{"id":15448,"date":"2014-05-18T00:00:09","date_gmt":"2014-05-18T04:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/?p=15448"},"modified":"2018-02-26T19:20:01","modified_gmt":"2018-02-27T00:20:01","slug":"minimate-mini-review-155-the-expendables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/2014\/05\/minimate-mini-review-155-the-expendables\/","title":{"rendered":"Minimate Mini-Review #155 - The Expendables"},"content":{"rendered":"

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#155 - The Expendables<\/h3>\n

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The Expendables<\/a><\/i> should have been a one-off genre novelty, but instead it spawned a sequel<\/a> (with another on the way, and possibly an all-female spinoff in the future), and that sequel got two toylines - including several Minimate box sets.<\/p>\n

The Expendables are an elite team of mercenaries, hired by Mr. Church to depose the dictator of the island nation of Vilena. With weapons specialist Hale Caesar, knife expert Lee Christmas and mission coordinator Tool on the job, it should go down without a hitch, but no job is ever that simple.<\/i><\/p>\n

(Since all the \"characters\" in The Expendables<\/i> were basically just the same people their actors always play, we'll just call them by name. You understand.)<\/p>\n

Lee Christmas is Jason Statham, seen here in a rare movie role \"Jasonthat doesn't<\/b> involve him driving a car like a badass. He's named after a real soldier<\/a>, but otherwise doesn't seem to have anything in common with him. Jason Statham is wearing all black, but there's a little bit of paint on his legs to create his kneepads and the top of his boots. He has a large bulletproof vest with painted details on the front and back, but if you take that off, his chest is painted with enough details to make it clear he's wearing a button-down shirt. There's a holster on his leg, and a black pistol in the tray next to him fits in there perfectly. The Jason Statham likeness is outstanding<\/b> - put this head on a different body, and it would instantly be Chev Chelios, Handsome Rob, or the Transporter (who I'm sure has a name but, like most people, I just call him \"Jason Statham\").<\/p>\n

\"TerryNext we have Terry Crews, playing the ridiculously pun-named Hale Caesar. At last, I'm one-seventh of the way to completing my Brooklyn Nine-Nine<\/i> Minimates display! Terry Crews is every nerd's second choice to play Luke Cage for Marvel (after Isaiah Mustafa<\/a>, duh). He's wearing a bulletproof vest similar to Jason Statham's, but with a different design printed on the front. His boots are the same pattern, but his kneepads are rounder. He's not wearing a shirt under the armor (the chest is fully painted), so he may not have sleeves, but he does have the Ghostbusters' elbow pads. Like Jason Statham, he has a holster and pistol. Though he's bald, his head has a hole in the top. There really isn't a reason for it, either: yes, he has a backwards baseball cap, but the inside is flat - no peg.<\/p>\n

\"BruceMr. Church is Bruce Willis, smirking his Bruce Willis-iest smirk. His role had originally been offered to Kurt Russell, which means the team could have gotten their mission from Snake Plissken instead of John McClane. Obviously the likeness is once again terrific - this set has two squinty white bald guys in it, and yet you can tell them apart at a glance. Yet again he's wearing black, but in his case it's a suit jacket<\/a> with no tie, so his white dress shirt and flash of pink skin at the neck add a little color. He's also got bare hands, unlike the last two guys we wrote about. And yes, weapons, but we'll get to that in a little bit. Hold your horses.<\/p>\n

\"MickeyThe final figure in this set is Mickey Rourke. I'm not sure whether \"Tool\" is his character's name or just a description. You ever wonder why Mickey Rourke in The Expendables<\/i> looked 100% exactly like<\/b> Mickey Rourke in Iron Man 2<\/i>? Same skiny mustache, same tiny goatee, same gray, ropy hair... it's because he literally filmed all his scenes for Expendables<\/i> while on a two-day break from Iron Man 2<\/i>. That worked out really well for Art Asylum, who could therefore just reuse Whiplash's<\/a> hair for this toy. He's also got Mayor Lenny's<\/a> vest and Wolverine's<\/a> cowboy boots. Yee-haw! Props to the face designers for also including the toothpick sticking out of his mouth.<\/p>\n

And then there are the weapons. In addition to the black pistols that obviously belong to Jason Statham and Terry Crews, the set includes a bunch of weapons you can give to anyone. There are two Colt M4A1 Carbines<\/a>, a shotgun<\/a>, an MM1 grenade launcher<\/a>, an M-16 with an underslung grenade launcher<\/a>, two small silver pistols, two larger silver pistols, a silver knife, and a silver revolver. Judging by their positions in the try, we can assume the knife and revolver belong to Mickey Rourke and the two large silver pistols belong to Bruce Willis, but the rest can be given to anyone.<\/div>\n
Next<\/a><\/div>\n


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#156 - The Expendables<\/h3>\n

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Barney Ross is the leader of the Expendables, an elite team of mercenaries hired to depose the dictator of the island nation of Vilena. But his rival Trent Mauser was right - the job has \"trouble\" written all over it, and Ross is drawn into the conflict with ex-CIA operative James Munroe and his right-hand man Paine.<\/i><\/p>\n

(Since all the \"characters\" in The Expendables<\/i> were basically just the same people their actors always play, we'll just call them by name. You understand.)<\/p>\n

\"SylvesterBarney Ross is named after a real man<\/a>, one whose real life kind of mirrors Sylvester Stallone's movie career: he started as a successful boxer<\/a>, then became a soldier<\/a>. Sylvester Stallone is wearing all black: pants, boots, belt, T-shirt and gloves. There's a little bit of paint on the legs to create his boots. He's wearing a heavy bulletproof vest, which also gets grey paint apps to keep it from being a formless black lump (if you remove it, his chest is painted to look like a tight T-shirt). The likeness is a decent representation of Stallone's new Asian face, and probably uses about the same percentage of plastic. He has two holsters on his legs, but they seem too small for the guns.<\/p>\n

\"ArnoldThe Expendables<\/i> was Arnold Schwarzenegger's first film in six years, thanks to his political career - thus the joke about Trent Mauser wanting to be President (Arnold was first offered the Bruce Willis role, but he wanted to just stick to a cameo). Since he's not actually involved in the story at all, his clothes are a bit more casual than the rest - and not at all black. He's wearing a brown jacket over a flower-print shirt, with brown-grey pants and darker shoes. The hair this figure uses is the same the Terminator 2<\/i> Minimates<\/a> used, appropriately enough, and his skin is much more orange than Stallone's was. Art Asylum has had so much practice making Arnold Schwarzenegger Minimates, there's no mistaking who this is even with the added wrinkles.<\/p>\n

\"EricThe villain of the movie is Eric Roberts, an actor who hasn't gone a year without a release since 1987, and yet still isn't exactly what you'd call \"famous.\" Since he's just wearing a plain grey suit, you could easily pass this off as a Dark Knight<\/i> version of Sal Maroni. The toy duplicates his bright blue eyes, and every line of his face (except his nose, of course, because Minimates don't have noses). He's painted with a red striped necktie; even though we can't find any pictures of him wearing that kind of tie in the film, we assume AA had reference material that showed it. Oh, and the character's name is James Munroe, because why wouldn't<\/b> you want to confuse him with the fifth president of the United States<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Our final figure in this set is Stone Cold Steve Austin, playing Stone Cold \"StoneSteve Austin (but named Dan Paine). Remember that time Steve Austin beat his wife? Hey, if people can harp on Hank Pym - a fictional character - for one accidental incident more than 30 years ago, then we can remind people that a real life man did it multiple times a decade ago. Of course, in his case it was because of the steroids WWE was making him take, something this Minimate pays honor to by way of one of the anatomical \"powerhouse\" chest caps. If you don't want him to be (as much of) a roided out freak, you can take the chest cap off, and he's still fully painted beneath it. He's wearing a dark blue shirt, a black belt, brown pants, and black shoes, and has two holsters strapped to his legs: one for a knife, the other for a baton.<\/p>\n

And of course, there is also a huge assortment of weapons included. Beyond the ones we've already mentioned, there are two M-16s with scopes<\/a>, a silver knife, two rifles with grenade launchers<\/a>, two small black pistols, a black handgun, an HK94<\/a>, an MP5<\/a>, and two silver handguns. Even if you're not a fan of these figures, it's worth getting the set just to have an arsenal of accessories for your other Minimates.<\/p>\n

Although these figures were released to coincide with Expendables 2<\/i>, they're all clearly based on the first movie. The Statham-Crews-Willis-Rourke set was available through your local comicshop, while the Stallone-Schwarzenegger-Roberts-Austin set was only available at select Toys Я Us stores.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

#155 - The Expendables The Expendables should have been a one-off genre novelty, but instead it spawned a sequel (with another on the way, and possibly an all-female spinoff in the future), and that sequel got two toylines - including … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,137,32],"tags":[53],"class_list":["post-15448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-asylum","category-mmmr","category-tru","tag-minimates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15448"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"http:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25942,"href":"http:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15448\/revisions\/25942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}