The Abridged Script
FADE IN:
EXT. PRISONER TRANSFER TRAIN
SYLVESTER STALLONE, JASON STATHAM, and DOLPH LUNDGREN drop onto a train from a helicopter. Also RANDY COTURE is there, BLEH.
SYLVESTER STALLONE
Alright Expendables! We've lost a lot of cast members, so we need to rescue Wesley Snipes from this train before it gets to prison!
JASON STATHAM
Wesley Snipes? 'Ow long 'til we make some obnoxious winkin' reference to his IRS trouble?
DOLPH LUNDGREN
I'm guessing it's his second line in the movie.
RANDY COTURE
Maybe it'll be his first line! Right guys? Ha ha, guys, right?
Everyone rolls their eyes and ignores RANDY, then proceeds to bust WESLEY out of the TAIL CAR.
WESLEY SNIPES
Thanks fellas. Hang on a second, I'm going to recreate pretty much all of Snowpiercer in the next three minutes.
SNIPES battles his way past through every guard on the train all the way to the front, then rigs the train to drive straight into SOME BAD GUY who is pretty much standing on the train tracks inside the prison. EXPLOSIONS happen.
WESLEY SNIPES
It's great to be back, because I'm totally an original Expendable, I was in "The Expendables 0", you must not have seen it. I'll bet you're glad to have a knife guy back on the team!
JASON STATHAM
Knife guy? I'm the bloody knife guy!
WESLEY SNIPES
What? You should be the car guy, or the transportation guy! I'm the knife guy, I'm Blade goddammit!
JASON STATHAM
Then you should be the sodding sword guy! And I can't be the transportation guy, that's Stallone for some reason!
SYLVESTER STALLONE
Guys, enough! Everyone is equally the everything guy, okay? Nobody has any distinguishing characteristics aside from physical appearance!
RANDY COTURE
That's right, I'm the cauliflower ears guy!
SYLVESTER STALLONE
Right, and I'm the Botox guy.
DOLPH LUNDGREN
And I'm the guy who time has been extremely unkind to.
JASON STATHAM
Wait, does 'at make me the male pattern baldness guy or the English guy?
WESLEY SNIPES
Well what am I then? You already have a black guy, and if you have two black guys on the same team, then it's officially a black team and you're limited to making Tyler Perry money.
TERRY CREWS
Oh no, he's right!
(is injured)
(goes into coma)
(no longer in the movie)
STALLONE, SNIPES, STATHAM, LUNDGREN, and, ugh, COTURE discover MEL GIBSON is a WEAPONS DEALER.
MEL GIBSON
Oh come on! I played this exact character in Machete Kills! Man, you make a couple dozen homophobic remarks and use somewhere between fifty and a hundred racial slurs and suddenly you're always the bad guy!
SYLVESTER STALLONE
Gibson? I thought I killed you back in "The Expendables: Beginnings"!
MEL GIBSON
Yeah well, nobody is truly gone until their contract negotiations fall through. Speaking of which, Bruce Willis is gone so Harrison Ford is the new plot guy.
(leaves)
EXT. OUTSIDE OF HOSPITAL
SYLVESTER STALLONE approaches HARRISON FORD, feebly hunched over with a cluster of medics sweating bullets just offscreen.
SYLVESTER STALLONE
Mel Gibson is alive, and going by a new fake name that we'll discuss for a weirdly long time.
HARRISON FORD
Mel Gibson? Did't you kill him in "The Expendables: Rise of the Expendables"?
SYLVESTER STALLONE
Apparently not. I suppose you're here to tell me you want him dead.
HARRISON FORD
According to the contract I got you to sign after Bruce Willis cashed in a Die Hard paycheck and told you to fuck yourself, I'm here to stand absolutely still during all dialogue scenes and sit absolutely still during all action scenes.
STALLONE meets with SNIPES, STATHAM, and LUNDGREN. And nobody else worth mentioning.
SYLVESTER STALLONE
Well guys, it seems like after the first movie that took itself way too seriously, and the second movie that had Willis and Schwarzenegger have a whole conversation about catchphrase use, we've finally figured out the right tone for these stupid movies...
JASON STATHAM
Brilliant!
WESLEY SNIPES
Cool.
DOLPH LUNDGREN
(indecipherable)
RANDY COTURE
Gosh, so this ought to be the best Expendables movie yet, huh guys?
SYLVESTER STALLONE
...which is why I'm firing all of you. I'll be replacing you with an unrecognizable team of younger people that none of the thirty-something man-children who like these movies will give a fuck about.
WESLEY SNIPES
Holy shit, I literally JUST got into these movies and now I'm out? This was a bigger waste of my time than installing TurboTax!
JASON STATHAM
There it is!
RANDY COTURE
Golly Sly, I can't believe you've already picked out a team to replace us.
SYLVESTER STALLONE
Oh I haven't, I'm actually going to spend the next twenty goddamn minutes doing just that. All with the assistance of...
(closes eyes and picks a random contact on his phone)
Kelsey Grammer? Alright, who's been messing with my Blackberry?
EXT. VARIOUS EXOTIC LOCALES
SYLVESTER STALLONE and KELSEY GRAMMER scope out some young actors who aren't actually action stars because then they'd have to be paid.
KELSEY GRAMMER
Thanks again for calling, Sly. This really seems like the perfect job for Carl Weathers or Gary Busey or Chris Lambert or Jesse Ventura or Stephen Seagal or Kurt Russell or Louis Gossett Jr. or Rutger Hauer or Val Kilmer or Burt Reynolds or Nick Nolte or Michael Biehn or Jon Voight or Emilio Estevez or Peter Weller but NO, you called Frasier first! I'm truly honored.
SYLVESTER STALLONE
Uh, yeah. So I need five fresh young faces to join my new team. Or maybe four young faces and another old face, I just can't resist that shit.
KELSEY GRAMMER
Great. First up, we've got Glen Powell. He's a world-class hacker, but don't go thinking he's some lame nerd, because he's also terrible at climbing rocks.
GLEN POWELL
Nice to meet you. Since this movie is written by people the same age as my grandparents, I can use computers to do literally anything, in fact I'm a hologram right now.
KELSEY GRAMMER
Next, we've got Ronda Rousey, a GIRL! But don't worry, no opportunity to highlight her sexuality will be missed.
RONDA ROUSEY
I can kick butt in 6-inch stilettos and I'm not wearing any underwear! I'm sure the guy who wrote this will do a classy job as the producer of an all-female Expendables spinoff.
KELSEY GRAMMER
Then, we've got Victor Ortiz. He makes his own guns or ammo or something.
VICTOR ORTIZ
I've designed a bunch of custom weapons that I will use absolutely none of, please give me a regular gun immediately.
KELSEY GRAMMER
Last is Kellan Lutz. He was in all five of the Twilight movies, and he's played both Poseidon and Hercules, so he'll be very eager to take his shirt off.
KELLAN LUTZ
(taking shirt off)
Fuck you, I hate authority, and I despise working as part of a team.
SYLVESTER STALLONE
You remind me of myself at your age. And since I'm writing the screenplay that dictates your reaction to that, it's a compliment.
KELLAN LUTZ
(putting shirt on)
I'd be honored to join your team, then.
(takes shirt back off)
STALLONE and THE EXPENDA-BRATS prepare for their next mission.
ANTONIO BANDERAS
Wait, you must allow me to join as well!
SYLVESTER STALLONE
What's your special skill?
ANTONIO BANDERAS
Never. Shutting. The Fuck. Up.
Suddenly SNIPES, STATHAM, LUNDGREN, and THE OTHER ONE all show up.
JASON STATHAM
Looks like you've got a new team of young action heroes, each one representin' the modern styles of action movies that do well at the box office and force folks like us out o' the spotlight. I'd say it's a bit too on the nose, but that's how you won your Oscar with Rocky.
WESLEY SNIPES
Sly, everyone knows that this is going to take a huge right turn into Mary Sue fanfic territory and have all the young kids getting captured so that us washed-up has-beens have to rescue them and prove our relevance. Let's just skip to that part and shave 20 minutes off this thing.
SYLVESTER STALLONE
Uh, no, that's totally not what's going to happen. All of these Expendables movies from now on are going to follow me and my new team: Glen Somebody, Victor Spanishname, Girl McGirlistan, and Lellan Kutz. Goodbye forever, Expendables.
THE EXPENDA-BABIES are immediately captured. STALLONE, LUNDGREN, SNIPES, and STATHAM have to save the day and, why the hell not, ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, JET LI, and HARRISON FORD too.
RANDY COTURE
And everyone's favorite Expendable, Randy Couture! Wait, has my name been spelled wrong this whole time? Oh come on, guys!
INT. ABANDONED BUILDING - OSMANISTAN
STALLONE, STATHAM, LUNDGREN and SNIPES find LUTZ, ORTIZ, ROUSEY, and POWELL and free them.
MEL GIBSON
(over loudspeaker)
Well, this was a trap obviously. And the building is wired with explosives, of course. Remote detonator, seconds before the whole building goes up, corrupt militia coming in to kill you, outnumber you five to one, tanks, yadda yadda yadda. It's hard to imagine why movies like this stopped being popular, huh?
SYLVESTER STALLONE
There's only one way we're getting out of this, and that's by working as a team. Let's all split up.
GLEN POWELL
Guys, I can use my magical hacking skills to jam the signal to the explosives. Of course, once my Moto 360 smartwatch battery runs out, they'll go off. I just charged it, so we have about 5 minutes.
RONDA ROUSEY
Is your sole purpose in this movie to turn what would normally be a timer counting down to zero into a battery indicator counting down to zero?
ANTONIO BANDERAS
Well hello, I will awkwardly hit on you, please ignore that I'm old enough to be your grandfather and that I almost exclusively now play characters named "Puss".
WESLEY SNIPES
We're going to have to shoot our way out of here. Make sure that all deaths happen offscreen and there's no blood, we need to secure that PG-13 rating so the movie will be accessible to a new generation of teenagers who have absolutely no fucking clue who any of us are.
JET LI
Sounds like a good time for me to do some Kung Fu ha ha just kidding there will be NONE of that nonsense.
KELLAN LUTZ
Great plan, let me just grab my motorcycle, which will be extremely useful in both this crumbling building as well as the uneven, obstacle-filled ground surrounding it!
There's a huge shootout between a fuckton of identical-looking characters, lots of noise, things blow up.
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
Guys, I was checking a list of Arnold Quotes and realized I have't said "get to the choppah" in any of these Expendables movies. So, get to the choppah!
Everyone hurries to escape the building, but MEL GIBSON shows up to face STALLONE one-on-one.
MEL GIBSON
If you want something done right, you need to put on a silk bowling shirt and do it yourself!
SYLVESTER STALLONE
Mel, at last we meet. Maybe you won't be like every other Expendables villain and you'll actually get to survive and become our nemesis in the sequels.
MEL GIBSON
Oh please, I don't need your handouts you Hollywood liberal pussy queer jew.
(is shot)
Aw shit, what did I say this time?! I was drunk, that means it's okay!
(dies)
All of the EXPENDABLES survive, and TERRY CREWS even shows up! And SCHWARZENEGGER and LI ensure there's at least ONE GAY JOKE! And the STUDIO leaks the movie online so they can blame PIRACY when the movie TANKS at the BOX OFFICE!
SYLVESTER STALLONE
Based on the dismal earnings, I guess it's safe to say this well has dried up. I suppose there's just not a market for watching the decaying corpses of former action stars rehashing tired formulae from the 80's.
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
We're just going to have to take our careers in risky new directions if we want to stay relevant, huh?
HARRISON FORD
It sure seems that way. We'll have to let go of the kinds of roles that made us famous when we were younger.
STALLONE announces plans for RAMBO 5 and ROCKY 7.
SCHWARZENEGGER announces plans for TERMINATOR 5, TWINS 2, and CONAN 3.
HARRISON FORD announces plans for STAR WARS 7, INDIANA JONES 5, and BLADE RUNNER 2.
END