The first one was the best. 2nd one was extremely disappointing with a off the wall script. Here the 3rd film comes back to reality with a script with character development and pretty decent villain from Mel. The thing that still plagues the last 2 films are ...
1. Using Jet Li in very little scenes
2. The background and locations all look the same and not realistic like the first film.
3. The CGI sucks big time....cartoon-ish.
Finally someone talking sense. I didn't even like the first one that much because of the horrible shaky cam/fast cuts, but all the characters got proper shine there and the action, despite it being terrible shot, was well thought out. Second one improved on how it shot the action but it basically became a blatant shoot 'em up with a far too short fight between Stallone and Van Damme and a way too disappointing fight between Statham and Adkins. I'd say this brought back a bit more inspired action like the first flick (that final battle was set up great), but they also went back to that shaky cam/fast cut shyt (probably to cover up some stuff for the PG-13 rating). It worked against Ronda Rousey in particular since her fight scenes were pretty much an undecipherable mess, which is a shame even more particular because she was the only 'young' Expendable that was somewhat interesting (outside of the motorcycle jump, the other 'young' Expendables didn't do shyt worthy of note).
They also pretty much threw half the cast in the bushes, Couture, Crews, Lundgren and Li could pretty much all have been written out and/or replaced and it would've barely made a difference. I guess they did this to give shine to Snipes and Banderas, who gratefully took what they were given and killed it. Snipes proved he still got what it takes to be a leading man and Banderas hasn't been having this much fun since whatever the last movie was he did, because he's always having fun. And I died at how they tried to stuff as many lines in as possible for Arnold to say "Choppa" at the end.
Overall the whole trilogy is barely decent, but as far as nonsensical action movies giving shine to actors most of Hollywood doesn't give a fukk about anymore, it thoroughly entertains.