Expend4bles

pixelburp wrote: »

The obsession with ratings is weird; it's not like splattering the screen with red is going to do wonders for the overall experience.

My own fundamental problem with the Expendable films is that they haven't been very good, regardless of the violence; subpar direction, subpar action, subpar script. And I don't mean 'plot': the dialogue has been pretty awful, trading wooden one-liners and lame winks to actors' more famous & quotable lines. I had to double-check, but Stallone has writing credit on all three films. Shane Black he ain't; if I want to hear lines from Arnie's older, better films, I'll just watch those instead.

Just to reference your point in bold;
I don't think anyone is implying that all were looking for is blood spattering the screen its that every part of the action is watered down in 3.

Heres one of the best scenes in Expendables 1 and is a prime example of why I loved the first 2 movies.

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Expendables is one of my favourite actions films of all time. Expendables 2 was disappointing but very much watchable; Expendables 3 was a dull turd with very few redeeming qualities. They really dropped the ball with that one, pandering to the young teenage market with the PG13 rating and the heavy focus on younger characters - and tellingly it did the worst of all three films at the box office by a large margin.

That above youtube clip is exactly what made Expendables so good - total balls to the wall gritty action - totally absent from the third film, it's just so bland, forgettable and generic beyond belief.

I would give Expendables 3 some minor let-off due to the fact that the movie was pirated to ****e also, but still it was crap as you pointed out

ps3lover wrote: »

American Sniper was online in DVD quality a few weeks before it came out and that did very well at the box office.

This is my favourite sequence in the series.

http://youtu.be/ZVUWZ9nv0WQ

Let's not forget that the director or The Expendables 3 is now doing The Raid remake, totally destroying any hope that that remake would be any good.

American Sniper is also a film which was targeted at older audiences, ones who traditionally don't torrent. Expendables 3 was when taken for what it was, a hell of a lot of fun and certainly undeserving of the drubbing it took. The problem with the series is not the rating, but rather the fact that the scripts seem like an afterthought. What they need to do with the series is write a script with merit and not simply try and shoehorn in nods to the star's previous roles. We don't need gratuitous violence, we need well made and choreographed set pieces and a decent story built around them. What so many people forget is that most of the beloved classic action films of the 80s would if released today be on the lower end of the rating system. Films like Olympus Has Fallen and The Last Stand were more visceral than the likes of Commando and yet you could take a 6 year old to see both in the cinema.

ps3lover wrote: »

You could take 6 year olds to see R rated movies in the 80s. I don't get that point at all.

The point is that we're not talking about the US rating system but rather the Irish one. If Commando was released today there's no way it would have an 18 cert in Irish cinemas, it would easily get a 15A cert meaning that pretty much anyone could see it. Saying that The Expendables needs to be more like the 80s action films is ridiculous as the only thing the series needs is a decent script behind it.