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zwolanerd

I guess I just like liking things

Expendables3Last week I made plans to see The Expendables III with a friend. We like to go to showings between 4-6p because they are the cheapest, but I don’t get off work until 4, so sometimes I run a bit late. As I drove to the theater I got a text from him that said, “In theater 4, saving you a seat.” Cool beans. When I got to the theater, they said, “Oh, we’ve been having some trouble with the projector, so the movie’s starting a little late.” Even cooler beans, as this means I haven’t missed anything. So I go to theater 4 and… he’s not there. “Dude,” I text. “Where are you?” Turns out, he had to gone to the other theater across town.

There wasn’t any way for me to make it over there, so I settled in to see the movie on my own. After the previews were done, the movie started — only it was Guardians of the Galaxy. See, at the theater he went to, Expendables was in theater 4, but here at the one I was at, it was in theater 3. By this time I had missed ten minutes already, so I got my money back and decided to go another day.

A different friend and I made plans to go on Sunday. We confirmed the place and time a few times, and met there. A few minutes after the previews should have started, a theater worker came in to say it would be a few minutes because they were having projector troubles. A few minutes later the manager came in to say the projector wasn’t working and the screening was cancelled.

The movie hadn’t opened so well, and I was beginning to suspect it was because no one could get in to see it!

Finally last night we were able to go see it. The projector worked, everything was on time, everything was great.  Well, not everything. It turns out, the movie wasn’t very good.  Nobody is more bummed about this than I am! I love the idea of The Expendables, gathering all the old action stars together into one movie and letting them blow stuff up. This one, though, spent half the movie with a group of new youngsters, which is not why I bought a ticket to an Expendables movie. It’s already hard enough to give everybody enough screen time when you’ve got a big group together, so cutting that time even more to give the new group screen time just made it worse.

Harrison Ford looked like he was enjoying himself, though, and that was good. He’s seemed a little… bored in his last couple of movies. Nice to see him having some fun.

I doubt there’ll be an Expendables 4, but I’d still see it. Get back to basics: keep the old crew, make it a bit more light-hearted, and don’t skimp on the violence. I really wanted to like this movie (I expected to!) and I was sad that I couldn’t.

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