Sometimes life imitates art.
The 2010 film The Expendables features Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham heading an all-star action movie roster. Stallone's team of mercenaries opens the story by rescuing hostages held for ransom by Somali pirates. Then the main plot features the squad saving the daughter of an island nation's leader. The leader has been co-opted by rogue American agents with an eye to profit more than politics.
I've seen The Expendables three times now, and enjoyed it on every occasion. I've attempted to watch the sequel, Expendables 2, three times. I made it through the entire film the initial viewing, but I subsequently haven't been able to make it much past the first scenes. Expendables 2 opens with the mercenary team rescuing a Chinese billionaire held in Nepal. In the process, the team kills so many Nepalese soldiers that I couldn't keep a body count. I'm guessing it was at least 50, but it may have been a hundred. Ugly stuff, too. Heads getting shot off and such. So I watch this first rescue mission, and the Expendables escape with the Chinese billionaire, and I sit there wondering why I'm supposed to be cheering for these guys.
I like Stallone and Crews and Ludgren as much as anyone, and I love Jason Statham from his Transporter days, but in Expendables 2, this merc team leaves a hundred families bereft of heads of household just to rescue a billionaire. Hello, whoever's in charge -- how about we just pay the ransom and spare the head-splitting violence and hundred graves? See, to make a long story short, I turn off the movie at that point. The killing was too horrific and unnecessary for me to spend two additional hours rooting for these characters.
How did the screenwriters go from the heroic storyline of The Expendables to the opening unheroic savagery of Expendables 2? Did they assume audiences would react to the different scripts the same way? Is the assumption that Americans won't care if the lead characters are killing people they don't really have much motive to kill? Then I got to thinking about the perceived necessity of rescuing the Chinese billionaire. Does it not matter how many die as long as the billionaire pays the bills? What kind of attitude is that for a U.S. movie? Why is rescuing a billionaire held for ransom worth a hundred lives?
Then, of course, irony kicks in. I've been asking parallel questions regarding the pandemic since Republicans began pushing for early re-opening. Substitute "economy" for "Chinese billionaire." Why was it necessary to sacrifice lives to jump start an economy being held hostage by COVID-19? Why not do what other countries had successfully done, namely stay locked down the recommended length of time? What was so difficult about another six weeks of stay-at-home and shutdowns? Why not, in other words, just pay the ransom?
American priorities throughout this re-opening debate have been incredibly skewed to coin over lives, skewed in a way I would have considered unthinkable. Did Americans really accept the opening of Expendables 2 as making logical or moral sense? Did the screenwriters believe economy-over-all is a national vibe?
The good thing about Expendables 2 is that I can turn it off. The bad news about the pandemic is that I cannot. The aspirational values of the United States have been turned upside down. Our citizens have been deemed eminently expendable.
Bob Dietz
July 8, 2020
