The first “Expendables” was a gritty tribute to small action flicks from the ’70s and ’80s, featuring a team of goodhearted mercenaries in a rescue mission. The sequel was more of an action comedy fueled by vengeance, larger in scale and number of stars. Instead of following this trend and being something different from its predecessors, the third installment is nothing more than a mix of number one and two. Yes, there is a “young Expendables” storyline at one point here but, ironically, it never matures.

“The Expendables 3” starts with the original squad -minus Jet Li- liberating Wesley Snipes’ character (who maintains his magnetic onscreen presence) in a train scene that is good but less memorable than the explosive opening of “The Expendables 2.” Mel Gibson’s Stonebanks injures one of the good guys -like JCVD did before him- and Barney Ross gets in “Find’em, track’em, kill’em” mode. But instead of asking his brothers in arms to join him, he illogically prefers to embark a bunch of inexperienced younger guys in a suicide operation.

After the mandatory “recruitment montage” and zero training sequences, these four (Kellan Lutz being the most experienced and recognizable actor) face Stonebanks, but ultimately end up captured by the enemy, shifting things into rescue gear. That pretty much ends any promise of seeing a technology savvy team doing things differently. So the question is why even bother? Why wasting time with these extremely thin -even for these films standards- characters when you have great “old” new additions?

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This is a similar frustration to the one I experienced while watching the latest “Godzilla”: Let these movie monsters fight! Someone may say that the younger guys were cheaper and more available, but I don’t buy that. With one more day of shooting for Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Wesley Snipes and Antonio Banderas the filmmakers would have gathered more than enough footage to fill that 20-minutes-long “Young Guns” segment.

OK, let’s pretend that all these people had to appear. Why not having all the new characters being antagonists? So instead of having a dozen of recognizable actors fighting against face-less extras (plus Mel Gibson) we could have The Expendables going against another lethal team. One of the attracting factors in this franchise has been the epic battles. Can you imagine seeing in one movie Statham vs. Snipes, Lutz vs. Couture, Rousey vs. Lundgren, Ortiz vs. Jet Li, Banderas and Gibson vs. Stallone?

Less wrinkled faces don’t make properties fresher, exciting concepts do. Still, “The Expendables 3” is a must watch for hardcore action fan. Not because of the stunts that these icons perform, but for the scenes where they fire words: Banderas hasn’t been this funny in decades, Gibson shines with his contagious energy, Ford owns each of his scenes, and Snipes is hypnotizing.

If a fourth chapter ever happens, I hope that Sly and company take more advantage of their resources and free themselves from a franchise mentality and start killing off and replacing so-called Expendables. Otherwise, this saga will become expendable itself.

“The Expendables 3” blasts into theaters this Friday, Aug. 15.

“In THE EXPENDABLES 3, Barney (Stallone), Christmas (Statham) and the rest of the team comes face-to-face with Conrad Stonebanks (Gibson), who years ago co-founded The Expendables with Barney. Stonebanks subsequently became a ruthless arms trader and someone who Barney was forced to kill… or so he thought. In order to defeat Stonebanks, Barney decides that he has to fight old blood with new blood, and brings in a new era of Expendables team members, recruiting individuals who are younger, faster and more tech-savvy. The latest mission becomes a clash of classic old-school style versus high-tech expertise in the Expendables’ most personal battle yet.”