The Expendables 3 (Patrick Hughes)

[Irish]

http://i.imgur.com/bnivBEN.jpg?1

- IMDb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2333784/)
- Rotten Tomatoes (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_expendables_3/)
- Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expendables_3)

[Pop Trash]

Well this totally bombed. Even Let's Be Cops beat it at the BO.

[Henry Gale]

I just wonder how many people who really cared about this didn't just opt for the leak(s) (multiple versions eventually arose) instead.

Like, is the crossover between fans of these movies and purists of the theatrical experience that large? Gonna say naaah.

And even for those who would've never known about it being online and just wanted to go to the movies for an action movie, Guardians or Ninja Turtles (and maybe even Let's Be Cops, despite it being real bad) provided more unique options for potential entertainment than the third go-around of this.

[Irish]

Like, is the crossover between fans of these movies and purists of the theatrical experience that large? Gonna say naaah.

Great point. I see a few critics on twitter downplaying the piracy angle, but I'm not so sure. An HD version has been on torrent sites for three weeks now.

I got a huge kick out of this, but then my bar for this particular type of movie is low. I will get a huge kick out of anything that puts Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger on screen at the same time.

This installment is the same as the other two. The structure is almost identical. But #3 has no edge (blame PG13 for that). The story is non-existent. What surprised me most is that they balanced the humor and the unwieldy cast. Nearly everyone gets their little moment, with Wesley Snipes and Antonio Banderas knocking it out of the park. Both of them are funny and entertaining. Kelsey Grammar and Harrison Ford are out of place, but the movie uses their personas well (and exactly as you'd imagine it would). For most of the show, the humor is pitch perfect and well timed. They don't overdue it until the last thirty minutes, where they squeeze in every dumb and obvious joke possible.

The third act is dull, like an uninspired set piece from a bad Van Damme movie. An abandoned building, faceless bad guys, lots of automatic weapons fire and explosions. It's not well shot, everybody is wearing black, you can't tell who is who, and the stunt action set pieces are just bland.

I just waited for it to be over because there weren't any stakes. It's an Expendables movie so you know nobody is going to die. But still, even with the series becoming tired-- a huge kick. There's one joke between Sly and Arnold that made me cackle with glee, mostly because of Sly's delivery.

[Acapelli]

(blame PG13 for that)
basically the only reason i won't be seeing this in theaters, even though i saw the first two

told my brother about the pg-13 rating and he immediately lost all interest

[Dukefrukem]

It's a strange box office history.

The first movie (rated R) with $100 mil budget made $300 mil WW.

Second movie (rated R) with $80 mil budget made $250 mil WW.

Third movie (rated PG-13) with ?? budget made $15 mil opening weekend, prob won't break $100 mil WW.

[number8]

Budget's $90 mil.

[Pop Trash]

PG-13 was a pretty dumb decision. I doubt it was Sly who made that call. The demographics for these movies are males (duh) at probably 25 at the lowest end all the way to 60s-70s on the high end. It's a nostalgia fest for people who watched these guys in the 1980s. 16-year-olds didn't watch these guys.

[number8]

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

*shrug*

[Pop Trash]

Well that didn't pay off, Sly.

I was figuring it was a Lionsgate decision since Sly directed the last Rambo which was one of the most violent R-rated movies I've seen recently outside of the horror genre.

[TGM]

As a fan of the first two movies, I really didn't like this one. The novelty has completely worn off by this point. The toned down action is extremely noticeable throughout, and, as mentioned by Irish, the last big action sequence is a freaking chore to sit through, about 20 minutes of quick cutting between 10 different people fighting faceless baddies. One guy will throw a punch, then it'll quick cut to someone else firing a gun, then someone else jumping off a building, and it's relentless like this for a stupid amount of time. At some point during this sequence, there's apparently some sort of joke brewing between Antonio Banderas and the token female Expendable, except the set-up to the joke is lost in the mindless and incompressible quick cuts, leaving us with a punchline that falls flat at the end.

Speaking of Banderas, I actually didn't mind most of the new actors here, with Snipes and Grammer being stand outs (and Gibson straight up stealing the whole damn show), but I couldn't dig Banderas' character at all. He felt almost too cartoony here, and only furthered the watered-down feeling of this PG-13 Expendables outing. Banderas sold the hell out of the character, don't get me wrong. I just wasn't buying.

But the big thing that stood out to me with this movie was just how cheap the whole thing looked. Now I don't know how it was filmed or what equipment they used, but my lord, this thing looked like something that was made for TV, or straight to video or something. It had a distractingly cheap looking quality to it all throughout, and my friend I saw it with noticed this as well. No clue what was going on with this, but it was most notable during the action scenes, and took away even more from it on top of the blatant toning down.

I didn't completely hate it, though. It has its moments, and surprisingly, the stuff with Sly and Grammer going around gathering a new team is probably the highlight of the movie for me. That, or anytime Gibson's just going batshit insane. And though there are those groan-inducing inside jokes that this series is known for, it's mostly more reserved this time around than in prior installments though Arnold making a "choppah" reference, twice in the course of a five minute period was over-doing it a bit.

All in all though, gotta give this one a nay. The fun factor that made the first two enjoyable just isn't quite up to par time around.


There's one joke between Sly and Arnold that made me cackle with glee, mostly because of Sly's delivery.

Which one was that?

[Dukefrukem]

I thought Snipes looked great in this. I hope he gets some extra work because of it. They replaced CGI blood with CGI bullets. Humor is still there, but I gotta go with a Nay. There's just not much else going on here that interests me. Generic bullet spraying action scenes with some mild creativity here and there.

[Dukefrukem]

It's a strange box office history.

The first movie (rated R) with $100 mil budget made $300 mil WW.

Second movie (rated R) with $80 mil budget made $250 mil WW.

Third movie (rated PG-13) with ?? budget made $15 mil opening weekend, prob won't break $100 mil WW.

Heh, it ended up with $206 WW.

[Skitch]

I watched this. Remember The Expendables 1 & 2? Its like that. You're on board or you're not, and either way is acceptable. I'm on board, but I drink.

[Grouchy]

Eh. It's fun at the beginning, the recruitment sequences are a stand-out, but by the end I'd lost all interest. The final fight is just boring, as many of you seem to have noticed.