"Expendables 2" to have a very famous star...

YES.

Now they just need to make a decent movie...

Unlike, you know, the first one.

It has a chance - Sly isn't directing. But the new director ... doesn't have much in the way of a filmography. Con Air and the Human Target pilot were good though, so there's hope.

Unfortunately, Sly still had involvement with the writing, so the director change might not even matter that much.

Sly should stay in front of the camera.

Academy Award Nominee Sylvester Stallone has been nominated for his writing once, and he damn well could be nominated again.

And he has written exactly one genuinely good movie. At what point do we call Rocky a fluke and move on?

Academy Award Nominee Sylvester Stallone has written the screenplay for all of the Rocky movies, and at least, two of those movies are "genuinely good", if you ask me. I also notice that he's credited for writing some of The Lords of Flatbush so he's clearly not all bad.

I wouldn't exactly say that Rocky IV was good writing... It was pretty entertaining, but Stallone isn't exactly the Coen Brothers here. It often succeeds in spite of the writing, rather than because of it. Even if I give you that, that's still two good movies out of twenty something. Hardly a track record to be proud of.

And you should really stop it with the appeals to authority. An Academy Award nomination hardly makes you a good writer. It didn't make Crash or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close good movies, or Angelina Jolie, Barbara Streisand, Jennifer Hudson, Julia Roberts, or Cher good actors. And they WON. Fun fact: the people who make up the Academy are 94% white, 77% male and a median age of 62 (people under 50 make up just 14% of the academy), and they give a third of their votes to whichever movie the Weinstein Company waves in their face the most.

edited 4th May '12 1:17:32 PM by Cthulboohoo

Who ever said anything about Rocky IV? The best Rockys are Rocky III and the original.

Also, I've never made an appeal to any authority. All I've said is that Academy Award Nominee Sylvester Stallone has written (and can write) decent stuff.

edited 4th May '12 1:47:44 PM by SeanMurrayI

Oh? Do you just like saying Academy Award then?

I remember thinking the best Rocky films were the first and Rocky Balboa.

And I don't think Sly Stallone's really a bad writer.

Did you watch the Expendables or the new Rambo?

Ugh. UGH.

His crappy writing and direction couldn't even be saved by THE CAST OF THE EXPENDABLES. It should be a real life example under Beyond the Impossible.

So how 'bout that Expendables 2? I hear it has a famous star...

Yes, I did, and I thought Rambo was alright, whereas The Expendables was underwhelming.

Sure.

Academy Award Nominee Sylvester Stallone earned and received the privilege to be referred to as an Academy Award Nominee, no different than Academy Award Nominee Jonah Hill, and I choose to honor that fact.

edited 4th May '12 3:20:53 PM by SeanMurrayI

I thought The Expendables was pretty decent, a solid action flick. It's no masterpiece, but it wasn't aiming for much more than fun.

The funny thing about the original was that it was mostly an okay action movie, but it was a fairly decent character piece. I certainly didn't expect Jason Statham to go to a basketball court to beat up the guy who abused his ex-girlfriend, maybe as a sort of Establishing Character Moment but that was a full subplot.

The main problem is that everyone was expecting it to be constant action and when expectations are too different for the project you can almost see the air deflate from the balloon. The last half hour was well liked and is basically what everyone expected the entire movie to be.

As for Stallone, he generally recognizes what is needed to make a movie interesting and exciting. Few of his movies are considered masterpieces but his worst movies tend to be the ones he has very little creative involvement (Over the Top, Tango and Cash, Stop or my Mom will Shoot).

Wasn't this known for a while now?

I don't expect anything more than another decent popcorn flick. Liked the first one well enough and will probably see this.

The first one was shit. I came into the theater expecting that the movie hoped it could coast by on star power alone, and in that sense, I wasn't disappointed.

I still want Tony Jaa.

Don't we already have this thread?

Tony Jaa no longer makes movies. Unfortunately.

Are you sure? Where did you get that information?