Just like Terry Crews so enthusiastically promised in yesterday's preview of a preview, the full theatrical trailer for The Expendables 2 has made its ostentatious online debut.
As you'd expect, the sequel to 2010's The Expendables looks like a quiet drama focused on subtle, telling interactions between complex, nuanced characters in a world not of their own making.
Nowadays, little teases for trailers – ads hyping ads – are increasingly common, but perhaps none has more succinctly encapsulated the appeal of the product its hyping than this new The Expendables 2 trailer tease.
The only actual bits from the sequel included are a series of explosions which sort of blend together into one bit generic mega-explosion. Most of the trailer tease, though, is Terry Crews yelling at the audience in a most aggressive manner. Crews, who reprises his role as the amusingly named Hale Caesar, is wearing a tank top and shouting about the imperative importance of watching The Expendables 2 trailer this Thursday. Explosions, muscles, shouting, and zero subtext.
2010's The Expendables had just as much over-the-top violence and expletive-filled language that you'd expect from a movie so masculine that the film itself reeked like a locker room. Everyone waiting for an equal or greater amount of f-bombs, bone-snaps, decapitations, and arterial spurts from this summer's The Expendables 2 had their hopes dashed earlier this year when word bubbled out that the sequel would be PG-13. But now Sylvester Stallone has apparently issued a contradictory statement that The Expendables 2 will indeed carry a rating that starts with an "R" and ends with "estricted."
Two new images from this summer's hetero-testosterone-fest The Expendables 2 have made their way online, and both should inspire some feelings of emasculation. Both images include Chinese actress Yu Nan, a new addition to the Expendables crew who no doubt shoots, eviscerates, decapitates, and generally harms bad guys just as well as her Y-chromosomal cohorts. That Nan could no doubt beat most of the audience silly isn't the principal reason for emasculation, though. It's Sylvester Stallone's forearms. Sly is now 64 years old (he'll be 65 by the time the sequel hits theaters), and his huge, veiny arms would be crazy on someone half his age.
On Wednesday, we saw the very first teaser trailer for The Expendables 2, an introspective arthouse drama focused on a group of professional men grappling with their own mortality. Just in time for the weekend, Lionsgate has released a new teaser poster to go with that. You may remember an alleged teaser poster making the rounds a few weeks back, with everyone in the cast holding a big gun, but Lionsgate immediately and officially disavowed all knowledge of that one, saying they didn't know where it cam from. This, though, is the uncut dope, straight from the source. Unlike the trailer, which was a procession of names and teeny tiny snippets of action, this poster focuses on one clean image and one even simpler message, one that has something to do with the number two. Still trying to figure it out.
Did you know that The Expendables 2 is on the way next summer? Did you know that Sylvester Stallone will again be joined by a cadre of muscular action stars wielding guns of various sizes and probably kicking, punching, and stabbing many, many nameless henchmen? Since you might be unaware of these facts, Lionsgate has released the very first teaser trailer for The Expendables 2, which helpfully introduces all the dudes who will be shooting, kicking, punching, and stabbing. That's pretty much all it does though, sidestepping plot and all that jibba jabba* to supply a single name and image for Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, septuagenarian Chuck Norris, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Liam Hemsworth, Jean Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Production on The Expendables 2 is going on right now in Bulgaria, and you'd imagine that the cast, with their combined action movie resumes reaching roughly to the moon and back, would be wrasslin', throwing knives, and setting up bear traps. Based on all these new photos from the set, though, the ensemble cast of the action sequel spend most of their time smiling and taking pictures. A whole bunch of new images show Sylvester Stallone, Jean Claude Van Damme, Terry Crews, Chuck Norris, Randy Couture, Bruce Willis, and Dolph Lundgren doing just that. Based on these image, I'm inclined to believe that in a no holds-barred survival match between all these actors, Terry Crews would be the last man standing.
Throughout all the sundry stories of casting on The Expendables 2, it's often seemed a given that Mickey Rourke would reprise his brief role from the first film, appearing once again as the former Expendable Tool. Particularly after a spoiler-y synopsis of the film's story emerged online in May, Rourke's involvement looked to be set. Not so, as Oscar-nominee Rourke has opted not to appear alongside Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Liam Hemsworth, and a gaggle of other tough guys. Instead, he'll be busy playing a crucial role in Seven Psychopaths, the sophomore feature from writer-director Martin McDonagh.
Much of marketing for Sylvester Stallone's hyper-macho 2010 actioner The Expendables included the promise of the erstwhile Rocky and Rambo sharing the silver screen with his fellow top-tier 1980's action icons, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis, best known to action aficionados as The Terminator and John McClane, respectively. In the film, however, the trio shared just one dialogue scene that relied heavily on winking to the audience at the novelty of these three together at last. Last month, Willis and Schwarzenegger were confirmed for The Expendables 2, and, perhaps sensing the sensing the collective sigh of indifference at their first cameos, the sequel promised more "substantial" roles for both actors.
The Expendables 2 is now in production in Bulgaria, from whence former California Governor and world class philanderer Schwarzenegger took the opportunity to tweet a photo of himself, Stallone, and Willis. Stallone is definitely in costume as Barney Ross, while Willis and Arnold seem to be rocking their looks at Church and Trench whilst hanging out on an airfield.
It would appear that The Expendables 2 has found its first next generation actor, as Variety reports that Liam Hemsworth has officially joined the cast. While the first film was built around the novel premise of uniting a cadre of older action stars whose ass-kicking days seemed behind them, Sylvester Stallone has been intimating for some time now that the sequel would involve some younger Expendables. Even as recently as last week, he said, "We also need some new blood in there, a Navy Seal-type, because with the Expendables none of them have 20-20 vision anymore. They need some help, man.”