Saw the film last night. I'd say it was the weakest of the three, but Mel Gibson is the highlight of this movie. Also having Ford there was a definite improvement over Willis. I had to chuckle with the "Church is out of the picture" line.
The problem with this movie is there's way too much going on and the plot is basically a rehash of the second film. Bad guy X, shoots and expendable and Barney is out for revenge.
Again Gibson makes the film shine, and I thought he's far and away the best bad guy of the series. Which makes you really wish he had survived the film. Actually, I think it would be funny if they somehow brought him back (maybe he had another bullet proof vest under his shirt), or maybe and even worse twin brother? With the over the top antics of the series I don't think people would have a problem. I doubt it will happen, but he was just so much better than Van Damme and Eric Roberts.
Kudos also go out to Antonio Banderas and Kelsey Grammer who I thought brought a lot of good chemistry and humor to the film. I hope they are both brought back in any future films.
The big disappointment in this movie is with the young expendables. The whole plot point seemed superfluous. They gather this new young team because Barney doesn't want his old team to die, then they get captured, and he goes back with the old team after vowing he wouldn't take them over to die. I don't know who in the hell wrote that ****, but it was terrible, and that's why the critics ripped this one after giving Expendables 2 fairly decent ratings.
Plus the young Expendables plotline pretty much put a damper on the exciting opening of breaking Wesley Snipes out of prison.
Also having a large section of the film where Christmas is out of the plot, left the film a little dull. Some of the great moments from the other films were from the great chemistry between the two.
The big problem is this film will far and away be the worst performing, and is going to pull in less than 50M domestic.
Also absolutely stupid decision to make this PG-13. Come on folks this series is aimed at the X-box crowd, who won't give a game a good rating unless it has sufficient blood splatter.
My overall feeling on this movie is disappointment, because with Ford and Gibson joining the team, this should have been one for the ages, where it really landed with a dud. No doubt the enormous success of Guardians of the Galaxy which is rapidly approaching the top domestic film of the year, and surprise family hit of Ninja Turtles, hurt the E3's box office take.
And let's not sugar coat this, it's a 46% drop from E2 and 53% below the first Expendables! This film may kill the franchise, but I hope not. The producers need to be honest with themselves. The attempt to bring in a younger audience by bringing in a new band of Expendables completely failed. According to Box office mojo 66% of the viewing audience was over 25 (which again shows what utter crap it was to tone down the over the top blood splatter from the first two films). What's ironic is that in E2 bringing in Liam Hemsworth, who can act and is extremely popular might have grown a younger audience, but we all know what happened to his character.
The biggest fail for the young Expendables was Kellan Lutz, aka Smilee. A guy who in 5 seconds goes from "problem with authority" and "waste of time" to "hey I'll joint the team."
If there is a 4th film, hope they learned their lesson, and I hope they can get Ford, Snipes, Grammer and Banderas back.