The Expendables 4 bombed at the box office, grossing a meagre $46 million against a massive budget of $100 million.
These are several reasons why this happened, starting with the dumb title.
Stylising movie titles is something that probably doesn't work anymore, chiefly because it reeks of early 2000s frenzy.
Would you watch a movie titled The Expendables 4? Maybe, if you liked the previous ones. But would you watch The, wait for it, EXPEND4BLES?
Probably not. Moving on from a quirky reason to a more serious one, the cast probably did play a part here. Pun intended.
At its peak, The Expendable franchise included Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Jet Li, Chuck Norris, Scott Adkins, Van Damme and Bruce Willis in the same movie.
Mickey Rourke, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Antonio Banderas and Wesley Snipes all made an appearance at some point.
With the exception of Willis, who's recently retired due to serious health issues he's dealing with, they're all still available.
And presumably they all said: "Fcuk it I'm not doing that".
So Sylvester Stallone had to settle for Iko Uwais and Tony Jaa, both amazing, amazing, AMAZING martial artists and choreographers but whose name is unfortunately not super expendable (pun intended) in Hollywood.
Then you've got Andy Garcia, nothing to say about that, and then Megan Fox and 50 Cent.
Well, now.
I'm a huge fan of 50 but his acting is hit or miss.
50 hit the jackpot with the STARZ TV series 'Power', in which he also stars as a side character.
But, as an actor, he doesn't have a particularly stellar track record in terms of box office performance.
As for Megan Fox, for some reason she's become a bit toxic. Anything she touches doesn't work, critically or commercially, or sometimes both, which is the case here.
The Expendables 4 holds a 13% rating on Rotten Tomatoes because critics and fans didn't like the "clunky and uninspired dialogue", "cheap-looking effects" and "lacklustre action scenes".
The cheap-looking special effects in particular seem to have irritated a few people.
On a personal note, I didn't mind it. A, because Megan Fox is so hot I'd forgive her nearly anything and B, because whenever I see 50 Cent and/or Justin Statham I hit like almost automatically.
