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I suppose that there are a number of people wondering how a bunch of washed up action stars came to dominate the Hollywood and international box office in the last few weeks. A number of people that I knew snorted in derision at the idea of it (while the rest of us got together and said, "Oh dude, that is going to be so awesome!").
But when we step back and look at what Sylvester Stallone has managed to do, it seems clear that the success of The Expendables was all but inevitable. The film is an example of brilliance in the field of targeting a market.
This practice has actually helped to revive Stallone’s career. As one of the Planet Hollywood triumvirate, the biggest action stars of the 80s, Stallone once dominated the box office. But after a number of bad decisions, and with the changing of viewer aesthetics and a redefining of the action film prompted by the likes of Michael Bay and the entry of John Woo into Hollywood, Stallone’s status as a bankable actor disappeared. (We actually saw all three of the Planet Hollywood action star triumvirate scrambling to maintain their A-lister ratings, to varying levels of success.)
Schwarzenegger went into politics and Willis had a good number of hits along with his misses, while Stallone seemed doomed to being an old pop culture reference. That is, until he made a Rocky-like and Rocky-fueled comeback, and found the formula that would bring him back to the top of the box office heap.
No one thought they wanted to see another Rocky film. There had been five already. Rocky’s story was finished. He was washed up. And how many of today’s regular moviegoers even have memories of that franchise, what with how quickly properties come and go? Yet, Rocky Balboa was a success. It might not have dominated the American box office in the way that the Rockys used to, but it tapped an international market that still lionized Stallone. And it made way for the revival of the Rambo franchise.
Rocky Balboa's inspirational speech to his son, played by Milo Ventimiglia. (Karateka73)
With Rambo we saw Stallone yet again reviving an iconic character whose franchise peaked when the Berlin Wall still stood. And detractors once again thought, who’d bother to see another Rambo flick? Part of me asked that, while the rest of me was in line, and saw upon entering the theater groups of dudes watching Rambo together.
Rambo - I'm coming to get YOU! (XardasMS)
And thus we get to The Expendables. It’s clear here that whether or not Stallone’s film dominated the Hollywood Box Office, it would make its money in the international market, especially in Asain countries and the post-Soviet Union states, the markets which responded so enthusiastically to the revivals of Rocky and Rambo.
Why? Because the pitch, despite the disbelief displayed by some, is irresistible. Get a bunch of action stars, put them onscreen together, and bank on the audacity of the whole idea to get people into the theaters. When I heard Stallone was making an action movie, and after having watched Rocky and Rambo which he directed and wrote (we often forget that Stallone is an Oscar-nominated writer, and after seeing The Expendables he’s showing some leveled-up directorial chops) I thought, hey I’d see that. Then I heard that Dolph Lundgren would be in it. I thought, What? Ivan Drago. I’m seeing that. Then I heard the other names rattled off, Jet Li, Jason Statham, the Schwarzenegger and Willis cameos, and then the smarmy Eric Roberts as bad guy, I thought, heck, Stallone is playing on various meta-textual levels of referencing. I also thought, dude, this movie is going to be awesome.
'The Expendables' Trailer HD (hollywoodstreams)
And while it is nothing next to the likes of the biggest movie of this season, Inception, The Expendables stands as an out and out fun movie-going experience. It’s not just an action film it is THE action film. Playing with most of the action tropes established in the 80s and then applying today’s special effects, it’s just this big, hulking ride of action scenes, shootouts, hand-to-hand combat, chases, and grand explosions. Sure it’s absurd when Terry Crews mows down a drove of soldiers with a shotgun-on-steroids and your seat shakes and rumbles to its percussive “budda-budda-budda” which actually manages to emulate what you imagine those sound effects in comic books would actually sound like, but then it’s all just so outrageous and absurd and fun that you will just go along for the ride.
Among the things that the film manages tap into is a machismo that is all but lost from contemporary action movies. Yes, sure, we often look at 80s action flicks with raised eyebrows as so much homoerotic subtext can be read into them (and here we reference Predator where Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers arm-wrestling and then engaging in a rather too-long bit of manly contact), but in our contemporary films the single-minded, unaware of any such things, action star is gone. Okay, well, there was John Cena in The Marine, but that was just a terrible film. What Stallone does here is he creates a film that exemplifies what bros are supposed to be like, how they are supposed to act. Much of the dialogue emulates how macho dudes are supposed to talk to each other. It is the action man’s bro code set to film. With lots of explosions and killing dudes who do wrong. Or beating them and their friends up while deflating basketballs on their chests.
Badass Handshake, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers. (MALRWiiStation360)
Going beyond just the expression of machismo, this film does operate as a love letter to a lost era of action film. It is, at its heart, a nostalgia piece. Granted it’s a nostalgia piece where almost everything blows up, but that in itself hearkens back to its own nostalgia. It taps into everyone who as a kid saw Rambo dueling a helicopter with a bow and arrow, everyone who likes massive action scenes, everyone who has an affinity for movies where a team of dudes has to get together and help some people in need. There is no political depth, no ambiguities and gray areas, there’s just bad dudes, and people who need saving, and a group of guys who know how to kick ass and are lugging around enough explosives to, as it’s funnily stated in the film, “kill a country.”
Now while most Hollywood movies are directed these days at the tweener market and the date market, they generally ignore this huge group of action fans that would just like to see great action scenes. And again, Stallone’s ace, the promise, like a childhood dream, of bringing all of these action stars together in one film.
People were surprised? As of this writing, it’s still going strong in the American box office, and it’s still showing in a good number of theaters locally. Stallone found his market with the revivals or Rocky and Rambo, and having found it, he created a film that would pull them all in. Whatever you may think of the film and its artistic merits, you can’t deny that Stallone’s identifying and targeting his audience and then creating something irresistible to them was a stroke of brilliance.
Photo: “expendables cover us” by Alexandre Rossignol, c/o Flickr. Some Rights Reserved.
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