You know that one idea you have?
It’s a great idea. A genius idea. money printing idea that rises to the surface of your conscience in two situations. In a bar, after several drinks, where it floats up like it was awaiting the perfect moment. Or in a late-night conversation with very good friends. Where the subject is an exchange of just such ideas. Ideas that could solve the world’s problems if there were ONLY an easy way to implement them. Solutions to problems they hadn’t even thought of yet.
So here’s mine.
How to make the Expendables great again.
First off, we start with an action sequence, because of course, with all the stars. Statham, Crews, and Stallone head a team of half dozen other walking door-frames of men. They are busting ass to get into some country that speaks no English, full of non-white people so that everyone watching from the reddest parts of the country can get a 3/4 erection and we’re barely 3 minutes into the film.
“Where is it?!” Stallone yells, providing cover fire. The camera turns and we see some kind of hacker with glasses, working on some kind of digital lock for a huge heavy metal door.
“Give me a minute!” Glasses yells back desperately. Statham stops his cover fire for a moment and turns to see the hacker, in a mess of wires, screen, and technology. He strides over to the door and kicks the pad off the wall, causing the door to swing open.
“Got it,” Statham says, striding through. Glasses looks back at all his technology, useless against Statham’s right foot.
The gang enters the room one by one, laying down gunfire behind. Eventually, Stallone is the last one through, slamming the door behind him.
The camera finally reveals what’s in the room. What they’ve been searching for.
It’s empty.
General confusion and grunting for a few moments from the gang at large. Then Statham utters something brutish and abrupt like “What a load of-“
CLANG
Jail cells come from nowhere, revealing the Expendable Expendables walked into a trap. Oh darn. All the muscles in the world can’t help them out of this pickle.
The villain reveals himself, he’s French, so we can all dislike him together. Add in a couple of “fromage” jokes through Stallone’s accent and we move on.
It’s been a few days. Or hours. Or minutes. But all of the Expendables look defeated. The nerd gasps as his final percent on his last device disappears so he can no longer play snake. Two other larger fellows are benching each other to keep fit, revealing one of the few ways masculine men can touch each other without screaming no homo. Finally, Statham walks out of a shadowy corner, up to Stallone whose leaning on the bars, also defeated. Statham pulls out an old flip phone.
“I had this hidden away for emergencies”
“And you finally decided this qualifies?” He takes the phone and then pauses.
“Where’d you hide this?” They share a long look, the only look that can be shared between men when you know that phone has been in a butthole for an extended period of time. The phone flips open.
“Who we gonna call?”
“You know who you gotta call”
They stare, mildly longingly into each other’s eyes with disagreement.
“I’m not calling her”
“You gotta call her”
“I’m not callin’ her!”
“You gotta call ‘er!”
“I’M NOT CALLIN”
“YOU GOT TA”
“FINE”
Statham crosses his arms as Stallone starts dialing an 11 digit number. It begins ringing.
We cut away to a very regal portrait of the queen with an ornamental frame, the shot widens out to reveal a recently laid-in bed, with onside’s covers pulled away to show someone just got up. On the other side, a sleeping supermodel of a man is still snoring away, clearly exhausted from passionate loving making from the missing person. The camera pans over an immaculate room of British taste, as we hear the ruffling sounds of someone putting on clothes offscreen. Eventually, the camera pans to the ringing phone, a vintage gold and porcelain rotary phone. A feminine hand picks it up. The camera pans with the hand holding the receiver, putting it do her ear.
“Hello?…. Oh my, have you boys gotten yourself in a spot of trouble?” Grey hair, delicate fingers, and a British accent respond to the call. The woman turns around to reveal DAME HELEN MIRREN, listening to the poor men with muscles, trapped away.
“That is a tricky biscuit…” She contemplates as she crosses over to the opposite wall, with a huge portrait of the Queen with her corgis. She leans on it slightly, listening to Stallone’s situational updates.
“Mhm. Well-“ We hear a click, and the portrait swings open to reveal a huge hidden arsenal of guns and weaponry.
“I’ll round up the girls, and we’ll get you cheeky boys home in time for dinner” She lifts a ginormous looking vintage rifle off the rack, the wood engraving on the neck reads “Danny Boy”.
“Cheerio” She hangs up the phone and picks up reading glasses and her iPhone. Group text. We watch as she types out-
“Anyone around for a Girl’s Weekend?”
THAT’S RIGHT. ALL WOMAN REBOOT. We’re gonna Ocean’s 8 and make it great. Ghostbusters with all it can muster. What Men Want and What Women want is this kick-ass movie. We then do a montage of various kick-ass women answering the call. We’re gonna drop a stupid amount of salary money on the table and get ALL OF THEM.
Charlize Theron is a gun tactician whose been out of the game too long but can’t resist a chance to embarrass old friend Stallone. Michelle Yeoh is a high-end fashion designer with a secretive history with the CIA. Michelle Rodriguez doesn’t have to pilot or drive a vehicle in this one, just bring her hands so these henchmen can catch them. Brie Larson lives on a farm, retired from expeditious hunting life but unearths the machete at Mirren’s call. Zoe Salanda thinks the whole thing is ridiculous but owes Helen Mirren for the thing with the time with the Queen. Jennifer Lopez, Carrie Anne-Moss, Summer Glau, Halle Berry, Ming-Na Wen, Milla Jovovich, and Sandra Bullock. Can you imagine the sheer power of such a film, the gravitas of the extreme amount of talent onscreen? All the hits of the ’90s and ’00s, bringing in One-liners and explosions. You will pick up your face off the floor when the movie is done melting it off.
And because we are all about lifting others up here, Mirren’s team will operate like a non-toxic, un-terrible MLM. The senior members of the team bring their onboarded proteges, new to the action movie genre. Michelle Rodriguez brings on Mj Rodriguez. Lauren Ridloff is the assistant explosives expert to Milla Jovovich and we get so many great moments of her being unfazed by any of them. Ariana DeBose is the babe in the woods, protege to Mirren herself.
The girls eventually all meet for a spa day at a private resort because that’s the rule. It’s the opposite of the rule that all the meetings in the men-expendables have to happen in an auto-repair shop. Sipping tea and getting facials while making light jabs at the various idiot men that need their help. Dame Helen Mirren invites Dame Judi Dench to help with the planning sequence and they lightly hint at their past working together.
Eventually, a plot comes together, they do their research, a badass montage and I’m really over trying to write an actual plot to this. Do we need one? Honestly from this point just have a fun time cobbling together a ridiculous action sequence of rescuing the guys from any of these ladies’ previous films and follow a few simple rules.
- At no point do any of the trapped male expendables pick up a gun and resume fighting. They are useless men from the point of entrapment and they will be corralled into rescue by newcomers to Mirren’s team, played by Ego Nwodim and Sasheer Zamata. You chose the funny women for this sequence because it’s gonna be nothing but the men complaining and these two women destroying any bits of confidence they have left. They are loaded in a van and shipped away, not to be seen until the resolution.
- None of these badass baddies will show an inch of cleavage for you. Because that’s not what this is about! They will do the whole movie in camp fatigues and crewneck sweaters! …Unless they want to, because their body their choice.
- Emma Thompson cameos as the ship Captain who scoops them up after their plane explodes.
- The French dictator is played by Vincent Cassel, whose folly is he keeps getting charmed by various women in the movie, and his right hand, Jean Reno, is constantly exasperated by him.
The film wraps with Stallone and Mirren standing at the railing of Thompson’s ship, watching the dictator’s island disappear in the distance.
“You kno’, dat guys not gonna be too happy about it”
“Mhm?” Mirren raises an eyebrow
“Us escaping with the (insert political captive important plot device here)”
“Oh, I don’t think he’ll have much to say.”
As if on cue, the island explodes as the factories in the distance become engulfed in flames. Stallone jumps up from leaning on the railing, taken aback. Mirren is unfazed.
“Now… let us talk about favors you owe me”. We cut to credits, with this open-ended statement leaving the field wide open for the Expendables universe to be enjoyable and entertaining for all time.
If you’ve gotten this far, I hope you’ve enjoyed my fan-satire. If you would like to leave a comment with an idea of the feminine hero that should be involved in the film, please do. If you have a note about this idea or wish to leave a comment about how unrealistic this is, go fuck yourself. If you are a movie producer that would like a full treatment for this script, please email me and I will send you my Venmo.
