EXPEND4BLES is now in theaters. And not in a good way. Watch my full review below, and for more be sure and subscribe to our podcast and youtube channel
This time around looking at Expendables 4. This is the fourth film in the franchise and I have to admit going into this I have never seen Expendables one, two or three. I think I’ve seen bits and pieces of one maybe two but I felt like I could go into four and be okay without having seen one two and three.
To be honest I was hoping that I would watch four and it would really encourage me to go back and watch one, two and three; sort of like the equalizer did. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago I saw Equalizer 3 and it immediately made me want to go back and watch one and two; it was so good. I was hoping I would have the same experience with Expendables 4.
No, I did not. I don’t know why the franchise is still going. I mean, I do know why. It’s a money maker, these people probably have fun making the films, people will go see it; so I get the concept of “that sort of why”, but of all the things to make I’m just not really sure why Expendables is still being done.
Even though I haven’t seen the films I know a little bit about what is going on with the production of the movies. In the first one this was a great concept. Sylvester Stallone got together with these older action star actors and put them all together in the same film.And it’s a cool concept to see the Dolph Lundgrens, the Arnold Schwarzenegger’s the Jet Li’s, and Stallone himself coming together and doing battle. It was just a really great concept, so I understand how cool that was.
Stallone directed the first one and again I’m assuming here it was probably the best one in the franchise. The first one and then everyone after that including four has had a different director. It never really bodes well to me when you have a franchise and you jump ship with your directors every time. I feel like you lose continuity, you lose some of the magic, the camaraderie that comes, the synergy. I know there are exceptions to those rules. I realize you can go, “uh well Matt you love the Harry Potter films and the Harry Potter films don’t always have the
same director”. Yes I know. I get that but at the same time some of the Harry Potter films like Prisoner of Azkaban are better overall film wise than the others. But that’s a whole totally different discussion.
I never like to really talk about spoilers. I can give you plot content but I don’t like to really talk a lot about what happens twist-wise in a film. I will only say that if you look at the poster a dead giveaway is the fact that Jason Statham has top billing now and in all the other Expendable films Sylvester Stallone has had top billing. This time around it’s Jason Statham that he is the main one driving Expendables 4. I haven’t seen the other three so maybe it’s the same there. I just
know that I see that the top billing has changed so in my mind something is different there.
Stallone for reasons that the plot brings about isn’t in this one nearly as much as everybody else. He sort of checks in and does some things and then kind of has to go do his own thing. So I don’t know if that’s just because he’s tired and he didn’t really want to be involved as much, but he knew that the franchise was a fun franchise to do so they kind of wrote the story the way they needed to. If Jason (Christmas) is sort of taking over that role that Stallone’s Ross used to do? Anyway it is a lot of Statham which helped the film as much as it could be helped.
As far as characters, you have 50 Cent in here, Megan Fox, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Sylvester Stallone.. I think those are probably the go-to’s that you see in the other films. Andy Garcia is in this one who I love. I think he can do any role and it brings another element to it. He does what he can with this script. Nothing that happens in this film is Andy Garcia’s fault. Actually, it’s no cast member’s fault for anything that happens in this film.
I watched this in a theater of about four or five people.Lluckily for me there were a couple of other guys in the theater who loved the franchise and obviously have seen the first three. There were things that happened in four where they would just get visibly and audibly excited. It was fun to watch them. So fans of one, two and three might take a little bit more from this one than I did. It just sort of depends on what you’re used to. Maybe I went into this with high expectations. Maybe I oversold it in my own head.
The trailer makes it look like a lot of fun with a lot of jokes, a lot of poking at us old guys; this should be fun. But it was just not good. If you just break it down to the core essence of filmmaking it’s not well done. It’s a horrible script, the dialogue is chunky and out of place,even the actors delivering it seem like they don’t really know why they’re delivering the lines. I don’t necessarily want to always blame the director but I think Scott Waul probably is to blame for a lot of this. These guys are seasoned actors. You know what they can do but they didn’t do it here. I think a lot of that came down to the horrible script.
I don’t know how they filmed it but it was so bad. There were literal scenes where I was looking at this going, am I watching a pre-screening? Have they not done the effects yet? Did somehow one of the raw copies get sent to my theater and I’m watching it before it was actually polished up? There are scenes where it is the most horrible green screen effects that they’re doing where it’s so obvious that these people are not in the moment in which you’re trying to
tell us they are in. It was so blatantly bad that it took me out of the moment so many times and I was like this is ridiculous. You take how bad it looks, the horrible script, the jokes fell flat; it’s like
the characters didn’t even believe the jokes.
Everything just feels forced and fake. When Megan Fox’s boobs are the most real thing in the film you know there’s nothing real there. Yes there’s lots of action. Is it good action? Some of it is, most of it isn’t. The weak story, horrible plot lines, terrible effects… This is not a good film. I wanted the same feeling I got from Equalizer 3 as far as making me want to go back and watch the other ones. And in this one I just didn’t.
The tagline for Expendables, they’re the last team called when everything else is gone. This is the last film I would watch if there was nothing else left to watch. Actually, i would just read a book.
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