I wanted nothing more than to like The Expendables. But it's really hard to like something that was totally misrepresented in the press and most definitely in the Trailer. I was following this during Production and the PR machine that was behind this was making it sound like it was going to be a return to those awesome 80's Action Adventure flicks with the big guns that headlined them all. But when you really look at it, the movie is basically Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham. Even though Jet Li has 3rd billing here, he is barely in the movie at all. Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger did their cameos, which by the way was the best part of the entire film.  Steve Austin and Dolph Lundgren were wasted here. But I will give props to Mickey Rourke, who was about the only good thing in the movie that wasn't a cameo. But everything else was just a complete let down for me.

Even the Special FX here was horrible. It seemed like nothing was shot on set at all. The muzzle flares, blood squib shots, bullet hits and even the fire were all CGI crap. If you're going to go down that road, at least do it right. The FX were so shoddy that everything stood out like a sore thumb. Another problem I had was the editing, which was intentional chaotic to cover up the lack of fully realize choreography for the fight scenes to masked that they couldn't string enough moves together to warrant a wideshot that lasted longer than 10 seconds.

This is definitely a Skip and because of that, I will not be posting any ScreenCaps for this one. Not worth it.

Now, onto Expendables 2. As bad as the first one is, there is a part of me that is glad that the sequel is currently being filmed. Part of me is hoping they will correct all the flaws of the first one and do this one the right way....old school, meaning don't rely so heavily on FX shots. Film it like it was shot in the 80's and they could come up with something great.