Final ‘Expendables’ Poster and New Trailer

At the end of last week the following trailer and poster for Lionsgate’s The Expendables (8/13) debuted around the Internet and today I was sent the source files directly for addition to the site. I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed a bit of a cooling effect for this film from some corners after this latest trailer. I am still anxious to see it, but I can also understand some of the raised eyebrows and questioning parties.

There comes a point when the selling point for a film begins to outweigh the film itself and I can’t help but wonder if such a thing has happened with The Expendables, which boasts a cast that includes Sylvester Stallone, ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin, Randy Couture, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke and Bruce Willis and what I understand to be a brief cameo from Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is pretty much all this latest trailer is selling and the poster doesn’t aim to do much better. Instead of playing like a second trailer, this actually plays more like a teaser and I have yet to be blown away by any of the marketing for this film as it seems to lack the gut punch I was feeling with the early marketing reels for Rambo.

Of course, it wasn’t as if anyone ever thought this was going to be a multi-million dollar box-office hit (most likely more along the lines of the $42 million Rambo delivered in 2008), but names like this are nostalgic and encouraging to those of us that have enjoyed action flicks from these fellas before. However, the long rumored PG-13 rating worries me and now such a beefy cast is beginning to look a bit problematic. I think Jeff Wells may be onto something when he takes the editing of the feature into consideration and the attempt to juggle all these names maintain enough screen time for each and try to tell a cohesive story.

Instead of the one man wrecking crew Rambo offered in R-rated glory, we are getting a large cast of egos and a film eying a PG-13 rating. I just called local publicity here in Seattle whether or not Lionsgate was going to be screening it for press and they still weren’t sure, though I didn’t necessarily get much of a feeling of optimism. However, this is Lionsgate we are talking about, it’s a toss-up for most of their films anyway. I was originally told Rambo wouldn’t screen for press and then a couple of days before the film’s release I was watching it. Certainly, a couple of days before release isn’t enough time for the dailies, but it screened nonetheless.

So, with all that said, here is the new trailer (sans virtually any actual footage from the film) and the latest poster, which you can see slightly larger in the RopeofSilicon gallery right here.

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