Our official review
Read EXPENDABLES 3: Social Security for Action Stars and the Armbar Holocaust by Gary W. Shockley
[QUOTE=GeneChing;1275432]Read EXPENDABLES 3: Social Security for Action Stars and the Armbar Holocaust by Gary W. Shockley[/QUOTE]
Nice review.
Though I’m thinking that Jet Li’s tiny part in the film has more to do with his current health issues (hyper-thyroidism) than having too many other projects on the table.
Jet & Arnie are…GAY???
Legendary Status Not Required: How Sylvester Stallone Plucked ‘Expendables 3’ Director Patrick Hughes Out of Obscurity
August 15, 2014
by Matt Patches
When Sylvester Stallone’s Expendables 3 character, Barney Ross, realizes his latest adversary, Stonebanks (Mel Gibson), packs more heat than even old-timer Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) can handle, he hits up his longtime friend Bonaparte (Kelsey Grammer) to wrangle a fresh-faced team of ass-kickers. The Expendables: The Next Generation recruits are young, fast, agile, and can work those newfangled computer thingies. (But, thankfully, they still have silly names like “Mars” and “Smilee.”) Guys like Toll Road (Randy Couture) and Gunnar (Dolph Lundgren) have battle scars to prove their valor, but a fully stocked résumé won’t outrun 18 incoming sniper shots. Age matters in the trenches.
That goes for blockbuster warfare, too. When Stallone handpicked Patrick Hughes to direct The Expendables’ third installment, the 36-year-old director had one feature credit to his name: Red Hill, a 2010 Australian western indie starring True Blood swoonthrob Ryan Kwanten. By August 2013, Hughes found himself on the Bulgarian set of an eight-figure Hollywood blockbuster, navigating the clown car of action vehicles. The way Hughes describes it, Stallone handing him the keys to the franchise wasn’t an invitation to live under the star-writer-producer’s thumb. This was a Barney Ross move. The Expendables 3 needed a whippersnapper. Hughes was there to keep Stallone’s rowdy team in check.
“Day one, take one I think I had eight of ’em lined up,” Hughes says. “I had a megaphone and told ’em where they were going to stand, what we were going to do, and how it was going to go. [But] as soon as you call ‘cut,’ they all start talking and after a while, it just felt like a kindergarten class. I’ve got a 5-year-old. You’re just trying to wrangle them all. You’ve got to use that megaphone a lot.”
Hughes self-identifies as a big, brassy Australian hungry to make his movies. Starving, really. To realize Red Hill — a brooding drama of chiseled-down cowboy archetypes, shadowy neo-western vistas, and brutal violence — the director threw his own cash into the project. The frustration of his movie stalling time and time again overtook his patience for traditional funding. He took a mortgage on his house, praying to God someone with industry influence might come along. The Berlin Film Festival was a breakthrough. Sony Pictures bought the film. Calls came in from Hollywood. DVD screeners floated around town. One dropped on Stallone’s lap.
“I got a call two weeks after Berlin that Sly had a screening of the movie and he can’t stop talking about it and he’s a huge fan,” Hughes recalls. “I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s awesome. And it’s completely useless information!’”
Weeks later, encouraging buzz solidified into a meeting with Stallone. The aging action star took to Red Hill’s gnarly set pieces. Maybe Barney Ross had a little Cormac McCarthy–style gunslinger in him, too. He sensed his own legacy in Hughes’s debut. The director says it’s there; on set, they referred to Red Hill as Rambo in the High Country. “I’m a huge fan of the western and action genres, but when you pare those stories down and the low roaring starts, it always comes down to the moral code of the hero,” Hughes says. “That’s what those stories represent, and that’s what [Stallone] was certainly drawn to.”
It didn’t hurt that Hughes revered the films The Expendables franchise always thought it was aping. Stallone was in deep writing and directing the first film in 2010, paying homage to his own ’80s shoot-’em-ups without the ability to stand back. Action veteran Simon West was a logical choice for The Expendables 2. But in Hughes, Stallone found someone who grew up dreaming of an Expendables-style mash-up. The first film Hughes made with his childhood Super 8 camera involved a stop-motion animated Rambo action figure setting fire to a Han Solo action figure. It ran 23 seconds. (“It was a terrible film,” Hughes admits.) The Expendables 3 could benefit from that same passion. Hughes had a chance to go wild with real-life action figures.
“When I initially sat down and discussed the project with him, we both thought the first one was too serious and the second one had run into parody. We wanted to strike a balance between those two and give it thematic weight,” Hughes says. He pushed Stallone to open up the action, both in script and effects. Hughes didn’t want to make a movie that was “just guys spraying bullets.” If he was going to recreate the ’80s style of filmmaking, he had to do it with practical set pieces with plenty of explosions. “We blow up every vehicle possible — tanks and cars and bikes and airplanes and choppers. I was looking for a different aesthetic. The opening train attack is very dynamic. The temptation there is to do it all CG, but no, let’s buy a train and get a chopper and do it for real. Let’s blow up a ****ing building.”
For Hughes, success was all about rapport. His ingrained admiration for the pillars of action cinema made cajoling the cast into following his orders easy. “I’d be like, ‘Han Solo’s gonna walk in and then, Rambo, you’re gonna come over here, and then you turn around and Terminator is going to be there, then we’ll pan over to reveal Desperado.’ They loved it.” Art imitated life. Like Barney passing the torch to the Expendables 2.0, Stallone’s sardonic mentor role extended to Hughes.
“I remember we’re with Mel and were [shooting] a scene where Sly only had two lines. I wanted him to lean forward to give a little bit of intimidation in terms of body language,” Hughes says. “By the third time I said, ‘Mel, that’s perfect. Sly, you keep forgetting to step forward, brother. You need to step forward on that line.’ And Sly goes, ‘If you give me that piece of direction one more time, I’m going to take my gun out and pistol whip your ****ing face!’ So I tell ’em, ‘You wanna rumble, Rocky? Why don’t you get out of the van and say that?’ And my eyes turn over to Mel and he looks utterly horrified, thinking, ‘What the **** is going on?’”
But directing an Expendables installment can be hell, no matter how much Stallone likes you. Hughes’s biggest challenge wasn’t stepping up from the indie world to shoot massive action sequences — it was keeping his head straight during a ****storm of scheduling. Rarely could every actor be on set at the same time. It forced Hughes, Stallone, and the film’s two additional writers, Olympus Has Fallen duo Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt, to design a story that took into account actors’ schedules. Which resolved only half the problems. “Some sets, we went back and shot them 10 times, because I’d have Arnold in house but I didn’t have Antonio [Banderas], so you’d have to shoot it with Antonio’s double, then come back to that location and put Antonio back in the same, but I wouldn’t have Arnold, so we’d need his double,” Hughes says.
“I think 24 hours before we shot the movie, Terry Crews was supposed to die.” Hughes can’t help but laugh. “Then [Stallone] decided he was going to live. It’s a constantly moving target. It doesn’t stop. Even on set, he’s writing, writing, writing.” The fluidity worked in Hughes’s favor. He’s beside himself that, in the swell of The Expendables 3’s bombast, he managed to tuck in a few emotional beats. As Galgo, the team’s motormouth acrobat, Banderas brought comic relief and one of the film’s only true character arcs. And then there are the glorious moments of subversion: Late in the film, Schwarzenegger’s Trench and Jet Li’s Yin Yang get cozy at the Expendables’ go-to bar. Stallone ribs them: “Get a room.” But then the two seize the moment, nuzzling each other while laughing it off. Did the former-Governator just silently flip off Prop 8? Are two of the Expendables together by the end of the movie? “I believe they are,” Hughes says, like he just got away with something amazing.
Stallone’s endorsement is already paying off for Hughes. As The Expendables 3 rolls into theaters, the director is prepping his next blockbuster: a remake of the 2011 Indonesian fight film The Raid: Redemption. He describes his version as being in the vein of Black Hawk Down and Zero Dark Thirty, signaling major departures. He’s casting the 12 integral roles of the film’s ensemble, with sights on shooting early next year. “After that, I’m pretty sure I won’t do a movie with ensembles, camouflage, and guns for a while.”
Hughes understands what he was brought in to do for The Expendables 3. “It’s Sly’s franchise. I’m a part of the puzzle. It’s not a personal movie, it’s a big studio popcorn spectacle.” But while it may not be the most prestigious directing gig in the world, Hughes made the movie he wanted to make. And it was fun. “If you can get paid for it, it’s a win-win situation,” he says. Setting off explosions without taking a mortgage out on your house? Hughes just came to Hollywood and fulfilled the American dream.
Matt Patches (@misterpatches) is a writer and reporter in New York whose work can be seen on Vulture, The Hollywood Reporter, and Time Out.
Trench & Yin Yang sitting in a tree…:o
If you’ve seen this film…
…this is even funnier. 
Red Carpet Fail: Wesley Snipes Served With Legal Papers At ‘Expendables 3’ Premiere — SEE The Cringe-Worthy Pic
Posted on Aug 21, 2014 @ 4:02AM
Radar Online
Convicted tax cheat Wesley Snipes was all smiles on the red carpet promoting The Expendables 3 last week in Hollywood. But on the way to the after-party, that smile faded when the former jailbird was served with a notice ordering him to appear for a debtor’s examination — and RadarOnline.com has exclusively obtained the embarrassing photo!
Snipes is being sued by famed public relations powerhouse firm Sitrick & Company for failure to pay fees associated with work the group did when the actor was facing felony tax evasion charges.
Sitrick & Co. filed a lawsuit against the actor , and was granted a judgment, which has now ballooned to more than $103,000.
According to court documents, Snipes must “furnish information to aid in enforcement of a money judgement.”
The document clearly states he “may be subject to arrest and punishment for contempt of court, and the court may take an order requiring [him] to pay reasonable attorney fees incurred by the judgment creditor in this proceeding.”
In 2008, Snipes was convicted of three misdemeanor counts of failure to file tax returns for three years, and cheating the government out of $7 million.
After losing an appeal in 2010, Snipes was sentenced to three years in prison, and was released from a correctional facility in 2013, after serving three years.
Sources familiar with the situation tell Radar, “Wesley never contested any of the bills of fees of Sitrick & Co.”
Attempts to reach Snipes for comment were unsuccessful, and Sitrick & Co didn’t immediately respond.
Stallone sez EX3 was ‘a horrible miscalculation’
Interview: Sylvester Stallone Promises R-Rated Expendables 4
Stallone calls the PG-13 rating for Expendables 3 a horrible miscalculation.
November 23rd, 2014 Fred Topel
This month CraveOnline was given the opportunity ti interview Sylvester Stallone himself for the DVD and Blu-ray release of The Expendables 3. The interview had to be conducted by e-mail, so I did my best to load as many follow-up questions in each one to get the most detailed answer possible. Fans of R-rated action will most certainly like his answer to the final question about the PG-13ification of Expendables 3 (which, for the record, was not a problem for me). The sequel comes to DVD and Blu-ray in an unrated addition as well as the theatrical, and is available November 25.
CraveOnline: I find that all of your films explore what it means to be a man, both the nobility and vulnerability of masculinity. The Rocky films may be about our emotional side, the Rambo films about the tragedy of our capacity for violence, and many other standalone films. Would you agree with my analysis and where would the Expendable films fit into that theme?
Sylvester Stallone: The analysis is interesting. The way this film fits into the theme is that The Expendables is about reliance upon your fellow man or brother in times of need and in times of peace. This is about companionship, that no man stands alone in this world.
Im glad Hale Caesar survived getting shot by Stonebanks, just like Gunner came back at the end of Expendables 1. So far the only Expendable whos actually been expended is Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth in Ex 2). Is it important that the Expendables persevere, and whoever is your favorite Expendable, you can feel safe theyll be back?
This is a big conflict for me because in an R-rated film it is difficult to believe that none of the heroes die. I personally just believe that the characters become identifiable and their demise could put a dark cloud over an audience exiting the theatre after seeing the film. But that may change in Expendables 4
Patrick Hughes told us he thinks in the next sequel the Expendables should travel through time to WWII. Would you ever let the Expendables get that crazy?
I have actually entertained the idea of putting the group into such an unnatural environment that it, in an of itself, creates extra suspense and tension: the fish out of water scenario. That environment might not be time travel, but nearly just as jarring.
Antonio Banderas was a revelation in this movie. How did you think up that character who talks too much but kicks ass? Was it at all based on knowing Banderas personally?
It was from my relationship of having worked with Antonio before that allowed me to realize what he is capable of. His true personality is naturally dynamic so all I did was say be yourself and pretend youre a mercenary, and the rest including the dialog was all his.
Was Mel Gibson ever approached to direct, or only to act?
I wanted Mel Gibson to direct originally because hes an extraordinary filmmaker. But after several months of discussing it, this ultimately was not to be. But he did say he wanted to be in the movie and play the villain. My response was a definite YES. Suit up.
Snipes was your original choice for Hale Caesar. When he was available for Expendables 3, how did you develop the new character Doc for him?
I thought it would be interesting to have the audience realize that The Expendables have been together for years and that some of their former mentors have ended up in dramatic predicaments such as moonlighting on their own in this case involving a bungled political assassination in a small African nation which landed Wesleys character in prison. And since Wesleys personal predicament with the law was very well known, he thought this would be an interesting fusion between his real life and fiction.
This Blu-ray features an extended unrated version of Expendables 3. Do you think future Expendables movies should be R-rated from the get go?
Absolutely unequivocally yes. I believe it was a horrible miscalculation on everyones part in trying to reach a wider audience, but in doing such, diminish the violence that the audience expects. Im quite certain it wont happen again.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
Oh, I thought it was he was trying to reach a wider audience with the gay Trench & Yin Yang thing…:rolleyes: