Photos
Two new movie trailers appeared on-line yesterday, one for the dance-battle adventure Step Up 3 The Streets, and one for the Sylvester Stallone Ocean’s 11 meets Rambo meets an episode of HBO’s Funny or Die Presents action film, The Expendables. At first, the two films could hardly be more different. One involves young men and women in their physical prime expressing their joy for life through dance. The other features the ragged husks of former action heroes pretending like they are expert murderous warriors rather than people who own pill-of-the-day cases. But a closer examination reveals that they are, in fact, much more similar than we might have first suspected. In fact they might even be THE EXACT SAME MOVIE.
Let’s begin by watching the trailers:
The Expendables trailer, you guys:
Step Up 3 The Streets trailer, you guys:
Now, let’s do the numbers:
1. Both films involve a gang with a highly specialized shared interest (dance, guerilla murder)
2. Both films involve secret hideaways
3. Both films involve aforementioned gang facing “the biggest battle” of their lives
4. Both films involve a character in a leadership position asking the less-experienced members of their gang if they are ready, and both films feature the less-experienced members bristling at even having to be asked such a question.
5. “One move can set a whole generation free.” vs. “one gang of senior citizens can set a whole made up probably kind of racist South American village free.”
6. Both films feature men with no shirts on for no dramatic purpose.
7. Both films feature characters whose entire lives have led up to this one important moment.
8. Both films feature large choreographed dance numbers in 3D starring Mickey Rourke.
9. Both films look kind of fun, and VERY retarded.
I rest my case.
 |
 |
You Might Also Like
 Here Are Some Afternoon Links! |  Here Are Some Afternoon Links! |  That’s Your Pen: The Sylvester Stallone “Chaos” Pen |  The Videogum Movie Club: Step Up 3D |
Leave a Reply
Sign inSign in with FacebookYou must be logged in to post, reply to, or rate a comment.
Now if we could just get Jason Statham to turn his gun about 60 degrees to the left…
step up 3D? does this mean we might get a 3D version of stomp the yard?
I would like a 3D version of Drumline, please. That way, I’ll get even MORE angry with Morris Brown College get’s ALL UP IN MY FACE!
Ugh, *when
*gets
Double ugh. I’m sorry for being the worst.
“Ain’t no class is going to teach me to do me” …in 3d
~Devon Miles
Of course dance can set a generation free. Haven’t you heard of minstrel shows.
As an unabashed fan of both Step Up 2: The Streets AND Jason Statham, I for one could not be happier. (I’m actually serious about this, but I know that no amount of convincing will make it not sound sarcastic or like an April Fools Day prank.)
I like the Step Up movies as well. But how can they do Step Up 2: The Streets and Step Up 3: The Streets. Isn’t there a rule against that?
Hey that’s my governator! But the Expendables is a joke right? It sure looks like a joke.
It looks like those fake preview movies during Tropic Thunder
The Expendables is Valentine’s Day for action movies, there could not BE any more stars (although the movie could do with some more Topher)
i could not be more excited for Step Up 3D!!! it looks soooooooooo GREAT!
According to IMDB, both films also feature great character names like Cable, Moose, Ice Cream Truck Kid, Toll Road, Hale Caesar, Dan Paine, and Lee Christmas.
I assume Ice Cream Truck Kid is in Step Up 3D and his dance move is the truffle shuffle
Both films will be watched by me on a plane in about seven or eight months.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
The Expendables.
The Expendables who?
The Expendables is a real movie that probably tens of people spent lots of time, effort and money on.
Hi-larity!
10. Both films will be featured one day in a “The Worst Movie of All Time” post. Probably before Amelia too.
True dat – I can see Gabe NOT doing Amelia just to keep the running sub feature – Submitting Amelia for the WMoAT – going and to keep on collecting all of the Werttrewisms.
The Expendables: Whoo Boy, too many faded action heroes, Amirite?
It’s like a collaboration track amongst your original twenty favorite rappers, and none of them can get a word in edgewise, let alone remain coherent onstage, what with the dementia.
CHRIST
Between Stallone, Rourke, Stone Cold, Statham, Willis, and Randy Couture, there’s enough plastic-y, still, lifeless foreheads to make a small army.
on an unrelated note it still hurts when I pee
If someone said “Welcome to my house” and then opened the door to reveal a bunch of random people in clown outfits and a pile of old boomboxes stacked haphazardly in one corner like it’s no big deal, I’d probably have to take a step back 3D and reevaluate the kind of people I hang out with.
Are you kidding? I think I conceptualized that very same house when we were asked to draw our dream houses in 3rd grade.
11. Both films appear in the new testament as signs of the apocalypse.
Maybe the Expendables would be improved by some dancing, Step Up 3D would definitely be improved by some guns.
I think the primary failure in the Step Up franchise is when the little kid in the first one, Skinny, got shot for no actual reason other than to prove that the streets are tough. Less guns, more ridiculous LED-lit dance battles! #stepuphead
Could Sylvester Stallone at least do a cameo in Step Up 3D as a tough-love dance coach or something?
He shows up as Rocky in a reverse-sports-movie-convention, where he teaches dancers to box in order to improve their impulses and fierocity.
Maybe a Stallone dance solo?
Someone is not very happy with the majority of this thread…
So, you are saying there is nothing new under the sun?
So, Romeo and Juliet really is just like The Last Song?
I’m pretty sure Stallone is wearing eyeliner in half of that trailer.
Angel Batista, why hast thou forsaken us??!!
My governor had time to be in a movie? My state is about to fall into the sea–more figuratively, as in a sea of debt and ruination, as he fires tens of thousands of teachers and freezes the salaries of state employees and allows the water and power companies to raise their rates BECAUSE we’ve been CONSERVING SO WELL!!???–and he is all, Fuck it, guys, I’ve got to go be in a movie! It’ll be AWESOME! Sly needs me!
RAGE FIT.
6. Both films feature men with no shirts on for no dramatic purpose.
totally my favourite kind of movie! although the film snob in me does prefer my shirtless men to have at least some dramatic purpose.
april fool’s! i totally love the shirtless dudes with no reason for being shirtless because then you don’t have to pretend to be following some plot development when really your brain is like “hey pretty!”
for realz! i always appreciate a good shirtless guy in a movie and i don’t even really like guys. for example, The Covenant may be one of the worst movies i have ever seen (and nate archibald isn’t even that cute in it), but it’s totally worth it because the main characters are all on a swim team made up of male models, which means that there is a completely gratuitous locker room shower scene.
totally! remember that time that you, me and hillary rewound that scene from the prince and me like 10 times just to that pretty boy shirtless? and then spent the rest of the movie yelling “take it off!” because who really cared about that movie, but goddamn, that boy had a pretty pretty torso. i mean, i just like to express my third-wave girlness by being as much an objectifying ass-hole as possible. it’s like the rules of feminism. i’m pretty sure i learned that from kathleen hanna.
yeah, i’m pretty sure i read that in the riot grrrl manifesto. and besides, anyone with eyes can see that there is an increasing objectification of the male body in the media. you don’t have to have read susan bordo’s “beauty (re)discovers the male body” to know that. and that actor’s torso was his only redeeming quality so i feel like it would just be rude to not want him to take his shirt off.
and that’s why i call you little miss gender studies. though i might switch to responding to all your fancy book-learnin’ with “clever girl!” variety is the spice of life, after all.
Irony aside, “The Expendables” looks crazy awesome. Like twelve year old lighting your farts on fire awesome. Like Calvin and Hobbes awesome. Like the new Rambo where he RIPS A DUDE’S THROAT OUT!!??!?! awesome.
Here is my super cool story you guys:
About 6 months ago, every morning for about a week, I walked by this big movie production where they were filming a scene in an abandoned warehouse next to the subway and it was pretty annoying having to walk through all of the equipment, trailers, and people dressed in ‘street gear’ etc. so after a few days I asked someone on the crew what movie they were filming and they said “The new Step Up movie” and I said “The dancing movies?” And they said “yup” and then we parted ways. They finished filming a few days later. Dreams do come true in NYC!
P.S. Since I know you are all dying to know, if I had to venture a guess, I would say the warehouse near me was probably the dusty one. I’ll buy the DVD when it comes out to analyze, but that is my gut feeling. I’ll let you guys know when I figure it out more definitively.
Did you guys know that director of Step Up 3D Jon M. Chu has a little dog named Monster? Did you know that this dog is not yet house trained, and spent much of his time pissing in director of Step Up 3D Jon M. Chu’s trailer during the filming? TMYK. Don’t ask me how I know this. Just sayin’ this dog is kind of a hero of mine and I think he should be the official mascot of Videogum monsters.
“One move, can set a whole generation free…” Yes. I am so glad I was wearing my Poise pads when I heard that.
Whoopi is our hero and a national treasure.
I accidentally left The Expendables trailer playing when I started the Step Up 3 trailer and then scrolled down, so imagine my confusion (joy) at the Step Up 3 trailer being a commercial for Purina Puppy Chow. Then, to heap confusion upon confusions (joy upon joys) the trailer for The Expendables started auto-playing again during the beginning of the Step Up 3 trailer. Just for a minute, EVERYTHING MADE SENSE.
I was just about to write about the very same thing!
The Step It Up trailer is awesometastic when you mute it and play the Expendables one over it.
Is it better to be born a dancer, or to become one later?
so pretty much the only unifying characteristic of the Step Up franchise is that it stars pretty white people surrounded by a bunch of minorities whom they have to learn (steal) from and then save with their special heart and understanding.
I’m really glad more movies in Hollywood aren’t like that.
lol
I kept waiting for the part in the Step Up trailer where the lady loses her arm.
Also, ERIC ROBERTS, GUYS!!