How 2012 movie The Expendables 2 short-changed Chinese viewers and everyone else, too – but still made US$315 million

Jet Li’s brief turn in The Expendables 2 about sums up the Chinese involvement in the film, despite it originally being envisioned a China-US co-production

Losing Chinese co-production status occasioned hasty script changes, moved the action from China to Bulgaria and saw a plot point literally drop out of a plane

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(From left:) Yu Nan, Terry Crews, Sylvester Stallone, Randy Couture and Dolph Lundgren in a still from The Expendables 2.

Published: 7:15pm, 1 Apr 2022

The Expendables 2, the second outing for Sylvester Stallone’s steroidal mercenaries, was meant to be a Sino-US co-production co-starring Donnie Yen Ji-dan, and a significant portion of the 2012 film was to be shot in China.

Things didn’t quite work out that way.

Instead, Chinese studio Le Vision Pictures stumped up a more modest percentage of the budget, superstar martial arts actor Jet Li appears for all of 10 minutes, and it was Bulgaria – not China – that provided the locations.

For most of its runtime, the film either downplays its Chinese elements or deals with them very, very awkwardly.

Directed by Simon West (Con Air), from a script by Stallone and Richard Wenk, the film pits Barney Ross (Stallone), Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren) and the rest of the Expendables against the evil Vilain (Jean-Claude Van Damme), with special appearances from Church (Bruce Willis), Trench (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Booker (Chuck Norris).