PG-13: How The Treachery Was Deliberately Timed

This year, in promoting The Expendables, they seemed to have pulled out all the stops.  They performed a minor miracle getting Stallone, Gibson, Snipes, Schwarzenegger, Banderas and more to show up, at once, for the Cannes film festival.  They went one further – they had a stretch of road shut down so that they could roll in on their purpose-hired APCs.

All of this was quite deliberate.

I don’t want to say I should’ve known, because I really should’ve known.  It was all a smokescreen to deflect from Stallone’s well timed bombshell, just before the BTR engines started revving for the cameras.  The Expendables 3 will be rated PG-13.  “We want as many people to see the movie as possible”.  So now we know what all of this heightened publicity and exposure was about.  The announcement of PG-13 and today’s oversized festivities happening in the same hour were no coincidence.

Two and a half years ago Chuck Norris inadvertently let it slip that The Expendables 2 would be PG-13, which of course was the intention.  But the problem was that Norris revealed it too early and the movie began suffering, badly, due to a tsunami of fan outrage.  In the end they were forced to shoot additional scenes and do what they could to turn it into an R-Rated movie, to assuage fan anger.  In the end, Stallone, who confirmed the rating himself, came back, tail between legs to debunk silly rumors (which he himself contributed to) and confirm that it was R-Rated.

But this time they were well prepared.  It is May, not December.  That’s the first reason the announcement was timed for today – it’s likely too late to do anything about the rating now.  Second, again, we know now why Mel, Arnold and Ford showed up at once.  They were most likely told that they were needed for severe damage control.  You gotta make this gig, I bet they were told. And yeah, the armored vehicles just added to the spectacle.

Yes we shit on PG-13 and there’ll be plenty of time to get into why that’s ridiculous in itself.  But right now while many are being taken in by the distraction, this article is just to point out the premeditated intentions beneath it.

We were taken for fools.