The Expendables 2: I'm just not the demographic

Rating: 3/10 (22 May 2018)

To me The Expendables franchise is a pretencious vanity project.
Yeah sure I get it, all the most famous action stars thrown together for old school action. I understand the appeal, I just don't like it.
Now despite what my profiles analytics say I don't really like action movies, they're not my thing unless they have a lot of other themed content (Action/horror etc). Sure I respect the old school original action films, they had a certain novelty charm to them but here it comes across as recycled as much as it does a homage.
Considering the list of famous names the action isn't as explosive as you'd imagine and the fight scenes are really quite lame. How can you have Stallone/Arnie/Willis and not have the best action? How can you have Van Damme/Norris/Jet Li and not have great fight scenes? It's like they decided they didn't need to make the effort because they had the cast, well you did.
The Expendables 2 is on par with the first movie, namely brainless action with a generic cliched storyline and nothing even remotely original.
It's like they took all these stars, threw them into a paint by numbers action flick and assumed it would work. Oh wait, it did. The franchise has been very successful. I'm sure it's nostalgic for the old and new and exciting for the young.
Well it doesn't appeal to me. Call me weird but I want more than gun fights, explosions and fist fights. I want story, I want substance, I want originality.
The Good:
Old school action
Few neat action movie references
The Bad:
Statham still can't act for crap
Some of the cgi is ropey, really shouldn't have been any anyway
Mindless
Things I Learnt From This Movie:
Charisma Carpenter is improving with age
Real heroes open fire with high impact automatic weapons even when innocents are in the same direction