SAN DIEGO – To hear Sylvester Stallone talk about it, "The Expendables" is a more apropos term for him and his fellow action-movie co-stars than even he imagined.
By Dan MacMedan, USA TODAY
Dolph Lundgren, left, Sylvester Stallone, Terry Crews and Randy Couture reunite for more action in 'The Expendables 2.'
"We're the ancient Avengers," he says of his mates inThe Expendables 2, opening today.
Captain America, Thor and Iron Man rule now. But in the 1980s, Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris,Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis and Jean-Claude Van Damme were box-office superheroes.
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They might be singing the swan song of their bone-crunching careers — Stallone and Schwarzenegger are 66 and 65,
respectively, and Norris is the old man at 72 — but at least they're going out with more than a few bangs, booms, gut punches and roundhouse kicks.
"The heyday is definitely gone," Stallone says. "Back in the day, they would put Arnold or I or Dolph in a film, and it didn't matter who the other cast was. Today, it's much more specific and it's ensemble-controlled. Even The Avengers proved the strength in numbers compared to Iron Man alone or Thor alone."
The sequel to 2010's The Expendables adds Norris andVan Damme to mark the first time all six action-movie icons have appeared on the same big screen. They share bullets and bravado with younger guys such asJason Statham, Terry Crews, mixed-martial-arts star Randy Couture and Liam Hemsworth, who, at 22, is the youngest Expendable.
In the movie, mercenary leader Barney Ross (Stallone) brings his group — including sniper Gunnar Jensen (Lundgren), heavy-weapons expert Hale Caesar (Crews) and demolitions man Toll Road (Couture) — back for another mission, but one that pits them against a formidable foe (Van Damme).
A cinema screen is the one place that can hold all of these oversized personalities and physical specimens.
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On this day, though, it's a tight fit for just four of them for a USA TODAY roundtable in a Hard Rock Hotel room. They're dressed for business, and their business is being larger-than-life action figures.
An air of respect pervades the space like an NFL locker room — where Crews actually spent seven seasons. And there's a sense of brotherhood among these men who redefined machismo in the original Expendables. The movie racked up more than $103 million in domestic box office, so — ancient or not — these guys still have a fan base.
The towering Lundgren, 54, who possesses a master's degree in chemical engineering, is just as intimidating as he was playing Russian pugilist Ivan Drago in 1985's Rocky IV, but has a wry sense of humor.
The strong and silent type of the group is Couture, 49. Cordial yet no-nonsense, he's a guy you would rather meet in an interview setting than the Octagon.
Crews is all smiles and muscles. The 44-year-old's pecs ripple under a dress shirt and are enough to get even the most devoted couch potato on the phone and ordering a Bowflex.
But Stallone, armed to the teeth with zingers, is the true leader of this squad off-screen as well as on, and the group defers to him almost as if he's their grizzled guru of action:
The four actors discuss getting their bodies into action-movie shape, their ultimate action movies, male bonding and who'll be ready for an Expendables reboot after the current crop hangs up their machetes and machine guns.
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Q: What brought each of you back for another round of The Expendables? Don't lie — I bet it was blowing stuff up.
Lundgren: I loved the character that Sly created for me in the first one. It's the second time he did that for me — the first one was 27 years ago, Ivan Drago, and I almost killed him in a fight. But now I'm on his side.
Stallone: Total bull. It's back end (earnings) with (profit) participation.
Lundgren: And the money. Yeah, my big back end on the first one really set me up fine. (Laughs.) It's called zero.
Stallone: The back end they got on the first one is the one they're sitting on now.
Crews: This was the biggest thing I've ever been involved in. I'll be honest with you, I would have done the first one for free, but my agent pointed a gun at my head and he's like, "You're gonna get out there and make some money for me!" And then my wife said the same thing when I got home.
Couture: Why wouldn't you come back? It's not like you had to have your arm twisted. I was ecstatic to hear there was going to be a 2, and to hear rumblings there might be a 3 is awesome.
Stallone: Doing a film like this is like having a dinosaur as a house pet — you know it's going to be extinct pretty soon, so enjoy it while it's here.
Q: Action heroes have changed a lot since a whole generation grew up on First Blood, Missing in Action and other 1980s films. Is that good or bad?
Stallone: It's good for the guys today because they're current, and it's bad for people who like the kind of mano-a-mano films where you basically perform without the aid of much technology. You have your fists and your wits, and it's much simpler filmmaking. I marvel at the films today, but then again of course you can do an action film that we do, for example, for $20 million and get the emotion out of it. That's the difference.
Q: Sly and Dolph, when you were filming Rocky IV, could you imagine doing an action film 30 years later?
Stallone: No. I mean, you had the fantasy, but the reality hit that the business is so ferociously competitive now and so unforgiving. I have a feeling that they would never make Rocky today. They may not even make First Blood—First Blood sat on the floor for five years. Everyone passed on it. I was the 11th choice. After I did the movie, I said, "My career's over." That genre hadn't been done yet: the man against his own country, the one-man-army thing. So I thought I was done. I literally tried to buy back the film and burn it, for real. So who knew?
Lundgren: I was just a Swedish kid who was an engineer, and suddenly I was a movie star. I just kept going. I did some good ones, some bad ones. This one was more enjoyable than a lot of them.
Stallone: It's a miracle that we're still doing them today, no doubt. This is a revival — it's almost bringing together eight different groups, oldies but goodies. Individually, this would not fly. At all.
Lundgren: Physical shape is important, too. These guys are in great shape for their age, and if you're not in shape, we couldn't do it.
Stallone: I think we should do one called The Slobs.
Lundgren: Just gain weight.
Stallone: If there's a fire, we don't answer. If someone's in trouble, we don't care. I like it.
Q: You are all in fantastic condition, but does your training regimen change for the rigors of an action movie?
Stallone: It definitely intensifies for me. These guys work out much harder during the film than I do, but I try to front-load. I get in the best shape that I can and then have smaller workouts because I know it's going to be diminishing returns. Every day, I'm going to get a little weaker, but if I come in in really good shape, I'll make it to the end. These guys are doing double workouts a day. They really approach it much like a real professional athlete would.
Crews: I treat the film as like a camp. We were in Eastern Europe, I had no family, I was 100% all this movie. I would study my lines, go over them again, work out in the morning, and then I'd do it all again in the afternoon. Anybody can be in shape, but you want people to understand your character. Acting is a discipline. All those one-liners have been practiced many, many, many times in the mirror just to make sure they sound natural and sound good.
Stallone: Acting is very easy. Being good is hard.
Couture: I was already in shape, still training and competing, and it becomes part of your lifestyle. It's who you are, the things you do.
Lundgren: You focus a little more on the visual when you're filming because you want to show off a little more. You try to stay in shape and live through it.
Q: Name your ultimate action movie.
Stallone: The ultimate first action films, of course, are Seven Samurai and Yojimbo and the Japanese classics. They were where I was first aware of bringing guys together, and then they did American takeoffs, like The Magnificent Seven and TheDirty Dozen. We've been jazz-riffing on a theme. It's really a classic case going all the way back to Thermopylae and the 300 Spartans: We need a group of guys who are outnumbered and they're going to get slaughtered.
Crews: I didn't come up in the Dirty Dozen days, but Enter the Dragon was in my formative times. As a kid, I never saw anything like that.
Stallone: His is Enter the Dragon, and what set the tone for my action career wasTootsie. I got in touch with my sensitive side. If I had to wear a dress, that would be really violent.
Q: Thankfully, no guy frocks are involved here. How key, though, is male camaraderie in a movie like this?
Stallone: It's very important. If there's one actor who has his own agenda and he's not a team player and he's dragging his lines and he's blowing his takes and he's arriving two hours late, it can throw such a negative spin on the whole process.
Crews: Women bond through good times where men bond through pain.We were all sitting there like, 'Man, I miss my family.' You also watch Randy swing a guy all over, and you're like, 'Damn, that must hurt.' And you're watching this guy take a tumble in a lake, and you're like, 'Man, that had to be bad.' You're watching pain happen to your castmates, but what happens is you realize these guys are taking hits for the team. It's like in the NFL — when you watch somebody get de-cleated, you get a respect for the guy.
Stallone: When we're sliding down high-tension wires with one arm, it sounds like, hey, no problem, but by the sixth take, think about it: You're 200 pounds, you're hanging with one arm, and with the momentum and the G-force, after a while it gets old. Especially if you're like us and have worn rotator cuffs. I literally cannot lift a 4-pound pistol — I have to switch hands. These stunt guys, it's very dangerous because it's not been done and will never be done again. (Terry's) smashing a guy's head into a pillar and the timing is critical — otherwise the guy will die for real. I know it must be very frustrating sometimes to work with green screen. I wish some of the younger actors could come into our world and just work under real conditions. I wouldn't know how to do it any other way.
Q: Let's say Sly is psychic and Expendablesis rebooted in 20 years. Who's in it?
Stallone: Oh, my God! I think the Hemsworth brothers (Liam and The Avengers' Chris) could definitely be in it. Who would play me?
Lundgren: I could do the Chuck Norris part.
Stallone: It's hard to say because you don't know if you're going to be around in 20 years.
Crews: They're all on Disney Channel now.
Stallone: They haven't gone through puberty yet. Call me in 10 years.
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