10 Recent Critical Duds We All Saw Coming

Just two words: "Too late". 

The Expendables 3 came out in 2014, almost a full decade before this finally arrived, and while the first three films (as artistically flawed as they are) have their fans, how many people were really clamouring for a continuation? The widely-disliked The Expendables 3, which wasted most of the cast and had an inexplicable PG-13 rating, did kill much of the goodwill towards this series, after all. 

The point is, Sylvester Stallone - who spends most of this fourth film off-screen in a very jarring manner - hadn't moved on from this IP, but the world had and so had most of the cast, very few of whom actually showed up for this, meaning that this franchise's USP of having a stacked cast of action legends was thrown out of the window. In general, The Expendables 4 seemed pointless and unwanted, more like a desperate attempt to revive a forgotten IP than something that came from a place of genuine creativity. The trailers looked pretty weak as well. 

In the end, The Expendables 4 was, much like The New Empire, quite a bit worse than it already looked, and it was even more of a dud than the infamous third film. Fine, it had an R-rating this time, but aside from some cool fight scenes this was a passionless, unintelligent, and staggeringly dull embarrassment for all involved. Still, at least this is the last one. Hopefully.