Today marked the first time in four years that I have been back to Comic-Con. My first experience was very unpleasant - too many slow walking, smelly strangers, and I have the craziest claustrophobia. This phobia gets so overbearing at times that I have to sit on the of the aisle when seeing a movie because I can't handle anywhere in the middle. I need to be able to breathe. So, I avoided going until I decided to give it a second try. My hopeful enthusiasm didn't really work - they're are people here this year who walking backwards - but it's a lot more tolerable second time around.
Living in California now has made it easier to get to Comic-Con. After driving in, I settled into my hotel and headed to the convention center to pick up my badge. Due to timing, I only attended one panel, and that was for THE EXPENDABLES 2. There's no fucking way I was going to miss seeing Sylvester Stallone talk about his movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, Bruce Willis, and Dolph Lundgren. Along with Stallone, Lundgren, Terry Cruz, and Randy Cultoure attended the panel, and right before we got into the meathead discussion about the film, Arnie showed up!
These two guys have a lot of class and chemistry and were bouncing nostalgia off one another. When talking about the time they first met (the Golden Globes where Rocky took home some awards), Arnie recalled the moment when Sly's mother told him, "You look like a piano mover." THE EXPENDABLES 2 is clearly a labor of love for Sly - he wanted to make an action movie with all of the original action stars of the 80s and 90s, and it would only work if everyone came on board. No mention of Steven Seagal, but I guess he's made his career really expendable by now.
Stallone went on to talk about the purity of the action, and how all of these guys really trained to bulk up. There are no "velcro muscles" in this little film. If you remember, back in 2010, Stallone coined Velcro Muscles as something Hollywood started doing with skinnier actors - digitally making them look ripped. Think Tim Burton's BATMAN for a nice example.
It's great to see these guys do something Hollywood's never done: show what happens to once booming action stars. Because they are immortalized on film, we don't think about the aging process. "The body is like a machine," Stallone said, "the parts wear out."
Arnie did talk a little about his comeback. After saying his my famous phrase, "I'm back!" to a crowd of fist-pumping fans, Arnold joked about Stallone approached him for his action come back: "We've known you have been out of the business for eight years, let me show you how to load a gun again." Arnie hilariously closed that statement with this: "All the fun things I didn't forget ... taking a knife out to kill a guy.You wish you could do those things in politics."
Probably the funniest part of the panel is when a fanboy asked Stallone, "What's up with the three sea shells?" in reference to the great DEMOLITION MAN. Sly replied, "Kinda know how chopsticks work? Enough said."
Stay tuned for more coverage.