, which is a credit to him, but it's equally unsatisfying to me. Like I said in one of my first posts in here, if there's violence, I want to feel it. At least you feel that Gary Daniels kick.

Yeah and I heard they might have altered it and made it deeper in ADR and sound mix. Also remember he's supposed to be high on meth so would make sense he's not too articulate.

I just loved Dolph in this. He really has loads of charisma and it shows onscreen.

But the film just didn't feel fun to me. I didn't have a problem with Sly's script and there're a lot of little bits that I liked, but on the whole this didn't live up to the hype and all the talent in it.

I'll rate this on par with Cliffhanger. Definitely above D-Tox (Dina Meyer sure gets killed in a lot of films does she?)/Avenging Angelo though.

I found it funny that Sly wouldn't let poor Dolph hang a dead body, even though they just slaughtered the dude as well as killed a hundred of his friends.

My Take:

http://chud.com/articles/articles/24...LES/Page1.html

MMF BBW DP? In what capacity does this happen?

That's the risk when the hype gets out of hand far beyond the product it came from like in this case. And people came to expect way too much from a project that was made up along the way and thought through or calculated like it could have (which is not gonna be the case for the sequel).

I also think some of his attempts didn't live up to Sly's expectations either (kind of like Dolph's COMMAND PERFORMANCE actually) and he must have scratched his head more than one in the editing room...

I'm not surprised by that at all. Quite a few little things. But what's funny is how Dogs is a close to perfect example of getting the "Men on a Mission" bit right, yet Sly's movie gets so much wrong in that dept.

Nice Sam. It was almost like watching the movie again, but way more funny.

Enjoyable hokum sums this up about best. The whole thing fell kinda flat when limbs weren't taking leave of their bodily homes. Or buildings weren't going boom. The script was also inexcusably hollow with some of the poorest dialogue I've heard in a while.

I was hoping for a little more of "President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho" in Terry Crews's performance. Except when he was firing his super-shotgun, he felt very restrained and under-the-radar.

Overall, except for a few cool moments, I was pretty bored by this movie. Bummer, since I had a great time watching Rambo.

I didn't enjoy every action scene, but can't really find too many faults with the dialogue - at the risk of giving a "so bad it's good" defense, I think most of the obviously retarded lines (and plot points, the Statham/Carpenter relationship for one) were at the very least tongue-in-cheek and often 100% played for laughs. Rourke's monologue was something else, though, at once absolutley dumb and hilarious, but also strangely spooky and poignant at the same time - all in the delivery, I think. Nick's "fun time with old friends" seems like a fair enough assesment to me, and I do think Statham, Lundgren, Li, Crews (underused yeah, but have you seen how little screentime some of the Dirty Dozen guys got?) and Rourke all came through in a major way in that department.

Also loved the pandering soundtrack choices - CCR and "The Boys Are Back In Town"!

No kidding. Poor Trini Lopez didn't even get to die on-screen.

Just got a message from Mark Goldblatt, THE PUNISHER director himself, saying

Wait what? That's crazy cool. What do you do again?

Overall, mostly unremarkable but decent. It seriously picks up for the final stretch though. Standout parts? Stallone and Statham being sociopaths and going back and killing a pier full of soldiers just for the fun of it. The nicely thought and executed gag with Crewes going nuts with the shotgun in the corridor, especially the shot with Austin watching this from the side and just turning around and running. And some really snappy editing, mostly in Statham's fights. Nice rhythm.

But every unneeded attempt at poignancy fell completely flat. Especially Rourke slurring his "I'm talking about me but I'm actually talking about you" speech.

A French P.I.M.P.

I am a little confused here with all this talk about retarded dialogue and thin plots. What did you really expect? Case in point, COMMANDO and RAW DEAL have way more dumber scripts and they seem to be pretty well loved these days (as I can tell).

I get the feeling Stallone went about this the wrong way. He started off by making a simple Merc movie but didn't realize that by adding all these heavy Hitters, Hardcore Action fans would demand a lot more from him.

If you've got Jet Li and Gary Daniels,,,USE THEM. Don't waste their fight scene with by making just last a few seconds of disjointed editing.

I see very little discussion of the waterboarding scene here. With Stallone helpfully illustrating the procedure for us, what's the final take? Torture or not? ~~ makes u think ~~

Also, Eric Roberts doesn't get enough props.

Shit my cover's been blown!

I groaned when they brought out the waterboarding. It seems like every single film with an interrogation scene has it now. It feels overused to me.

I actually love that Rourke tried his best to inject some sincerity, some heart into the movie... but yeah. I think the poignancy thing worked nicely in Sly's last two (e.g. Rocky and Paulie talking about Adrian, and Rambo coming home to meet his father) but that was because we were talking about fucking Rocky and Rambo. Nobody gives a shit about Barney Ross.

I only watched the movie once so I may have missed it, but I think his famous "I OWN YOU!" from the trailers was missing. This must be rectified when the movie comes out on disc.

Haven't read through the posts yet, but I will.

This film is interesting for me. I was really looking forward to it, yet after the viewing it fell kind of flat. The writing isn't intended to be filled with depth and seems more concerned about action pieces. It's almost as if Stallone wanted "names" for this film, but didn't really care about giving them anything to do, as to create a wonderful marketing strategy to get "cheeks in the seats".

Now what is missing from this film besides a stronger narrative? Perhaps better action sequences? Perhaps any type of reason for me to care about these characters besides that fact that I love these actors in so many other films?

Perhaps Stallone really took "expendable" to the next level with this film, yet through juxtaposition. The characters in the narrative are "expendable", but the actors playing them are not, save perhaps Randy Couture and Steve Austin. I don't know if I would have had the same reaction to the trailers (excitement in seeing this film) had it not been for the names of Stallone, Statham, Li, Willis, Crewes, Rourke and Schwarzenegger. Even though a couple had nothing more than half a bit part, it was still enough to garner my interest. Maybe it goes even farther. The story itself is completely expendable, yet the legendary actors live on.

It was decent but it could've been so much better, christ this movie was loud, the explosions at the end were insane.

The only expendable I wanted more of was Jet Li (but then, I'm biased), the fact that he was saddled with the same Yin Yang must've irritated the hell out of him, no wonder he didn't show up to promote the movie. The Dolph vs Jet fight was pretty cool, the fact that it ended in a total bromance moment between Stallone and Lundgren was pretty funny.

For some reason I totally forget Gary Daniels was in this movie and kept thinking it was Ray Parks playing the brit, neck break was brutal.

Why the hell did they let Gunnar back in the team after he betrayed....aaaaah, who gives a shit.

Yeah, Gunnar's 'resurrection' and instant rehabilitation was the unintentional comedic highlight of the movie.

Eric getting a CGI knife through the chest was also hilarious. The A-Team was better though.

NathanW, Gunner was...Reborn, like a...Phoenix! As such, all his sins were burned off, hopefully including his drug addiction, so he will not be the one, Expendable....EXPENDABLE, when...The Expendables 2, Run n' Guns into theaters.

Jensen's coming back and changing sides totally makes sense with his mental instability of a "user".

The more I think about this movie, the more I wish I had an endless loop of Rourke's sad speech. Maybe every once in a while his bit about Statham's head tattoo could pop up too. That would make me happy.

My favorite part was when Rourke starts to tear up and then growls a little bit.
The Charlotte's Web tattoo ad-libbing was awful.

With a....a leg uhh......danglin.....
down yer neck?

Yeah, Rambo stomps this movie, and there's just long stretches where NOTHING of interest is going on. But when it gets down to business, fun is had. Which would be all well and good if this wasnt a movie that had a cast this promising.

And yeah, Lundgren's entire character and character arc are just hilarious.

"I shot you 6 inches above your heart. We cool?"
"Oh, yeah, I deserved it. Throw me some more of that sweet methadone, brother."

Justin Clark, Clearly, you and I saw a different film. Sure, there wasn't non-stop action, but, The Expendables, is...All Kinds Of Awesome! Even the...Allegedly slower parts of the film, are better than any other film in...2010!

"Damn it, Tool, I'm talking to Gunner!"

The spider tattoo thing wasn't ad libbed. It was in the script.

It's like poor Mick was trying to improvise but his brain was just not cooperating that day.

Have we talked about the bit after Mick's new girlfriend heads upstairs and even though Sly and Mickey are in the middle of a conversation, the camera ignores them to do a really sleazy/gratuitous full body checking out move on her? You can almost feel Dirty Old Man Barney nudging you in the ribs.

LOL at Oscar nominated screenwriter Sylvester Stallone then.

haha Wow Mickey's spider tattoo ramblings were written down on a page?
It really seemed like Rourke had no idea where he was going with that and was slowly making shit up as he went along.

I'm sure Felix has already mentioned this, but seeing Gary Daniels on the big screen was worth the price of admission itself.

I enjoyed the hell out of this movie, even with the gaping holes and ridiculous character arcs. I will be just fine, though, if Randy Couture never appears in another movie. Just terrible.

And yeah, I'm still trying to figure out how (and where) Statham hid all the knives he took into combat.

It's a pity though that the Gary Daniel vs Jet Li fight wasn't portrayed better.

Anyway, I've been sorta tracking the progress of The Expemdables overseas. No official figures as yet (Different Distributors), but currently its done about 50-60 Mil overseas so far. I suspect it should do over 160 Mil worldwide at the end of its run.

Potentially Lionsgate biggest film. Let's hope Sly learns his lessons from this one and gets someone to do the sequel better.

I laughed when it cut to Couture's grim face while Austin was burning alive.

Looked like he was hiding them in people's necks.

Son of a bitch that was a great moive. Not as good as Commando (but what film is?) but still a damn fun flick and a real old school 80's action movie.

Having recently watched Universal Solider again I loved that Dolph got to play batshit insane again, in fact I wish there had been more of him in the flick. Sort of a Bennett to Stallones Matrix if you will pardon another Commando reference.

Pretty much everything else I wanted to say has been covered, great film with a cast that seemed to be having a hell of a lot of fun.

Good times. Not as good as ROCKY BALBOA or RAMBO but still a lot of fun.

I agree that the dialogue wasn't exactly sophisticated wit but for some reason the actors pulled it off, especially Stallone, Statham, Li and Lundgren. If anyone else had been saying this stuff then it would fall flat but with these guys it worked. Maybe because we know them from so many other films.

I thought the fights were edited well, apart from maybe the Li vs Dolph fight. And Daniels could have been used more but I don't think he was available for very long.

Overall, flawed but enjoyable.

The most expensive Viagra commercial ever. Hell, that motorcycle montage is the sort of thing that plays while an announcer proclaims that if you have an erection lasting more than 4 hours, seek medical help.

Script, character interactions and story were terrible. Just terrible.

But it was fun. And it played very well in a packed theater. MVP goes to Dolph. He was great. Even if his character was a joke. And Jet Li, my god. What a terribly written character. You never understand what the fuck he's doing there.

Statham is very good. And he's never been better as an action leading man. He's the only one of the bunch that feels like a natural protégé to those guys.

Action was good, but it was shot a little too close. Couldn't really differentiate things. And all the 1 on 1 fights felt a little lacking.
Overall, i give it 3 out of 5 stars. But golden stars for the effort.

The movie of the decade, right next to RAMBO!!!!!

I'm ready for Expendables 2...the expantion continues

Not sure what that means, but I agree.