Tag: Kellan Lutz

Ah, a third movie. The Expendables 3 was rocked with “controversy” a few weeks before its release by having an actual good copy of it released on the internet. DVD or better scan, all the effects in, everything. Not a shitty cam copy. Well, in a day it had over 100,000 downloads, and by now over a million I am certain. They say that the video was stolen or whatever and you know what? I don’t believe it.

There was a lot of negative press on this film because now that there are even more stars in it than before, it is now rated PG-13. The other two films (1 and 2 here) were rated R! That is how an action movie should be! But this one was certain to fail because no one wanted to see a big action movie with lots of stars with toned down action.

So yeah, I think they leaked it themselves and will now blame that leak on bad ticket sales, and only like one person will lose their job.

But at least they are classing it up for this third installment.

The Expendables. Lead by Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) still, they are making their current mission to free Doctor Death (Wesley Snipes) from confinement. He was an original expendable, but they eventually locked him up for tax evasion. That is a real life joke right there. But after the mission they use him to do another mission and that is where they find out that Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson) is free and out to kill.

Conrad was another original Expendables, but he is a lot crazier and lot more mad at the former members of the groups. So he wants to kill em all. Simple as that. After injuring one of the current crew, Barney vows that he will get him back and make him pay. So he sends away his crew (Jason Statham, Randy Couture, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews) because he doesn’t want them to get hurt. Instead he decides to get a bunch of fresh new guys and get them hurt instead!

So he gets his guy who knows guys, Kelsey Grammer, gets his team of noobies (Glen Powell, Victor Ortiz, Ronda Rousey, Kellan Lutz) to get Conrad! Yeah!

Also starring Harrison Ford as the CIA guy who also wants to take down Conrad, and Antonio Banderas as a former special ops type guy, but is getting older and no one likes him. Also of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jet Li are just hanging around too.

Mel Gibson? Playing a bad guy? That doesn’t fit in with my world view at all.

By far, The Expendables trilogy has to be the most mediocre trilogy I have reviewed on my website. 2 out of 4’s across the board. They don’t even hold equal 2 out of 4s either. The second one is the best, the first one is the worst, and this one is somewhere in between. A lot of the action early on felt shitty, so let’s blame that on the rating.

The first one didn’t know how to be entertaining. This one really didn’t have huge entertaining moments either, outside of the fact that Antonio Banderas was a-freaking-mazing. His character was hilarious and brought a lot of fun to the movie. Without him, it would seriously be a 1 out of 4 dud.

Because lets look at the new guys? Who the fuck are these people? Two of them are just MMA fighters, not action stars. Lutz is the only one who actually has been in technically action movies.

Isn’t that the point of these movies? To bring in action stars together? Gibson was great as a villain. Snipes was underused. Crews, normally the best part, was even more underused, so that was disappointing.

The action was whatever too.

Easily a passable movie, and technically a passable franchise.

Twin Films. Dopplegangers. Mirror Movies.

These are all terms to describe what happens when two movies about the same subject matter come out around the same time. Last year we had White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen, and surprisingly they both had their merits. Usually one of the movies is clearly better than the other, or they both are bad. This year is the battle of Hercules.

The Legend Of Hercules comes out 5-6 months before Hercules which has The Rock attached to it.

Unfortunately, after having now seen The Legend Of Hercules I can say that there is no way that these two movies fit the Mirror Movie formula. No, it fits an even darker and more sinister phenomenon. Whenever a big (usually CGI/Animated/Family) movie hits, there is usually a much lesser, straight to DVD version with a similar name (if not identical), that was rushed out to cash in on people buying the wrong version. I am talking Chop Kick Panda versus the real Kung Fu Panda stuff. You know, movies that the grandparents will accidentally buy.

The Legend Of Hercules feels like it should have been straight to DVD and never mentioned to anyone.

Yes, I would deprive you of those abs.

I know I never compare movies to the books they are based on, and really, what is Greek Mythology but really old books? But in order to understand the plot of this movie, you first need to cleanse your mind of everything you know about Hercules. Every little thing. The only thing about this movie that is like Hercules is the fact that he is a son of Zeus.

In this movie, King Amphitryon (Scott Adkins) has just conquered a new kingdom. He is a powerful and strong warrior, but also a huge jerkface. His wife, Queen Alcmene (Roxanne McKee) thought she could change his war like ways with marriage and with a son, but no, every day he wanted more and more power and she feels like she has helped create a monster. So she prays to Hera to help find a solution. Hera’s solution? She is totally going to let Zeus impregnate her, to make a second son, who will one day save the kingdom.

Wow. Thanks gods. Ask for a solution, get one in 20-30 years.

After a very special wind and rain storm, Hercules (Kellan Lutz) is born! However, Amphitryon has his doubts about the son’s origins, and makes sure to make his life a living hell, while also reiterating that his first born son, Iphicles (Liam Garrigan) is his real heir!

Many many (many) years later, Hercules is totally in love with the Princess of Crete, Hebe (Gaia Weiss) and she loves him back! So when Amphitryon declares that Iphicles (These names are the worst) is to wed her in four months to bring their kingdoms together, Hercules gets mad, and then gets sent off to fight a war and basically die. Hercules would rather not die, win the war, and return and take back the woman he loves, while also hurting his step-dad and half brother. Violence solves everything back then.

Also starring Liam McIntyre as some random commander Sotiris dude, and Rade Serbedzija as Chrion. Yes, Chiron is a human and not a centaur.

In this scene, Hercules is filled with bloodrush, and declares war on weather.

As you know already, The Legend Of Hercules has nothing to do with Hercules or his legends. Lutz is most well known as playing a brother of Edward Cullen in Twilight. Although not technically the same genre as Twilight, the two movies are actually similar. They take a story and turn it “darker” while changing everything about it and add in some romance. Basically, what they with Red Riding Hood. Fans of those films are what this movie was made for and no one else.

The CGI was gods awful (that’s a pun, due to the setting) and looks like stuff out of the 1990’s. I have my hunches that the entire movie was done in front of a green screen, even the scenes where the actors were swimming. I bet outside of the 7 tagged actors, everyone else was fake. The bad graphics made it so that I could never really connect to the movie. The film tried very hard to use as much 3D as possible but almost every time it was in a tacky way.

The acting is dreadful, but that is to be expected when your biggest star is Lutz.

The story was hard to follow at times, because every single scene was rushed in order to move the train-wreck forward.

The movie is rated PG-13, so the action scenes aren’t going to be as cool as they could be, making everything seem subdued.

It took the worst elements of 300, Troy, and Immortals (which itself was a bad movie and had Lutz as Poseidon) and crammed it into this CGI suck fest that will never be worth any price of admission.

If anything, the good news that this movie exists is that we already know one of the movies that will top the 2014 Worst Movies list. I hope this doesn’t mean bad things for Pompeii next month.

Some things in life are timeless.

A lot of those things are classic movie villains. Sure you have your Draculas and your Frankensteins. But in the 80s we were introduced to a new batch. Like Jason! And Freddy Krueger.

So with these franchises already past the point of overabundance, I don’t care if we get a remake. Why the hell not? It couldn’t get worse. They could even change everything about how it got started, and I probably wouldn’t care. Just give me cool deaths or something, maybe real scares, and make him terrifying.

Well, right now he looks like burnt beans. I mean that kid from Even Stevens.

Guess what. In this movie, people are dying in their dreams. There are Nightmares On Elm Street, and they are deadly.

Dean Russell (Kellan Lutz) is flipping his shit at a diner, and it appears that he slits his own throat in a dream like sequence. He is being attacked by a strange man, burnt face, hat, blades on one hand. Oh yes, the Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley) is all up on his life.

So I feel strange talking about the plot outline of this movie. It is fucking A Nightmare On Elm Street. He kills people in dreams, because he died a long time ago for being a pedo. SOmehow magic is involved. Some of the teens begging to die include Katie Cassidy, Kyle Gallner, and Thomas Decker. Rooney Mara gets to be our main lady, so she might survive. We shall see.

Oh, is Freddy a teacher now? There is no joke here.

Wait, did you see the cast listing? Outside of Mara, they have basically Twilighted this series. Maybe the original had some big teen stars too, but they didn’t have Twilight. This one is more obvious.

What really bugged me was the high quality of the camera work. It made the movie seem fake, having it set to ultra HD standards. The 80s movies are gritty, because that was the only quality available, but it also added to the fear. The crisp quality made me actually hate the movie, which I don’t think I ever said before. It just took me out of the moment.

Rehashing the story felt silly the whole time. Another problem? None of the deaths felt particularly creative or anything. The plot to fight back was stupid. The ending was stupid. The movie/remake was stupid.

A lot of the time lower budget movies will have less money. Almost 100% of the time that is true, actually. This is not an exception. Most of the time the grittiness from lesser cameras works against the overall appeal of the movie, but this may be one of the cases where it kind of makes it better.

I am not a fan of most action movies, especially the ones who try to think they are better than action and try to have a plot, but the plot usually fails. Overcomplication is probably the problem. Arena says screw overcomplication. Lets have some bloody fights!

Like this. But less fat people not wearing shirts.

In this world, there is an underground fighting network called Arena. It is secretly located but broadcasts over the internet. After all, the most interesting fight is the fight for survival. The organization, lead by Samuel L. Jackson, kidnaps the downfallen of society and trains them to be brutal and fight other combatants. The audience votes on if the loser should be killed, and also bets on the outcome, generating income for Mr. Jackson. No one wants to be in here, as it means certain doom. Thankfully Kellan Lutz is promised freedom if he wins ten fights in a row, including killing blows.

There are a few twists in the movie, but nothing to write home about. The endings you cannot predict, because they purposefully don’t show you any clues that would suggest it. Daniel Dae Kim is in this movie too, as a prisoner/fighter, although uncredited (at this point? Probably by request).

If you like bloody violence, the fight scenes in this movie feature a lot of blood. They fight in computer generated scenes, with real weapons, based off the surroundings. The construction site weapon choices were particularly interesting. A lot of the fights are cut short, but that is because over 10 fights with one dude to the death would be ridiculous to watch completely. Also, if you like a whole bunch of naked womens, this movie has a bunch.

It also has a few, not so subtle, references to other movies.

You could argue that this movie explores how acceptable violence is in America, and the downfall of society, but that would just be bullshit.