Stallone and Co. hope to kickstart a fading genre with “The Expendables”

Where have Hollywood's real men gone?
Action heroes of the square-jawed, rock-ribbed variety fell out of fashion decades ago, but many of them are reuniting for “The Expendables,” being released soon. It's an old-fashioned shoot-and-blow-them-up starring Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke, most of whom haven't successfully detonated a box office in years. Other stars include Jet Li, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Terry Crews and Jason Statham -- a younger group, relatively speaking, whose ages range from 37 to 47. (There's also a cameo from California governor/former action-movie king Arnold Schwarzenegger.)
Not long ago, “The Expendables” -- about a team of mercenaries dispatched to kill a Latin American dictator -- might have been dismissed as a last-ditch effort by a bunch of oldsters and B-listers. But timing is everything: After years of mushy “Twilight” sequels, a glut of animated family films and a shortage of straight-ahead action flicks, “The Expendables” is shaping up as a potential hit. The movie has become one of the most talked-about releases on the Web, according to
BoxOffice.com, which monitors social-networking sites.
Why is a movie about middle-age men stirring such buzz among mostly young males? One answer is that there's been little else for them to watch. Even superhero movies virtually disappeared after the May release of “Iron Man 2,” which now seems like a distant memory. Overall, there seem to be precious few action options for the young male audience.
The action genre hasn't dominated the box office in years. In “Predator” (1987), Schwarzenegger led a team of commandos through a deadly jungle; in “Die Hard” (1988), Bruce Willis played a one-man police force battling a group of terrorists; and although Stallone's John Rambo began the decade as a damaged Vietnam vet (1982's “First Blood”), he ended it as an all-American soldier-saviour (1988's “Rambo III”).
What brought the tough-guy era to a close? The more liberal and dovish 1990s may be part of the answer. But Stallone pins the blame precisely on the first Batman movie, in 1989, which put an average-bodied actor, Michael Keaton, into a costume with ready-made washboard abs. Pumping iron? Why bother?
“The action movies changed radically when it became possible to Velcro your muscles on,” Stallone recently told The Los Angeles Times. “The visual took over. The special effects became more important than the single person. That was the beginning of the end.”