By the third film, the "Expendables" series has become a veritable action star version of the Avengers, and it has the energy to gather the world's action fans. Among the stamp collections of The Expendables 3, Harrison Ford, Antonio Banderas, Mel Gibson, Kelsey Grammer, Wesley Snipes, Kenan Lutz, Yoda Rousey et al. Needless to say the first three, the latter ones are relatively unfamiliar. Kelsey is not an action star, but his acting skills can instantly kill the rough men of the death squad. In recent years, he has played supporting roles in blockbusters such as the "X-Men" series. The charm in the American TV series "The Windy City"; Wesley has acted in the "Blade Warrior" series; Kenan is a small fresh meat actor, starred in the "Twilight" series, and starred in the slag version of "Hercules" ; Female member Yoda is an MMA fighting star and has no previous experience on the screen.
For a movie that sells the feelings of an action movie, the addition of a former action star is a new selling point. But this brings a trouble. Every actor must have a role in the scene. In order to take care of the actors, the director has to share the role of each person equally. The sudden increase in the length of the film is only an external reaction, and the internal rhythm is also damaged. Mel Gibson plays the villain that must exist. He pretends to be fierce and brutal, and can't hide the tiredness of his precarious career; Harrison Ford, with silver hair, seems to be just to reproduce the "Star Wars" flying meme ; Antonio Banderas has a lot of roles, with a rhetorical model learned from B-movie director Robert Rodriguez, and acts as the chief joke of the whole film with exaggerated babble; Wesley Snipes brought the knife-playing skills of "Blade Warrior" to the death squad. As for the newcomers, it doesn't affect the overall situation. Most of them are only responsible for supporting the old guys and contributing a little bit of box office attraction with unknown effect.
Simplicity and rudeness are the key words of the entire series. As the core creator, Stallone leads a group of superstars whose action careers are coming to an end, posing with a hard and rough posture, and bombarding the last hormonal cannonball naked. "The Expendables 3" still has nothing to do with sophistication, but there is a kind of awkwardness that is more complicated than the first two. The rhythm of the first two parts is simple and crisp. At the beginning, they received a task or encountered trouble, then called the members, and then killed the villain; in the third part, in a different position and again, Stallone and his partners played "emotional". "Tug-of-war": The mission is too dangerous, don't let it go, go, or don't let it go, or have to go, of course, in the end, you all go. At the same time, the plot of summoning new members took a lot of space. Although there are bridges such as Banderas being funny, Jet Li and Schwarzenegger being involved, and the stupidity of the tough guys is also a bit stupid, but due to the lack of effective dramatic effects, the seemingly compact and tense plot seems too long. , can not make people continue to invest with great interest.
When attention is taken away from Stallone's male bomb, "The Expendables 3" reveals another feature of the series: it's just a lie about tough guys. In this excessive lust, the hormonal cannonballs are obviously just an illusion of the void, and under the influence of nostalgia and respect for the elderly, the adrenaline pretends to churn. Hardcore action and the age of the actors are the natural enemies, and the young body will give the over-the-top action more difficult to argue legitimacy. The intense illusion created by editing and blasting may make young Stallones raise their middle fingers and say that this is shameful cheating and insults the glorious tradition of tough-guy action movies.
As smart as Stallone, of course, he knows the rules of the game well in the movie, and he knows that their group will eventually come to an end. But he refused to accept his fate. He was willing to dance with the times, and he was willing to collect debts from the past. Judging from the business results, he was successful. If there is still value left to extract, Stallone will definitely squeeze the last drop. He can make "Rocky" film six, let "First Blood" film five (currently there are four); together with Robert De Niro, he can sell a "Rocky vs. The cheap idea of "Angry Bull" ("Equally Closed"); and Schwarzenegger hated each other for 20 years, but in order not to be abandoned by the times, they could not hesitate to form a group to do "The Expendables" together, and the two also cooperated grandly for one. "The Golden Cicada Escape Plan".
Just like Rambo's tenacity to survive, Stallone, who was born in poverty, also has a strong desire to be unbeaten. If there is no major accident, the "Expendables" series will continue to shoot. The director of "The Expendables 3" is Patrick Hughes, who has so far been mediocre, and Stallone has been the talker of the series. The desire to survive and win is both admirable and uncomfortable. If survival and victory dominate everything, there will be a lack of persistence in style and taste. As a screenwriter or director, Stallone's early works, such as "Rocky" and "First Blood", have vivid movements and delicate textures born from reality, but now they are divorced from real experience, "The Expendables 3" only The simplicity and rudeness born from the type, as well as the over-consumption action feeling.
If a franchise succeeds only in the commercial dimension, its end of life may be nearing its end; if a movie has only emotion left, its quality must be hard to compliment. Continue to be stupid like "The Expendables 3", and in a few years, this series will be forgotten by most people, just like the mediocre movies of the 80s and 90s that we forget today, just like the fast-moving movies year after year. Concocted, fast-consumed, fast-forgotten fast food movies.
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