The Expendables (Franchise)

One missed opportunity in the series was having the Expendables go up against a team of bad guys played by recognizable action stars. The first movie sort of did that, but all of them basically amount to a whole team of heroes vs one or two recognizable villains and a bunch of disposable henchmen.

Edited by GrandmasterKiramidHead on Oct 2nd 2023 at 11:20:58 AM

I think that this franchise was relying on the star power of the big-name actors to keep itself going. Unfortunately, what this franchise has shown me is that it doesn't matter if you have a lot of big-name actors in the film. If the scripts aren't written very well, then the movies will flop, regardless of who's in the movies.

The third movie at least gets credit for trying to bank on both Harrison Ford being brought in and Mel Gibson being the villain—even with the rating that was supposed to draw in a bigger audience of appeal and ended up cutting the franchise off by the legs instead.

Not to say the third one's terrible, it's not. Does the Unrated version—if there is one—make it any better though?

I wonder if they ever tried to cast any James Bond actors. Moore and Connery are dead now (and were too old when the Expendables series started), Lazenby and Dalton are also too old, but Pierce Brosnan may have worked.

They need Schwarzenegger back if he'll come back and they probably should retain Stallone for background too. What hurt his role in this one was for one thing barely being in it. For another, it was that everyone figured he'd die early on in the movie too—and when he didn't, what they did to keep him from dying was so batshit insane no one could support it.