The Expendables 2

There's a great line from 22 Jump Street. Do exactly what you did the last time. Don't change anything!

The Expendables 2 did pretty much just that but upped the ante, or tried to at least.

The premise of the Expendables is very much the same. Bady guy is doing bad things in a different country. The Expendables are hired to stop him. They go in, they shoot a lot of things, they kill the bad guy. Lots of fun is to be had.

This time, the bad guy is Jean Claude Van-Damme. He's an evil Mercenary using a small village in Bulgaria's mining to get plutonium and the CIA doesn't like that. The Expendables are originally brought in with a new member Maggie Chan (played by Yu Nan) to get a computer with the location of the plutonium.

Van Damme kills Liam Hemsworth, a new member of The Expendables and Silvester Stallone and the Expendables seek revenge and end up saving a Bulgarian town from the evil Jean Claude Van-Damme.

I'm sorry if Jean Claude Van-Damme killing Liam Hemsworth was some kind of spoiler but to be totally honest, I was really relieved when I saw it happen like that.

I don't care how badass you try and make him, I don't care how many Afghanistan war stories he had, Liam Hemsworth will never be as cool as Chris Hemsworth.

And I've gone on this rant before.

Its got to be tough being Liam Hemsworth. To have more of a pretty boy look compared to Chris who is freaking Thor. And he still looks like he's 18 years old. So I just don't buy it when you try and sell him as a Army Scout Sniper. He can shoot all the people he wants, Liam Hemsworth will never be cool enough to be in the Expendables.

That's why they killed him off, that's why nobody really cared when he died.

Now it created for some fun revenge action because while the rest of the world didn't really care that Liam Hemsworth was kick stabbed in the first half hour, apparently Sylvester Stallone cared and so we have the rampage to avenge Gale and again, save a small Bulgarian town.

Like I said before, the movie falls under the same formula. It does however, I think, do it better this time around.

The real draw of this movie is that its an 80s action movie made in 2012. You've got old action movie stars, 80's style action, and some one liners that just make the movie cheesy and epic at the same time.

The problem I had with the first Expendables was mainly due to the fact that these characters were so stock and ordinary that any of them could be replaced with the other and the movie really wouldn't change. You could have made Terry Crews the knife guy, Jet Li (who is barely in the second film) the shotgun guy and none of it would have changed. And the fact of the matter is, the core group of the Expendables really isn't that interesting of a group.

You've got Sylvester Stallone who's pretty entertaining besides the fact you can't understand half of what he's saying, but then you have boring Jason Statham, Terry Crews who doesn't get nearly enough screen time or Old Spice References, Dolf Lundgren who most people only know from Rocky 4, and that other guy, Randy Coulture or something. Besides Stallone and Statham, this core group really isn't that iconic of actors, they're just a funny group.

Now I could maybe understand the concern that you don't want too many stars to compete with each other but then I would challenge you with saying this.

The most fun parts of the movie was when other 80s action stars showed up for brief cameos or guest star roles.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Freaking Chuck Norris!

Its when these guys show up that the movie actually starts to have fun. These characters have such brief appearances that they give a one liner, shoot up a good number of bad guys, and then they go away.

I just wish that that was more of what the movie was. I don't care about Terry Crews or Dolf Lundgren developing as an iconic team, I want to see Chuck Norris one arm shoot a bunch of bad guys... the Entire movie!

One of the best parts of the movie is when the bad guys are in an airport doing bad guy things, and suddenly the glass of a window shatters and Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger all saunter forward shooting an automatic machine gun and just blowing people away. Who cares if they're clear and present targets that would be gunned down in a second, that scene was freaking awesome.

And that was the disappointment that came along with both Expendables. The movie just needs to have more fun with itself. Don't get me wrong, I think it is having fun with itself, but I think it can do more.

You're already having Chuck Norris walk on set, how serious of an action movie can you get here?

Now with that! Just because the Expendables is a funny weird joke, doesn't mean that the movie should be a big joke on purpose.

The video I'm putting a link to at the end of this will explain this point a little better but the reason these action heroes like Schwarzenegger and Willis were so good was because those movies in the 80s were so serious. Yes they were over the top and ridiculous, but the entire way, Willis kept on like the true 80s hero. While the movie was ridiculous, Willis being serious made us feel like this movie was serious and just freaking awesome.

So, if I had any complaints about this movie, it would be that they need to restructure the team into a group that is actually recognizable and a dream action movie team up film.

My dream Expendables team from what I've seen:

Stallone, Willis, Schwarzenegger, Norris, Jet Li, I guess Jason Statham (maybe switch him out with Mark Wahlberg), and Tom Cruise. My point here is that the team actually has to be that dream team... instead of Dolf Lundgren...

Or Vin Diesel! Put Vin Diesel in The Expendables 4 please!

My point is that if you put these big names in the trailer, have them actually be in the film, not just a cameo where Arnold Schwarzenegger says, "I'll be Back" shoots a guy and leaves, or Chuck Norris walks in, shoots a guy, and walks out with that western music in the background. Was it cool? Yes. Was it disappointing, yes! If you're going to have a cameo like that, don't tell me, just surprise me!

As far as villains go, Jean Claude Van-Damme nails it. Honestly, I don't think anything is really known about Van-Damme's character in this film. Maybe they had a scene where they explained who this guy was... I think I missed that scene if it happened, but my god, that guy must have had a ball with this film because while you don't know anything about him, Van-Damme portrays himself as just the most badass villain. He's a stock bad guy but he does it so will and he's so entertaining that I didn't care that I didn't know anything about him. He was just bad.

Is he incredibly memorable, no! But was he fun at the time, hell yes he was.

The movie itself, I think, just fixes a lot of what the first movie was not able to accomplish. It most likely had a bigger budget, more time committed from the big actors and it was able to do more. It fixed the problem of down time for the most part and it started to show the inclining that it was having more fun with the movie, if not a little bit too much.

There's no doubt in my mind that the Expendables knows what it is, its not trying to be a ground breaking drama filled movie. Its taking a bunch of action movie stars, giving them a gun and having them go nuts.

All I would ask is that if they're going to be recreating these action movies of the 80s, recreate them, don't parody them. Don't make The Expendables the Scary Movie of action movies because why would you get all these great action stars and not make something serious enough for it to be epic? Again, I'm not asking for an Oscar Winning action film here, I'm just asking for something really fun and 80's...y.

Now as far as films go, the movie is not good. The dialogue is complete shit, the story is generic and boring. But again, that's not what this movie set out to do. For what this movie is out to accomplish, it did it. I just think they can do it better.

Now the reason I watched the first two, is that I actually did see the 3rd one... sort of. I watched it in a Drive In... you never really watch movies at a Drive In. But I watched enough of it for me to actually want to see the entire movie. Am I going to pay full price to go see it? Probably not. But hopefully soon, you'll get the full review of The Expendables 3.

But those are my thoughts on the Expendables 2. What did you think? Am I over thinking this movie? Who is your dream Expendables team? Comment and Discuss below.

I'll leave you with this. I mentioned this video above. You may see some correlation between what is said in this one and the review but its some good ideas for the most part. Enjoy!