The Expendables 2 (2012)
- Many of the practical effects used in the climax were achieved without any CGI.
- Before Sylvester Stallone was cast, several major A-list stars turned down the lead role because they felt the script was too risky.
- During the filming of The Expendables 2, Sylvester Stallone improvised one of the most famous lines in the movie.
The Expendables 2 is a 2012 American action film directed by Simon West. Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, and Terry Crews return alongside newcomers Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme as the villain, and expanded roles for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis. The team is tasked with recovering a safe containing a map to abandoned Soviet plutonium from a crashed plane in Albania, but the mission goes wrong when Jean-Claude Van Damme's Vilain kills one of their own and steals the map, triggering a revenge mission across Eastern Europe.
Van Damme's villain brought genuine menace and martial arts credibility. The sequel leaned more heavily into self-referential humor, with the action legends quoting each other's famous lines. The Expendables 2 earned $305 million worldwide on a $100 million budget.
The film was praised for its entertaining execution of its genre formula.
