One, and I don’t know how I missed this before, but there exists a comic that seems to be (I cannot tell because I don’t read Japanese, regrettably) entirely about enjoying food and riding trains. As far as I’m concerned this means that comics have reached their zenith because enjoying food and riding trains are two of the finest things in life and having a story dedicated to them with such gusto is the best thing I could have come across in a good while. Thank you, Hayase Jun; I shall be ordering this.

Two, I went to see The Expendables last night with the spouse. He expected a steaming plate of turds and got just a turd so he was happy, while I was disappointed because I expected… well, I don’t exactly know, to be honest. I had to sit and think about this when we got back home.

See, when I was a kidlet I used to watch a billion action and thriller and horror and SF&F B-movies with my dad, on pirated VHS because that’s what video rentals gave you and were charging money for: god bless you, 80s Yugoslavia. Anyway, these films and their explosions and rubber sharks have a special place in my heart and I think I was too caught up in nostalgia to notice that most 80s action stars couldn’t or wouldn’t take part in this film and I only realised, Dolph Lundgren notwithstanding, it was only really going to be quintessential bruiser good guy Stallone vs quintessential oiled-hair bad guy Roberts once the film got going.

Which is good enough, fair enough, but it also meant I was going to be irritated by everyone else because while I enjoy the work of Jet Li, Jason Statham, and the rest in their own films, the fact that this wasn’t an aged 80s action stars reunion got in the way of me perceiving the “Expendables” gang as having any chemistry or backstory needed to create a convincing sense of camaderie, so all the banter fell flat. The little we did get of the likes of Schwarzenegger or Willis was so little that it was rote as fuck, like an honest-to-god cured-of-all-irony version of the “hey kids, it’s Mark Hamill!” scene from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

I don’t know what I expected. I though, having had something of a lull in this genre as far as blockbusters were concerned, the pause would have given the writers time to make something that would be soaked in goofy machismo, as required, but would also be clever. And instead of clever it was lazy and so it was boring.

I don’t know of a good way to put this so I’ll give you the best I can: somewhere, long ago enough that I can no longer attribute the source, I read that all art is a product of its time, so when you make something that looks like stuff that was made ten or a hundred years ago it will still have been informed by all that happened in the meantime, making it essentially impossible to create something truly retro. And this film has made me doubt that because it felt like nothing had changed for – or was learned by – its makers since its predecessors’ heyday, which is something I find hard to accept. Given the potential, what I wanted and expected was more than an assembly line product.

I must add here that by “nothing was learned” I am not implying that I wish the film was rid of its daft clichés, including the ones where women exist solely to be punched about so that men could be a) motivated, b) placed along a morality scale. If I complained about that in a film like this I would achieve nothing besides looking stupid. I can make myself look stupid in more original ways than that, tyvm. Although this is a good place to note that I lost track of what was going on some three quarters in because I got lost in fantasies of how much actual ass this film would have kicked if it had had Grace Jones, Brigitte Nielsen, Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hamilton and Maggie Cheung on its ass-kicking roster instead. And perhaps Demi Moore in lieu of Eric Roberts.

Brb gonna enjoy my brain film some more.

So, yeah. Oh and there was a scene somewhere in the middle where Mickey Rourke’s character has a Defining Plot & Character Development Monologue that I laughed out loud at and got bad looks from guys in the audience. Oops.

Ah well!