Yesterday the stars of The Expendables took the stage at Comic Con for their panel. It was a wild and fun affair with Terry Crews half standing on the table, ripping his shirt off and making his pecs dance. And that was just the beginning.
After the panel David Ehrlich of a cinematical.com put together a piece with his list of 10 things that he is thinking about going into the movie having seen the clips and trailers as well as listening to everyone talk about making the film.
Have a read and show David some love when you get a chance.
Enjoy!
1. Bruce Willis is a backseat director. Stallone shared an anecdote about how Willis freely disregarded Stallone's direction, choosing instead to bring his own spin to his scenes. At Carnegie Hall last year Kevin Smith told the crowd about how Willis was the final judge as to how a scene should play during Cop Out, and it seems like the bald-headed legend is similarly unafraid of exerting his will on Sly.
2. This might be one ugly film. Rambo's most recent iteration was a bloody success in part because Stallone was happy to step back and let the audience revel in the carnage - the action was clear and viewers never questioned whose entrails were flying where. The tunnel sequence Stallone showed during the panel was dark, dingy, and chaotic - a muddy and disconnected mess of jacked biceps and thick thighs...
3. Until Terry Crews and his rail gun ride to the rescue. Crews might have been the only member of the cast capable of lifting that thing, and he sure knows how to use it. It's a moment cribbed from the Rambo handbook, but when the bullets are sailing over Jet Li sweeping some guy's leg, it all just feels a bit better. Also, with "Stone Cold" Steve Austin as the villain rather than the oppressive Burmese junta of Stallone's last film, I predict that the film won't be quite so reserved with its wanton destruction.
4. No blood > Fake blood. It's a shame that a movie as baldly proud of relying on practical effects as The Expendables didn't elect to keep things old-fashioned when it comes to the red stuff. Unmistakably CG blood worked when Takeshi Kitano used it judiciously in 2003's Zatoichi re-boot, but here - where 3D and other newfangled techniques were eschewed in favor of letting the heft and tangibility of the action take hold - the weightless buckets of digital blood feel woefully out of place.
5. Jason Statham knows no fear. You know that trailer where Statham is strapped to the nose of an old propeller plane, manning a massive mounted machine gun as the aircraft passes speeds towards the jungle below? Well that really happened. Stallone claims that he found the plane "stuck on crates" in the jungle, and asked Statham if he wouldn't mind going on a ride at 200 M.P.H. Jason Statham did not become Jason Statham by declining such offers.
6. And that airplane sequence works. Statham risking life and limb would all have been for naught if Stallone hadn't captured the veracity and danger of the stunt, but he did. There's a balletic moment seen from above when Statham's plane begins its initial descent, and in that moment the big boys and their toys feel clicks in every which way and it feels as if you're watching Commando's infinitely more competent spiritual successor... it feels like a brief window into the golden age of brawny mayhem.
7. The Expendables has already proven a few action legends to be expendable. Stallone apparently approached the likes of Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal, both of whom rejected the project. But Stallone aimed for the heavens, and landed a dream team even without a few icons.
8. Dolph Lundgren needs to star in a Werner Herzog film. Perhaps one about a woodcutter who falls in love with a whale. There's got to be a booth here that would listen to a pitch like that.
9. The blu-ray is going to be incredible regardless of how the film turns out. Stallone made a crude and comprehensive documentary during the course of production, and I can only imagine the kind of stuff he caught with a cast like his. Fortunately, it seems like we won't have to imagine for long.
10. According to Sly, "The production designer forgot to make the padding for the bricks." The Expendables is gonna hurt.
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