Trailer drops for Expend4bles

James Pickard • 08 Jun 2023 News

Stallone returns to the pass the torch that may also be a grenade.

Image credit: Lionsgate

Ah, a number replacing a letter in the film title. New ground achieved.

Se7en. Scre4m.Th13rteen Ghosts. Lucky Number S7even. 2 Fast 2 Furious.

In fairness those films are all varying degrees of enjoyable. Except the last one which is terrible.

Moving on, Stallone is back and doing his slowly-walk-away thing by appearing a little bit in the latest Expendables instalment.

It had seemed somewhat suspicious that Sky Cinema is showing all three original Expendables films on a dedicated Expendables channel.

The, ahem, explosive trailer is here.

In case you weren’t aware, The Expendables are a crack team of mercenaries who get into action-packed shenanigans together. The gimmick (and it was a great gimmick) is that Stallone is getting together your favourite action megastars from past and present, and you get to enjoy them beat seven shades of sheep out of each other.

He’s had Arnie, Bruce Willis, Big Dolph Lundgren (personal favourite thanks to He-Man), Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford (somehow), Jet Li, Mickey Rourke, Wesley Snipes, JCVD, Chuck Norris, Terry Crews, Randy Couture and, of  course, his regular second-in-command for the series, Jason Statham.

The third film ended with a few young guns being accepted into The Expendables, but they have possibly gone to college or something. Anyway, this time we get Megan Fox introduced as Statham’s ex (classic), Andy Garcia and the apparently bulletproof 50 Cent (handy, given the film’s content). Other new faces include martial arts behemoth Tony Jaa, and Iko Uwais, who many will know from the excellent pair of The Raid films.

The premise has something to do with the threat of nuclear war. As is often the case.

Statham is believed to be carrying on the series after this, but whether the producers can, as they probably hope, turn this into a money-spinning, ongoing mega-franchise a la Fast and Furious remains very much to be seen.

Who on earth came up with 2 Fast 2 Furious? How did that get past any kind of screening process? Although it did allow the people behind Lavalantula to release a sequel titled 2 Lava 2 Lantula. An act of delightful menace.

Expend4bles is out on 22nd September.