The Expendables Textual Analysis

The Expendables uses a very well known cast to it's advantage, combining big action genre stars such as Sylvester Stallone, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger in one film does a good job of pulling in the target audience of action fans (Some an older generation of fans, with Stallone's most famous films being from the 80's, and some younger fans, with newer actors like Statham, who has starred in recent films such as The Transporter series and the Crank series), this broadens the audience as an older and younger audience would come to see the film. The idea that our film will be a serious retro throwback to old, over the top action films such as Rambo, Commando, and even recent films such as Crank, links to The Expendables as the film is intended to pay homage to films like the ones previously mentioned, and bring an all star action cast back for one massive, over the top action film.

The idea of retro throwback-style films can be used to our advantage to draw in a wider audience, with older people and younger people able to enjoy the film as more current actors and special effects, etc. with a more traditional style plot and over the top, cheesy dialogue.

Commando Textual Analysis

The film Commando uses lots of fight scenes and chase scenes to keep the audience on the edge of their seat throughout the film, also the tense atmosphere included in the opening of the film where Schwarzenegger's character (John Matrix) is chopping wood and sees a reflection of someone behind him in the axe could emphasise that he expects an imminent danger. The action-heavy sequences of the film are broken up with dialogue between Matrix and Cindy (His helper, as the film follows a propp character style), and the scenes with the main villain (Bennet) talking to his soldiers. The setting uses places like an army barracks, a mansion on an island, and a shopping mall. The use of the shopping mall setting as opposed to the other settings works as the mall is a more civilian setting, and the fights scene between Matrix, the police and Sully (A man who he is chasing) works as he has to try and keep himself safe and the civilians out of harm, also a lot of the dialogue happens in a civilian setting. In contrast to this, the scenes set in the army barracks, etc. are more action heavy as Matrix is simply out to kill these men and not anything else, so he doesn't have to worry about civilians, etc. The sound uses tracks composed purely for the film and no other songs by bands, etc.