The Expendables 3 will conclude that trilogy where aging male action stars creak their way towards enormous guns this August, and last week both a trailer and 16 character posters appeared online. Amongst the latter, next to Sylvester Stallone’s usual team of unusually heroic mercenaries, there was an improbable Kelsey Grammer, hands jammed in his fishing vest like his nearest Florida casino had just booked Steely Dan. But only Hazlitt exclusively received a leaked Expendables 3 screenplay, and we’re excerpting it below.
INT. ABANDONED MILITARY BASE.
The huge airline hangar is filled with burnt wreckage, old communist computers and paramilitary corpses, none of which belong to THE EXPENDABLES. There’s STATHAM, cockney knife genius. LUNDGREN, the sniper, his gaze as icy as a Jönköping eve. The SEVEN-FOOT-TALL MMA DUDE [nationality TBD] cleans his gore-flecked Gatling gun. Meanwhile, their weathered leader STALLONE regards his bro-turned-rival SCHWARZENEGGER across a table made out of empty plutonium canisters.
SCHWARZENEGGER
So those “peace activists” were working with the Grenadian sleeper agents all along.
STALLONE
That’s right. And they set up all of us to take the fall—of bullets.
SCHWARZENEGGER
What are you going to do? Alert the government?
STALLONE
So they can kill us instead? I ain’t no fan of these crazy revolutionaries, but the CIA... also bad.
SCHWARZENEGGER
You must think you’re some kinda Rambo.
STALLONE
If you’re not in on our little mission, then hasta la vista, baby.
SCHWARZENEGGER
A real Tango and/or Cash.
An irritated STALLONE rises to grab SCHWARZENEGGER by the collar.
STALLONE
I don’t know why you came jingling all the way in here, but—
STATHAM
(Britishly)
Oi, mates! Let’s not be a bunch of wankers about this.
FRASIER appears from a cargo plane, holding wine.
FRASIER
Carafe of Beaujolais, gentlemen?
SCHWARZENEGGER
Is that... uh...
FRASIER
An exquisite vintage? Certainly.
STALLONE
He’s an old friend.
SCHWARZENEGGER
What’s his specialty?
FRASIER
Aside from amateur translations of Dante, you mean?
SCHWARZENEGGER
You ever taken down a helicopter with one of those?
FRASIER
Oh no, I’m far too effete for all this bristling weaponry, being haughty psychiatrist Frasier Crane.
FRASIER (CONT’D)
(idly massaging a rifle barrel)
Have you fellows ever considered that this whole gun thing might be a sublimated form of male insecurity?
A fallen paramilitary soldier suddenly staggers to his feet and lunges for a grenade, but STATHAM skillfully dribbles a combat knife into his gut.
SEVEN-FOOT-TALL MMA DUDE
Nice.
FRASIER
That was rather bracing.
STALLONE
It’s getting too dangerous around here, Frase. We need to reactivate you again. Is the Doctor in?
FRASIER
(agitated)
Ah, please, don’t—I know certain talents of mine may prove useful to the Expendables soon, but please don’t say that word...
STALLONE
“Maris.”
FRASIER shuts his eyes in some distress. When they reopen, it’s with the bedside manner of Death personified.
FRASIER
(darkly)
That was a grave thing you did just now, friend. There must be much slaughter ahead of us. Many subjects for my lithe and pitiless surgery.
STALLONE
You know it.
FRASIER
The Agency consigned me to Seattle with quite the cover story. My maimed father, our dutiful housekeeper, the radio show, that mischievous little dog. When you reawoke me I had to eliminate them all, of course.
FRASIER (CONT'D)
I took no glee or joy in it. They were dispassionate professionals, and would have done the same to me.
STALLONE
(apologetically)
The dog had a remote-controlled bomb inside of it.
FRASIER
Though I will allow that I lingered beyond reason with the one who called himself Niles. Beyond reason, but not beyond purpose. Have you never wondered how many quivering organs could be removed from a living human?
STATHAM purses his lips delicately.
STALLONE
(as if reviving from a stupor)
We can’t let those anthrax spores reach St. George’s, the capital of Grenada.
SCHWARZENEGGER
Are we playing the heroes now?
STALLONE
As long as it’s a paid performance.
SCHWARZENEGGER
Well, remember to get to the chopper. When we raid the airstrip out there, I mean.
STALLONE
Yippie-ki-yay.
LUNDGREN readies his sniper rifle, gazing into the sight as coolly as gravlax spread, or an Ingmar Bergman tableau. While the other EXPENDABLES get into position, FRASIER puts on a cardigan the shade of bitter dirt and sickening nights and a hole in Creation. He has no visible weapons. STALLONE gives them all a signal before opening the hangar door.
EXT. AIRSTRIP - DAY
Several hundred feet away, a dozen GRENADIAN MARXIST TERRORISTS are loading canisters onto a military cargo plane. There are many ominous-looking skull symbols on them. When the EXPENDABLES appear, they begin gesticulating wildly. Somebody’s head explodes in extreme SLOW MOTION.
STALLONE
Let’s show these boys the original chemical weapon: lead.
STALLONE picks off beret-wearing gunmen with his enormous assault rifle. SCHWARZENEGGER has somehow acquired a rocket launcher. STATHAM expertly tosses his nail clipper through a man’s jugular. The SEVEN-FOOT-TALL MMA DUDE is running through entire people.
SEVEN-FOOT-TALL MMA DUDE
Woo!
FRASIER pauses while beating the nearest enemy soldier to death with an antique alarm clock.
FRASIER
At the risk of betraying my Freudian leanings, is there not beauty in annihilation?
INT. HELICOPTER GUNSHIP
Suddenly the GRENADIAN COMMANDER pops up to grab the controls of this nearby GUNSHIP, preparing to take off and mow down the exposed EXPENDABLES. Then, as if from a fold in the shadows, FRASIER appears behind him.
FRASIER
All flesh sings, if one knows how to listen to it. Yours is begging for the knife. “And there is hunger in the desert, and missiles in the sky, and every soul is interwoven before the wrong or right.”
The GRENADIAN COMMANDER is unable to react before FRASIER kills him horribly.
EXT. AIRSTRIP - DAY
STALLONE idly kicks at a recovered canister of weaponized smallpox while brushing brain matter off his bulletproof vest.
STALLONE
(gruntingly)
Looks like the Expendables are going on a Caribbean vacation. All expenses covered.
SCHWARZENEGGER
That’s good, because the last time I was there I told some friends that I’d be back.
STATHAM
Back in Blighty, we’d call this a typical Boxing Day, the post-Christmas holiday shared by several Commonwealth nations.
FRASIER rejoins the rest of the team, holding a meticulously reassembled human spinal column.
FRASIER
I believe I’ve found a replacement for poor departed Eddie. Can’t you just picture him trotting into Cafe Nervosa, presaging the fate of all life?
SEVEN-FOOT-TALL MMA DUDE
You know, that’s an interesting image. I was writing my dissertation on the use of memento mori in medieval European art, focusing on major plague outbreaks near Florence, but I had to abandon it after we got hired to track down that rogue arms dealer...
Distantly, the sound of explosions.
