The Expendables - revisiting 80s action trash with Stallone, Statham, Li, Willis, Lundgren, Rourke, Austin, Trejo, Roberts

Ladies and gentlemen, the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhHL3lhBn5A

And Angel from Dexter as the evil South American dictator

And supposedly, Arnold makes a cameo.

That looks like awesome nonsense.

Too much Stallone.

roberts? chris or julia?

Eric.

that's who i meant, cheers. who tf is chris roberts?

oh nice this one has waterboarding

like point break!

no wait

I don't recognize half of those names... Statham? Austin? Trejo? Roberts? Were they action stars in the 80s?

original new kids on the block lineup

stallone looks like shit, movie looks great

okay there are two things that stand out, showing me this movie will be awesome:

- some dude catches a KNIFE TO THE FACE
- "BRING IT, HAPPY FEET."

when you say "catches" do you mean with his face?

YES

I just won free tickets which is PRECISELY the amount of money I wanted to spend to see this, hurray! Will report back on Thursday (SNEAK PREVIEW WAAAAAAUU)

I keep hearing the title in the way/tone as "The aristocrats!"

Based on the Onion AV Club review, I have to see this. This sentence alone . . . Freed from direct-to-DVD purgatory by the unexpected success of Rambo and Rocky Balboa, Stallone co-scripted, directs, and stars as the leader of an elite team of battle-hardened mercenaries so tough, one member — Statham — single-handedly beats up an entire basketball game in his free time.

how do you beat up a game

was this any good? Not hearing good things....

one member — Statham — single-handedly beats up an entire basketball game in his free time.

i think Stallone mind-melded with ILX on this one?!?

Jason Statham beating up guinea pigs would have been better.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, June 26, 2009 12:23 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

a man with a true vision ...

Will I be revealing great ignorance if I ask why in the poster Mickey Rourke has that silly cowboy hat?

just Mickey being his bad-ass self, i suppose?!?

jesus fuck it was bad.

this movie i mean.

a few moments were okay but nowhere near the number of good movie moments i need from a bad movie to find it worth it.

Did this have the same plot as the last Rambo (i.e. Rambo must save downtrodden third-worlders from vicious brutes)?

wasn't it foolhardy missionaries he was saving?

you could probably get drunk if you jsut took a shot every time sly stallone saves one of his buddies at the last second by shooting someone with a fucking pistol

you'd also get blackout drunk because there's liquor nearby and it probably dulls the fucking pain

terry crews makes this big stupid deal abotu how his gun is his girlfriend and then two scenes later drops it in an explosion and doesn't give a fuck

i mean, like, come on, shit like that is so fucking easy to get """"""right""""" (ie. follow through with your bullshit cliches) FUCK I HATED THIS

I dunno, that kind of sounds like how these characters would treat their girlfriends based on the trailer

also even if jet li's pushing 85 years old or whatever the fuck guy can still do his tricks good enough that you don't need every moment of him fighting being an out of focus out of frame 0.5 second fast cut

oh jsut you wait until you see how jason statham treats his girlfriend charisma carpenter -- os sly stallone treats his love interest who i don't even think had a fucknig name -- daughter of pretend noriega -- the writing for the women and the way the men deal with the women is straight up the room level

tbh your negative review is making me want to see this more as it appears it is EXACTLY what I thought it would be

THE ROOM WITH EXPLOSIONSS

oh there's also a close-up shot of mickey rourke blubbering about losing his soul presumably put in because sly was like "well shit the guy can act" so he decided he would write a heart-wrench old man ruing his uselessness scene which is at first kind of "oh hey this is interesting" and then you hear the words he's saying and you're like "well never mind" and then "gross i think a booger is coming out of mickey rourke's mouth" and then "i love that his name is tool this movie is stupid"

like you have no idea how massively you are selling this movie to me

NO. IDEA.

tbh your negative review is making me want to see this more as it appears it is EXACTLY what I thought it would be

― How could you forget the crazy hooker? (HI DERE), Friday, August 13, 2010 5:30 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

plus, mickey philosophizing in bad movies is like one of his hallmarks. ok, well it was his hallmark in harley davidson and the marlboro man.

here's the thing: if i had heard this negative review i would have wanted to see the movie more too -- the thing is i expected bad but i expected entertaining bad -- what i got was jsut bad. it's almost bad enough to be a train wreck, but not quite, so it's kind of just a... a kite wreck. kind of sad, and kind of lame, and kind of "who the fuck uses kites anymore this isn't the fucking 80s these kites can't fucking act in action movies anymore where the fuck is the jean claude van damme kite WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT"

yeah disappointment on every level is waht i am looknig for -- when one of the most genuinely funny lines in the movie is delivered by randy couture talknig about his cauliflower ears you know you're in trouble (fuck i am sellnig this movie again aren't i)

GOD DAMN IT YOU'RE ALL GOING TO GO SEE IT JUST GO SEE IT

DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU

one of the most genuinely funny lines in the movie is delivered by randy couture talknig about his cauliflower ears

SO EXCITED

hahaha "kite-wreck"

I feel your conundrum about how to explain how bad a movie it is without selling it. I just saw timecop.

points in timecop's favor:

- mia sara topless
- jcvd freezing a guy and then kicking him to pieces

Ill see it even if all it is is Sly and Company arguing for 200 minutes about how to conjugate the word "almorzar"

usually, though, the Magic of Jason Statham can make even awful movies great (see revolver and the entire crank series).

"whyncha let me doodle... like charlotte's web on your head"
this pipe is amazing
how many affectations can one man have

pretty certain this is the same plot as just cause 2
stallone LOVES having poor scrawny victims as set dressing and vaguely foreign bad guys
oh shit it's the cop from dexter and he's A BRUTAL MURDERERRRRRRR
I just saw Raid The Redemption and it had more complexity and mayhem in the first five minutes than this has in the first half hour

bruce willis as... MISTER CHURCH
oh shit arnie! he's wrinkly and shitty looking!
so much money in this church and so little talent on display
these line readings are astonishingly dumb, so bad they need sound effects to accentuate the point
"why don't we have dinner" "when" "in a thousand years" OOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooo sick burn

stallone has the weirdest wax face
willis acting like he was woken up to do this scene and needs to get back to sleep
hey surprise this is kinda shitty

i wish dolph had this movie to himself, he is definitely the high point
"we all know i wrestled in college"
what the fuck cauliflower ear soliloquy here
aw, male bonding to mississippi queen in an airplane be still my manly heart

ugh so many hokey just real folks shorts of villagers
"spanish" "who are you, zorro?" hahahah stallone, so smart in your writing
stone cold loves to overturn apple carts
are we STILL talking about strathan's fucking "relationship" there needs to be more killing here
late middle aged men behaving badly
thought the woman was gina gershon for a hot minute, no such luck. she mighta helped things

eh this sucks, letting it go

man trust me you are better off watching any one of the dozens and dozens of legitimately terrible, (unintentionally) hilarious, excessive, ultra-violent, corny, (unintentionally) surreal direct-to-video action movies of the actual 1980s. this is just some slick, bland, bait-and-switch nothing of a movie.

OTM. Sad that I even started this thread. Save your time and watch the Herzog/Cage Bad Lieutenant movie instead.

this movie is like someone luring you to housesit for them by offering you free all-you-can-drink beer and endless pizza and a use of a giant new tv and a hot tub and a super-comfy bed, but then once you get there you discover the beer is flat, the pizza is ellio's, the tv only plays qvc, the hot tub has a giant turd in it, and the bed is actually made of knives.

troo

lol strongo

it's like a hot guy/girl shitting in your mouth instead of doing the business, and you hate it but whenever you think about it you're like, how awesome would it have been if you had just done the business and they hadn't shat in your mouth.

that seemed funnier in my head. oy

i think it would be thinking "aaah! shit in my mouth!"

^ an exclamation of horror, not an imperative

that part where Stallone and Statham are flying away from the island, then decide fuck it let's bomb 'em and torch the place, and Stallone does that mini-fist pump, that was worth the $8.99

The Expendables 2 trailer got nearly constant applause and cheers when I went to the Avengers midnight show last night. Best reception of any trailer, including The Dark Knight. NB: Could be just a case Iof "lol Cleveland."

how do you not root for that movie

Fan-made trailer for E2:

http://youtu.be/W1RUH7DHFMk

"open a can of domestic violence and man up"

haha

you guys, I am someone who really, really loves dumb action movies, so it really pains me to say that I REALLY FUCKING HATED THIS MOVIE

this is me throughout the whole movie:

http://i1029.photobucket.com/albums/y353/rainerosewater/wil-smith-serious-face.jpg

this is me when Terry Crews shot his monster gun the first time:

http://gumbumper.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Will-Smith.png

this is me five minutes later

http://i1029.photobucket.com/albums/y353/rainerosewater/wil-smith-serious-face.jpg

how are you going to make a movie about a group who call themselves "the expendables" and then NOT KILL ANY OF THEM

Then there wouldn't be a sequel.

ideally they would kill 'em all off and replace them w/ progressively more obscure action stars w/ each movie.

or they get killed and then join the other expendables as extra body parts and then you get THE EXPANDABLES

Or you just get the shithead flunkies that you are designed to hate and therefore THE EXECRABLES.

ned I don't think you're having fun with this game

Nonsense.

you don't have to kill ALL of them

like, why is Dolph still alive

Randy Couture got shot, and he went "ooh ow" and winced for a nanosecond, then jumped up and resumed powerbombing fools, why didn't his ass bleed out

storywise, only Sly and Statham needed to survive, any 2 of the rest could have been cannon fodder and there are enough action ppl waiting in the wings to pad out a sequel with more cannon fodder (Keanu, Jason Patric, Nic Cage, Vin Diesel, Daniel Craig, Gerard Butler, Channing Tatum, lol TheBeef, Marky Mark, Matt Damon, basically anyone in Hollywood who isn't easily embarrassed)

Ving Rhames, was gonna say Michael Clarke Duncan but I didn't know about the heart attack :-(, whoever that martial arts dude who played Spawn was, Ray Park, Gina Carano, Linda Hamilton, Vivica (is) A. Fox, Will and Jada, Tommy Lee Grumpypants, Cantankerous Ford, Clint Raciallydodgywood, YOU COULD BASICALLY GET ANYONE

I mean, they could be all "THE EXPENDABLES 2, STARRING A POTTED CACTUS" and my response would be "kudos, that is a bold casting choice, I knew a potted cactus was a rising star"

instead they gave us Randy Couture whining about his ugly-ass ears

lol @ Clint Raciallydodgywood

literally the only good moment in expendables was statham and stallone deciding to strafe that dock, but i will see the living shit out of expendables 2

in summation, I think my feelings about this movie were best expressed by Millie Jackson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGJgyuAu6eo

this movie is like someone luring you to housesit for them by offering you free all-you-can-drink beer and endless pizza and a use of a giant new tv and a hot tub and a super-comfy bed, but then once you get there you discover the beer is flat, the pizza is ellio's, the tv only plays qvc, the hot tub has a giant turd in it, and the bed is actually made of knives.

― jesus christ (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Friday, May 4, 2012

killer post

Second movie is actually getting some okay reviews. Seems to be a little more self-aware this time.

Expendables 2 is absolutely terrible in every way except the one that actually matters, which is that it's insanely fun. Highly recommended!

Okay, this was much better than the first one. Much more self-aware, in a good way - most of Arnie's lines make fun of the movie itself, JCVD is surprisingly fun as the villain, Chuck Norris gets his own freakin' theme song and even makes a nod to Chuck Norris Facts, which has now come completely full circle. The cast is so big that you even forget who's in it, Randy Couture does practically nothing, Jet Li is hardly in it though he does get off one of the best/worst one-liners I've ever heard. Somewhere in the last 10-15 minutes it basically turns into a comedy. The first movie tended to take itself oddly seriously, no such problem here. For all the talk about Chuck Norris forcing this movie to retain a PG-13 rating, I mean, the first like, two minutes pretty much put that to rest.

I kept waiting for Arnold to tell Norris, "walkuhh I have aids". (he doesn't say this)
It was all pretty lifeless. Norris is more vibrant in that nordictrac infomercial.
There's a lot of exploding and fighting but only terry crews brings any joy to it.
Even the clever bits poking fun at dolphs real life Rhodes scholarship fall flat.

I do think the movie needed less Stallone and more Terry Crews, but it's Sly's movie
Overall I feel like the jokes were clever but there was a point where it could become too clever and break the 4th wall. If they're going to reference Dolph's scholarship or Arnie's past movies it almost has to be hamfisted. To know that the writers of this movie had any sense of subtlety would ruin it!

the movie felt very disappointing for its first half i feel. as soon as chuck norris shows up for the first time i found the movie got a lot more entertaining. but yeah, very hamfisted jokes but still quite a few of them work. stallone really does feel like the weak point in this movie - hated the way everyone felt the need to come and talk to him but first they'd ask him "hey can we talk". tbh tho i watched this less than a week ago and i can't remember that much from it except that i found it enjoyable enough.

I'd be happy with hamfisted but everyone was so low-energy it didn't even rise to that level.
The climactic battle sequence gags with willis and Arnold probably looked really good on paper but those guys refused to sell it at all.
I heard a stuntman died on this movie -- maybe it brought down everyone's spirits?
Stallone in particular looks genuinely forlorn and tired in every scene.

If Avi Lerner gets his way, "The Expendables 3" could come loaded with a slew of A-list actors.

The Hollywood producer has revealed that not only will Nicolas Cage appear in the potential threequel (ok, so Cage isn't quite the "A-lister" he once was), he's also been talking to Clint Eastwood and Harrison Ford.

“We’ve approached Clint Eastwood to be one of the guys, we’ve got a character in mind for him. We’re talking to Harrison Ford," said Lerner in an interview with Total Film. He then added: "[And we want] Wesley Snipes when he comes back from prison. I’ll give you one more name, we’ve got Nicolas Cage to play [one of the characters].”

Cage is such a perfect fit for this movie. He's the only actor I can think of who could sell the bizarre, awkward dialogue that fills the non-action scenes (you know, the five or so minutes where people aren't getting killed)

tbh I'm shocked Cage wasn't in the 2nd one (haven't seen it yet btw)

the movie felt very disappointing for its first half i feel. as soon as chuck norris shows up for the first time i found the movie got a lot more entertaining.

hah, i was totally on board with the first half and thought it turned into irredeemable dogshit as soon as norris showed up. the only way he should've been in this is as a bad guy who dolph and terry crews have to beat the fuck out of. then they play that mayan soccer game with his severed head

still, its mostly an improvement on the first one.

it would be an impressive feat to be worse than the first one!

scott adkins and van damme are totally wasted. adkins vs. statham should've been a marquee fight, but instead statham dispatches him in less than 30 seconds. and van damme, while awesome as hell in this, gets to be sly's punching bag. total ego move by stallone, who then gets the asian chick making wet eyes at him afterwards, like she could possibly be attracted to his california raisin lookin ass. arnie's wasted too, and the movie does him the additional disservice of acting like he's on the same level as bitch ass chuck norris. get the fuck outta here with that.

i did find it funny that jet li literally parachuted out of the movie

That Stallone/JCVD fight was such a wasted opportunity. Like I know this is Sly's movie and all but he's also the focus of all the scenes that don't really work. I expected to roll my eyes a lot at this but the "His name was Billy!" line was so damn obvious. I do think that Norris should have been used more, this movie is totally a crowd-pleaser and nothing else, and somehow Chuck Norris, at 72, is somehow the only really culturally relevant guy in the movie (if the crowd reactions were any indication). I wonder if he really didn't want to be involved much, but it's like c'mon, just one roundhouse for old times sake!

Also lol @ Van Damme wearing his sunglasses in a dimly lit underground mine