It was a truly expendable week at the box office, with Sylvester Stallone’s holdover The Expendables earning top honors with a paltry $16.5 million. Still, Sly and his band of mercenaries-of-a-certain-age still had to fend off a motley collection of competitors, from the spoofy undead (Vampires Suck, $12.2 million) to Julia Roberts (Eat Pray Love, $12 million) to a movie about, well, a Lottery Ticket ($11.1 million).
It was a week where movie studios reached into their bin of leftovers, grabbed a handful, and threw ’em at the wall to see if anything stuck. It didn’t. Three new releases—the horrid 3-D pic Piranha, the cute Nanny McPhee Returns and the semi-sweet The Switch—all finished outside the Top 5 and made just $26.5 million combined, about $8 million less than The Expendables collected all by its lonesome last weekend.
All of which just proves … well, what, exactly? That old-school action heroes can beat down a pack of snide vamps and CGI fish? That fortysomething men looking for a nostalgic, blood-soaked trip back to 1980s-era cinema still rule the box office? That Sly was right, and that action films don’t get the respect they deserve?
“There has always been an elitist attitude toward action films,” Stallone told time.com. “Good action films—not crap, but good action films—are really morality plays.”
Stallone has a point. “Good” action films, for all their violence, try to teach us certain lessons—that crime doesn’t pay, good trumps evil and it’s wise to stay in peak physical condition in case you’re attacked by terrorists or ninjas.
But a handful of dubious lessons does not a good movie make. And for proof, one need only look at The Expendables.
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