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Expendables 4 Is Missing The Point About What Went Wrong With Sylvester Stallone’s Action Franchise


The Expendables 4 is fixing The Expendables 3’s most obvious problem, but there are other issues it needs to address to save the franchise.
The Expendables 4 is correcting the biggest mistake made by The Expendables 3, but that is not the only problem it must fix. The ragtag mercenary team that is The Expendables is finally returning to theaters after a nine-year absence. The Expendables 4 set to debut on September 22, with Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, and Randy Couture reprising their roles within the franchise. The Expendables 4 is also bringing new stars into its ensemble, with Megan Fox, 50 Cent, and Andy Garcia joining the sequel, alongside martial arts legends Tony Jaa and Iko Uwais.

The Expendables built its brand on assembling a cast of action movie heroes in each movie, and the franchise as a whole is a love-letter to ’80s action flicks. However, The Expendables 3 fell short of its two predecessors’ success, with the film’s failure widely attributed to its PG-13 rating. While The Expendables 4’s new team is embarking on an adventure in an R-rated setting, it seems like the upcoming sequel missed the point about what went wrong with the franchise.
Expendables 4’s Trailer Wants You To Think The R Rating Fixes The Franchise

The red-band trailer for The Expendables 4 offers a mea culpa of sorts, opening with the caption “We heard you loud and clear.” The following footage and text further emphasize the sequel’s R-rated action sequences and F-bombs. While this plays into the cheeky humor of The Expendables franchise, it also shows the potential for The Expendables 4 to be a genuine comeback for the series. However, by focusing so much upon the PG-13 rating of The Expendables 3, The Expendables 4 could create another problem for itself.The Expendables 3 adopting a PG-13 rating is low-hanging fruit for The Expendables franchise, so simply going back to an R allows The Expendables 4 to sell itself as fixing the problem that killed the series for nearly a decade. While this makes for good marketing, The Expendables 4 cannot afford to simply call it a day after returning to an R rating. Looking back on The Expendables 3, its PG-13 rating is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what The Expendables 4 needs to fix to fully rehabilitate the series.
Being PG-13 Wasn’t Expendables 3’s Only Problem

A big problem The Expendables 3 ran into was the sheer size of its ensemble cast. While a stacked lineup of action heroes is the entire selling point of The Expendables franchise, The Expendables 3 expanded its roster to the point of feeling overcrowded. The younger crew of mercenaries in The Expendables 3 added some meta commentary to the franchise’s cast of aging action stars. However, their inclusion came across as an attempt to warp The Expendables into the Fast & Furious in an effort to look cooler to younger audiences.
In the aftermath of The Expendables 3’s failure, Stallone himself described its PG-13 rating as “a horrible miscalculation.” However, the movie’s other issues are not inherently linked to that problem. In general, The Expendables 3 lost the more focused approach of its predecessors by expanding its scope beyond its control and sacrificing too much of the ’80s essence it began with. The Expendables 4 might be selling itself on fixing the most perceptible issue with The Expendables 3, but it cannot mask the franchise’s other flaws by altering its rating alone.

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‘I am officially off the market’: When Margot Robbie revealed she made the ‘conscious’ decision of not dating actors


Margot Robbie revealed her decision to not date actors because of the media scrutiny that came with a public relationship of two high-profile actors
Back in 2015, A-lister Margot Robbie made a declaration that she would not be dating any actors. The actress may have alluded to her fiance Tom Ackerley, who she married the following year in 2016. In an exclusive interview with Marie Claire, she revealed that being in a relationship as an actor herself came with its own set of challenges. She believed that dating someone who was popular would add on to the media scrutiny.

Margot Robbie opened up on why she made a conscious decision to not date actorsTalking to Marie Claire, she claimed, “I am officially off the market.” She then shared the reasoning behind her decision and added, “I made a conscious decision not to date actors.” She continued to explain, “But not because I hate actors. That’s a nasty generalization to make, and that’s not the case. People take such an interest in your love life when you have a profile, it puts a lot of stress on a relationship.”
The Barbie actress continued, “So two people with profiles, I figure it’s just double the amount of scrutiny, and I’d like to avoid that at all costs.” This came after reports of her locking lips with Tarzan co-star Alexander Skarsgard started making rounds. It was reported that she was caught kissing the actor during the Sundance Film Festival.

Margot Robbie revealed she opted for a minimal lifestyle even after becoming an actorIn the interview, Robbie also opened up about how she was adapting to fame. She shared, “I have a normal 24-year-old life. If I were a waitress, I’d probably have the exact same lifestyle. I’d go to the same clubs I go to already, live in the same house with the same housemates, hang out with the same people.”
However, Margot Robbie tied the knot with Tom Ackerley who is an English producer and actor. The duo met on the sets of 2013 movie Suite Francaise where Tom was working as an assistant director. Post marriage, both of them launched their production company LuckyChap Entertainment.

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Monica Bellucci and Tin Burton at lunch in the restaurant in Selci Lama


For All Saints’ Day, the Hollywood star from Tiferno returned to his native Umbria to enjoy a moment of relaxation and then visit his parentsOn the occasion of the All Saints’ Day celebrations, the Hollywood star of Tiferno origin, Monica Bellucci, returned to her native Umbria to enjoy a moment of relaxation and to visit her father Pasquale and her mother Brunella.Flanked by her current partner Tim Burton, she went to lunch, together with about twenty old friends, at the Osteria del Musicista, which has always been her favorite restaurant, in Selci Lama.Menu dedicated to typical dishes of the area, which includes an appetizer with breadsticks lined with coppa, duck in porchetta and grilled pork livers, polenta with wild boar sauce accompanied by the very typical cappelletti in broth.To conclude, a dessert based on fried “ciaccia” with Nutella and roasted chestnuts.
Having paid the bill and greeted the restaurant owner and lifelong friend, Roberto Polchi, Monica brought home cappelletti and broth for a family dinner.

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‘Rocky’ Was Quite Different In His Original Screenplay, Sylvester Stallone Claims


Sylvester Stallone took his friend’s advice on a rewrite of the original screenplay to Rocky. A few tweaks later, he was on his way to major success.
In the new Netflix documentary Sly, Stallone discussed how he initially conceived of the project, which had a much harder edge. In the early version, Rocky was depicted as a “thuggish” character, inspired by Martin Scorsese’s crime drama, Mean Streets.

But Stallone’s perspective changed when a friend read the script and thought the boxer was too cruel for audiences to actually care about him.
Stallone recalled her crying.

“She goes, ‘I hate Rocky. I hate him. He’s cruel. He hits people. He beats them up.’”
Stallone took it to heart, and asked what he could do to soften the character.

“I said, ‘what if you stop short of it?’ Like, maybe he almost did. He could have, that’s his job, but he doesn’t?’ ‘That’d be nice,’” he added. “I said, ‘What if he had a girlfriend or something?’ ‘Yeah, that’s nice.’ So I go back, start writing that: ‘Girlfriend. Nice.’”
$117 million in box office later, a franchise was born.

Stallone also revealed that actor Dolph Lundgren sent him to the hospital during one fight scene in Rocky IV.
“Dolph Lundgren… he pulverized me,” Stallone says in the documentary. “Later that night, my heart started to swell—which happens when the heart hits the chest—and then my blood pressure went up to 260, and they thought I was going to be talking to angels. Next thing I know, I’m in intensive care, where I’m surrounded by nuns, and I thought, ‘OK, that’s curtains.’”
Stallone was in the hospital for nine days following the incident, praying for “one more round.”
“For the first minute of the fight, it is going to be a free-for-all,” Stallone told Lundgren. The Swedish actor joked in a separate interview that all he did was “obey orders,” explaining, “[Stallone] was the boss. I did what he told me.”
Doctors allegedly told Stallone that he received a blow to the ribs that made his heart rattle around in his ribcage, a condition typically seen in head-on collisions. “I did hit a bus, of sorts,” Stallone joked.

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