What happened?

Rating: 5/10 (8 July 2013)

I went into this movie with high hopes. I LOVED the first one. I am a late 80s/early 90s kid so movies like Commando, Terminator, First Blood, Lethal Weapon, Timecop, Tango and Cash, you name it were some of my favorite movies. When it comes to Action flicks I am very complex in what I can overlook in the name of entertainment and what I expect for quality.
Now, as I write this I realize that Expendables 2 actually would work better as a prequel. The way it is written (aside from utterly poor) all of the protagonists come off as amateurs. They make stupid mistakes that weren't forgivable in the 80s and certainly aren't in this day and age. When on missions they don't employ stealth at all, they will just yell for their comrades not considering enemies could be lingering. I could write the whole list of these, but stupid actions bring these characters down from the badasses they were in number 1.
The biggest problem with this movie can be summed up with four words. Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Willis and Norris. They treated every scene they shared together as a chance to launch their stand up comedy careers and it just felt completely out of place. Yes, I get it that you had a lot of successful movies, you had a lot of popular movie quotes, there are internet memes regarding how badass you are, those things are why we want to see you but when you then acknowledge them and ham up the screen, it almost breaks the fourth wall and come off like the annoying 6 year old hurting for praise and attention. I mean, Stallone did this back in the Tango And Cash days and that ONE line was a bit of an eyeroller, but coupled with the fact that he was playing a preppy cop, it worked much better. Don't get me wrong, I think well written and placed humor in action movies are great! That is the key though and when you have an incredibly poor script any hopes of good humor are out the window. This movie needed to play it straight. Rely heavily, first and foremost on action and sprinkle the laughs within. You want to throw a couple laughs in at the end during the big battle, that's fine, but when there are as many terrible jokes being told as bullets flying, just turns me off.
I also have overall problems with the plot of the movie. Church (Willis) apparently blackmails the Expendables because of how the events unfolded in the first movie, but wasn't that more or less a success? Their army was all but destroyed and both leader figures were taken out. Did I miss something? I really enjoyed Willis' (albeit short) role int he first movie. He has never been the physical match for the big three, but he certainly comes off as the smartest but it seems like they just wanted to amp up the animosity between Church and Barney Ross for tension which didn't add up in the first act (feeling contrived) and makes the final act all the more jarring.
I'm not saying the first movie was genius, but Stallone writing and directing the thing did it with style and successfully and it came off as intelligent as you could. So I can only assume since the variable in this equation is the director, that has to be a major cause for the quality drop. I can only hope that moving forward we can get back to the level the first one was at but I will find out either way from my couch when it ends up on Netflix because I am definitely done with Expendables at the theater.