The Expendables 4 Producer Admits Making Mistakes With The Franchise’s Third Film & Leaving Fans Disappointed, Recalls Thinking, “Let’s Give A Wider Audience A Taste Of Expendables & Give It A PG 13”
The Expendables 4 producer explains his takeaway from the franchise's third instalment also led by the great Sylvester Stallone. Read on!
The Expendables 4 Producer Talks About Disappoint The Fans With Franchise’s Last Release (Picture Credit: Youtube)
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The Expendables 4, aka Expend4bles released last week, has not been receiving enough love from the audience at the box office despite having action veterans like Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham in it. The film’s director, Scott Waugh, recently expressed that he would love to be back for the fifth instalment while the film’s producer, Les Weldon, has shared the lesson he kept in mind from the film’s third instalment, and yet they failed to make a successful film!
The film, apart from bringing back the old characters, introduced a few new ones as well, including the stunning Megan Fox joining the franchise. As mentioned earlier, the director is excited to continue with the franchise, but as per reports, Expend4bles has the lowest opening in the franchise, and it’s not looking good either after a week.
The Expendables 4 producer Les Weldon, while speaking to ComicBook.com, opened up about the things he took away from the third instalment of the film franchise. Weldon said, “The biggest lesson is, well, there’s actually probably two. And the first one is that you have to stay true to your audience. And I think on the third one, maybe we were a little bit wayward, or at least we sort of wanted to try something, ‘Hey, let’s give a wider audience a taste of expendables and give it a PG 13’.” He continued, “And I think some people were a little bit thrown by that and maybe a little disappointed. I don’t know. I mean, I think the movie is still in that spirit, but for an Expendables film, the audience knows what they want. They want to know hardcore action. They want to feel those bullets.”
The Expendables 4 producer added, “They want to feel the heat of the explosions on their face, even though they’re just watching the film. They want to feel the punches and the knife throws, and just they want to feel the carnage, basically. And we shouldn’t second guess the audience. We shouldn’t try to fresh. That’s not the way to freshen up a franchise.”
He went on and explained the other lessons from the previous film in the franchise and said, “And the second thing is that, which goes along with this and the audience, is you need to stay true to a story. And you can’t fit square pegs in the round holes. We can’t be bringing these big, big stars and just have ’em in for a cameo and expect that to either affect the story or affect any of the other guys or gals in the franchise. And so, for this one, we were focusing on the story. We were trying to get the best possible story with the best possible characters. And then we went after the actors, and the actors came in, and they all wanted to do it. And what happens then? It becomes very organic. You suddenly don’t get a big actor kind of scowling at Jason in a cameo, or now you get that sexy romp with Jason and Megan … now here’s a strong woman going tête-à-tête with our leads.”
Les Weldon, the producer of Sylvester Stallone‘s Expend4bles, praised fans for it and said, “And it just works so much better when you focus it that way. And we owed that to the fans. We owed them a good story. We owed them good character. Any character that came in, if you notice, in this film has meaningful interactions with other characters, whether it be Randy and 50 or Andy Garcia. It’s part of the fabric of this film.”
Despite it all, The Expendables 4 still struggles to impress the audience in the theatres. It was released on the 22nd of September and is currently running in the theatres.
