The Expendables 2 - Anyone Keen?

[Admiral_Young]

According to this...an All Female "Expendables" is in the works, no names are attached.

http://collider.com/expendables-fema...8/#more-189838

[PKerr]

davejames wrote:

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Yeah same here. Maybe it's just that the novelty has worn off a little, but it felt like the first one was a bit more fun and badass somehow. There were also more varied locations, and more varied types of action.

This one all seemed to take place in the same murky environment, and most of it was just people shooting guns.

And dare I say it the cast is becoming too big?
In the first movie everyone had pretty equal screen time and their own nemesis so to speak, Expendables 2 just felt like a bunch of cameos and a bunch of random shooting.

[PKerr]

Admiral_Young wrote:

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According to this...an All Female "Expendables" is in the works, no names are attached.

http://collider.com/expendables-fema...8/#more-189838

Ughh..Pass.

[Agent Richard07]

Dumb shoot-em-up action movie full of clichéd tough guys, but it was great to see a lot of the biggest action stars from the last few decades together on-screen. I liked that Schwarzenegger and Willis got more screen time, and good for them for getting Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme. That's all this is about, isn't it? Getting the big names?

Anyway...

- When Van Damme said "What is this symbol? I like... symbol.", about a third of the audience laughed. They were laughing at him.

- The audience cheered when Chuck Norris appeared and his line about the snake also got a good laugh.

It's a shame we won't get to see Van Damme and Seagal together in one of these.

...Unless Van Damme's character has a twin brother.

[Donald Draper]

Agent Richard07 wrote:

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It's a shame we won't get to see Van Damme and Seagal together in one of these.

...Unless Van Damme's character has a twin brother.

Van Damme mentioned in an interview that him and Stallone have talked about his character having a good guy twin

[JarodRussell]

PKerr wrote:

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And dare I say it the cast is becoming too big?
In the first movie everyone had pretty equal screen time and their own nemesis so to speak, Expendables 2 just felt like a bunch of cameos and a bunch of random shooting.

It's becoming too big for 102 minutes runtime. All great ensemble films I know are at least 120-130 minutes.


It's kinda disappointing that they assemble all these great action stars, each of which have made incredible, ground breaking action films that shaped everything that came after, and they reduce it to a very dull, straight forward story, cameo characters and one liners. When it could have been so much more.

[Biffette]

I liked this movie a lot; I even liked it more than the first one. I disagree with a few of you here. I thought that while there were more characters the screen time was distributed more evenly between them this time, and I liked that it was a 100-ish minute movie; makes for tighter story editing imo. The boom-boom-boom straightforward plot and action were a wonderful nostalgic callback to watching these performers' repertoires in my youth. Spent about 60% of the movie lmao.


ETA: Dolph Lundgren still looks scary as shit.

[scnj]

Awful. The action was pedestrian, and the jokes weren't funny in the slightest. How long has it been since Chuck Norris jokes even approached clever? And do we really need to throw in references to previous movies? Every one of those references just served to remind me of a better movie. I wish I'd stayed home and rewatched Terminator, Die Hard, Rambo, or even frigging Delta Force. Holy hell, I hated this.

[Ethros]

Dumb fun. I enjoyed it a lot, definitely better than the first one.

Best line-

"You've been back enough, *I'll* be back!"
"Yippee ki yay"

[Trekker4747]

Expendables 2

My Grade: B+

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Not much to say on this one. I never really saw the first movie but went and saw this one on a whim because it looked like a good, popcorn fun, time at the theater. And it was.

But it's corny fun that you just have to sit back and enjoy and there's certainly plenty of times and moments in it where you just have to shrug and roll with it. There's many times in this movie where they're clearly winking and nudging at you.

Stallone is the leader of a rag-tag bunch of guys who go around as basically mercenaries for hire doing impossible missions and kicking ass while doing it. Along for the ride are Jason Statham, Terry Crews and others. Including someone whose fate can be read by even the most shadiest of psychics if they have seen any action movie ever.

Along the way Stallone and his Motley Crew run into and get the help of other 80s/90s action stars like Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis.

The movie is probably heavy on puns but they're puns I just couldn't help but giggle at and enjoy. Over the top action scenes, bad guys with worse aiming techniques than your average Storm Trooper and a villain plaid by none other than Jean-Claude Van Damme.

In short, just a good, fun, time in theaters.

[DarKush]

I do think that Expendables 2 was an improvement on the first film in many ways. However it's still not quite there yet. To be honest, I liked the villains in the first movie more. Outside of seeing Jean Claude, his character was very blank, with very simple motivations. I can live with simplicity, but I wish he had had better quips at least. But what I would've liked is him to be more quirky, more out there. With the first film, you got three main bad guys, the complete asshole in Eric Roberts, the brute in Stone Cold, and the eventually remorseful dictator. With part 2 you just had Jean Claude and he was solely motivated by money. I wish there had been something more there, and I wish we had got something of his back story.

I still think both films suffer from poorly written or realized characters. When there's no action they are a pretty dull bunch. Part 2 did add more lines for Terry Crews, finally using more of his comedic skills, but unfortunately the film wanted Dolph Lundgren to be the main comic relief, and his limited acting range prevented that. Despite that he did have a couple good lines and Sly got a very good one off on him about Chinese food. The film did show more of the banter between Sly and Statham, but at times it felt like the delivery was just too flat, or maybe it was the dialogue, because I think that both guys were into it, but the words just weren't there.

And it feels like they are holding back completely from 80's excess. In the bar scenes, where are the scantily clad bombshells sitting on each guy's lap? If this is supposed to be a totally male fantasy, both Expendables movies are a bit sexless. You got it a little with Mickey Rourke in the first one, but nothing really with this film. If anything these guys are monks or chaste monogamists. I think part of the issue is that they keep pairing Sly with younger, hot actresses and it feels more like a father-daughter relationship than anything that could be romantic or sexual. I think the next film needs a more mature actress, or actresses for love interests, or one love interest for Sly. Outside of the fine Charisma Carpenter (for Statham's character), I don't think the other guys are going to get any play.

Liam Hemsworth's Billy didn't play much of a role outside of being the new guy that they killed off, to motivate Sly to go against Jean Claude. They had to make it personal, but I think the Expendables already had the motivation to do that even without killing Billy off. I thought it was a waste of the character and the movie would've had more of an emotional punch if it had been a first film Expendable that was murdered. Perhaps even Mickey Rourke. Of course Jean Claude killing Billy to teach the Expendables a lesson didn't make much sense, he should've killed them all. Later in the film he tries to wipe out the slave labor he's been using for his plan, telling his flunky, "no loose ends", yet earlier he left the Expendables alive, with their weapons, and made sure to piss them off by killing their youngest, most innocent member? Way too convenient. As was the surprise appearances by Chuck Norris and later Arnold. The Bruce appearances made more sense in comparison.

I enjoyed the first five or ten minutes the best in this film. I was hoping we would get more explosive action like that throughout the film. There were some spots, but I felt the action in the first film felt a bit more bone crunching in spots.

Hey, I know I shouldn't expect much from these films, but I do think they would be better with a few things. It did live up to its charm with the older action stars, especially when Chuck Norris arrived. And he even did a Chuck Norris joke, which was pretty awesome. I just wish he had done it with a straight face because it would've really sold it. I think Arnold did the best with quips, perhaps in part because he got the most of them. Bruce was better in part 2 as well, though I wish he had done more quips. However he was playing an asshole so I can forgive him for that.

[DarthPipes]

Of course Jean Claude killing Billy to teach the Expendables a lesson didn't make much sense, he should've killed them all. Later in the film he tries to wipe out the slave labor he's been using for his plan, telling his flunky, "no loose ends", yet earlier he left the Expendables alive, with their weapons, and made sure to piss them off by killing their youngest, most innocent member? Way too convenient.

Yeah, this made no sense for me. I thought you were going to learn that he was working for someone who didn't want them killed. But it made no sense for him not to have killed them all.

[PKerr]

DarthPipes wrote:

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Yeah, this made no sense for me. I thought you were going to learn that he was working for someone who didn't want them killed. But it made no sense for him not to have killed them all.

I found that odd as well, let's leave alive the people that would give us the most trouble and give them even more reason to come after us.

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

The movie was tons of fun.
But there were oddities. There was one scene where they use a lot of mountain climbing equipment (notice how they never run out of equipment and always have a truck or plane when they need it?) to scale down a bluff to get a view of a bridge or something. However, the cliff is0--- what? -- ten feet. I could jump down it.

During the climactic duel, Van DAmm knocks down Stallone, and tehre is a cut to Stallone on a grated floor. Stallone gets up and is knocked down again three feet away. But they reuse the first insert shot of him on the grated floor.. My guess is they never got the second shot but the editor figured using the first shot would suffice.

While the movie was tons of fun, Ill be the chats between the main stars about making this film would be more fun to have seen than the film itself.

[FPAlpha]

August 30th, Friday night.. can't wait (last night my buddy repeatedly reminded me to keep that date open while we watched the new Batman movie ).

That'll be awesome.. and afterwards on to a few beers and having a good night out with the boys (sometimes you just don't want women around )