The Expendables 3 Characters- a critique by Chris Stuckmann

Full-text transcript of The Expendables review:

[00:00:08] Expendables three now, the first one was directed by Stallone himself, the second one by Simon West from Con Air Fame. The third one is directed by a new guy named Patrick Hughes. And it’s PG 13. To many fans dismay the summation of this plot is that an old rival, Mel Gibson to Stallone, shows up. And these guys created The Expendables together back in the day. They used to be buddies. They’re not anymore. They hate each other. And Stallone is getting older. He’s getting worried about his partner. So he decides to go out on his own with a whole bunch of newer young guys to try to take out Mel Gibson because he wants his older buddies to survive, I guess, and he wants to kill that the younger people first. Makes sense, right? No, I’m not one to automatically hate on a film in a franchise that’s usually rated R simply because it’s PG 13. There has been a film in the past that I thought did it not too bad, actually. Die Hard four is not the best die hard. But it was still pretty bad ass and it had a lot of good stunts and it certainly was better than Die Hard five. So in my opinion it can be done if certain things are handled correctly. However, in The Expendables three, it’s unfortunately not. Now I am a humongous fan of action movies. I’ve loved action movies my whole life. I love Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, all these guys.

[00:01:14] I really enjoy watching these guys kick ass. My problem with this movie is that these guys are just playing parodies of themselves. They’re very self-aware, which is kind of cool. And I understand they’re trying to go for a more silly vibe. But in the 80s, when Arnold said things like, you know, I’ll be back and run and get up now, like when he said those things, he actually meant it. He really meant that line. He wasn’t trying to be funny or silly. But now when he runs and burst into a room and goes, I gotta get to the javal, like, it’s just he’s just joking. He’s making fun of himself. And I don’t really like that as much. It kind of takes the fun away from it, even though I think they think they’re adding fun to it. I like when they just play a character, when they’re not just playing a parody of who they actually are as actors or performers, like in the second one. And Bruce Willis just goes, I’ll be back. You’ve been back enough. And then Arnold’s like, he became I’m like, oh, my gosh, did you guys just happen to watch Die Hard and Terminator off camera and now you’re just going to quote your lines? It just I don’t like how these films do that. That being said, there is a good aspect of this movie, in fact, an extremely good aspect to this movie.

[00:02:15] There’s two of them, in my opinion. For one, this movie actually does take a little bit more time with its characters. Some people may call that slow. There’s a little bit of buildup to some of the characters, though. They actually do give an opportunity for some character development in this movie, which is something I did really like. But hands down, the best part of this movie is the villain played by Mel Gibson. And a lot of that is due to the fact that when you take an actor at his level and you put him in with, you know, bodybuilders and wrestlers and Stallone, he’s going to look pretty damn good. And, my God, he was really good in this movie. And I mean, he was by far the series best villain. There is a truly great scene in this film and it struck in which Gibson explains why he is the way he is. I thought the scene was riveting. I really wish the rest of the film was like that. And that one scene gave us like a little hint at what these Expendables films could really be if they actually did try to make really good films and not just parodies or jokes of their former selves. Now, how’s the PG 13 action? Some of it is kind of awful. You can really tell that a lot of this movie has been chopped and edited to shit because there’s a lot of shots that just seem like they’re there for a split second where you see some guy fall down and you feel like they just completely cut out the first.

[00:03:23] Second there was a blood, you know, explosion out of his chest or whatever. They just cut that out. Now he’s on the ground. A lot of the stuff that looks like it was blood seems to have been digitally altered to look like dust or mist. And that’s one of my biggest complaints with this movie, is that it looks like the entire film was actually shot to be rated R, but now there’s all this CGI patchwork everywhere to kind of cover up the things that would make it rated R. Antonio Banderas in this film is on a level of oh my gosh, he might be Jar Jar Binks and or he might be funny. I think it’s a 50/50 split. Whether you’re going to go to this movie and think Antonio Banderas is annoying as hell or if you’re going to like him. I’ve always liked Antonio Banderas, but in this film, he kind of rides that fence where you just if he falls one way, he’s officially the Jar Jar Binks in this movie. Harrison Ford, I think, is a very good replacement over what Bruce Willis was giving to the movie, because Harrison Ford actually looks like he’s actually giving somewhat of a performance in this film. So that’s pretty cool. But for the most part, this film just seems like an attempt to finally make some money by making it PG 13 and by sidelining some of the characters and focusing more on other characters that we don’t really care about.

[00:04:20] It kind of ruined the movie as well, but they need to stop doing these parody things. If you’re going to make a good Expendables movie, just take these people, show a legitimate character and make it interesting. Don’t just make a whole bunch of jokes from your former careers. I’m going to give The Expendables three a C. It’s an entertaining film at times. However, it is also a boring film at times with a very good villain, a few good action sequences. But for the most part, you can just tell that a lot of it’s been glossed over by CGI, which is very, very unfortunate. Guys, if you do see Expendables three, let me know what you thought of it below. And as always, thank you so much for watching, guys. Also, my interviews are up with Sean Bean, Morris Chestnut and Ali Larter from the show Legends. They’re all on my channel. I was nervous as hell, but I did my best to maintain some professionalism. I hope you guys do check out those interviews. The links are in the description of this video below. Thank you so much, as always, for watching, guys. And if you like this, you can click right here and get stuck. Minimized.