The first teaser trailer for Lionsgate’s summer 2012 testosterone-fiesta The Expendables 2 has been released. You can watch the trailer and read the official plot synopsis here below.

The trailer is little more than Bruce Willis‘ menacing Mr. Church (the character he played in the single scene he shared with Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the original) confronting Stallone’s Barney Ross about a deal they made and how it’s time to pay up, followed by a roll call of the movie’s cast. Eleven actors, and not one neck between them.

Like brother, like brother.

As his elder sibling, Chris, is becoming something of an action star, up-and-comer Liam Hemsworth has found himself quite a project. Variety is reporting that the star of The Hunger Games has joined the cast of the upcoming sequel, The Expendables 2.

The Expendables
Directed by Sylvester Stallone
Starring Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Steve Austin
Rated R
Release date: August 13, 2010

Since The Expendables was first announced in 2008 the idea of bringing together some of the finest cinematic tough guys and badass motherfuckers of the past three decades for one big blood, bullets, and bombs brouhaha sounded like the wet dream of millions of action movie geeks brought to life in booze-and-steroid-infused flesh. I was raised on a steady diet of badass from the moment I was born. When I was a child my celluloid heroes were Han Solo and Superman. My mother didn’t think I was ready for R-rated movies, the threshold you had to cross to truly be a man. When I turned ten the time had come. During my summer vacation I caught the HBO premiere of the immortal Die Hard and my mind was promptly blown by the glorious on-screen action and the awesome presence of the one and only Bruce Willis in his signature role as badass New York cop John McClane. My exposure to such large scale chaos until then came chiefly in the form of cartoons like Transformers and G.I. Joe (which one day would ironically become big screen cartoons only with flesh-and-blood folks playing one-dimensional characters), but watching Willis bury bullets in the heads and asses of a bunch of heavily armed German thieves was a serious cultural awakening nothing could’ve prepared me for. By the time I was eleven and my parents allowed me to watch Lethal Weapon for the first time, the doors on a brave new world were forever opened for me. I may have still inhabited the body of a shy, snot-nosed kid who grew up dirt poor and never had many friends, but from that moment on I was a man, in my heart at any rate.

The Expendables could quite possibly be one of the really special movie projects that we see in the near future. Written, directed, and starring Sylvester Stallone, the movie has attempted to gather pretty much every massive action star and put them all in one film. We still don’t know exactly what kind of movie it will be, but it sounds like it’s going to be pure, full-speed action with no rules — at least that’s how it feels like it should be done. While he wasn’t able to get all of them (Jean Claude Van Damme), he has put together one of the best action casts ever seen, and it has folks very excited to see what comes of it all.

Now comes word that two of the biggest action stars ever to live will be filming a small cameo for the movie with Stallone: Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Willis spoke to MTV News recently about if he’s filmed the “very special” cameo and what it might involve.

Jet Li’s Fearless
Blu-ray Edition
Directed by Ronny Yu
Starring Jet Li, Nakamura Shidou, Sun Li, Dong Yong, Nathan Jones
Universal Studios Home Entertainment
Release Date: December 9, 2008

Jet Li was planning to stop making martial art movies after the filming of Fearless. He didn’t stick to that plan, but had he done so he would have gone out on an extremely high note.

Fearless tells the story of the life of Huo Yuanjia (played by Li), though it takes some major liberties for dramatic effect. In real life, Huo had many children and grandchildren, not a single daughter, and he was not the only person responsible for the forming of the Chin Woo Athletic Association. Also, humorously, the film greatly embellishes the facts around the fight between Huo and a boxer named O’Brien (Nathan Jones). In reality, there was never any fight, O’Brien simply left town after a dispute over the rules of the match. I don’t imagine that would make a great sequence in a martial art film though, so it’s safe to say the film was “inspired by” Huo’s life rather than a factual account of it.

The Blu-Ray edition holds three versions of the film: theatrical, unrated, and director’s cut. I can count on one hand the number of director’s cuts that are significantly different from the original film. Fearless is one of those films and the director’s cut is a significant improvement over the theatrical version. Running 40 minutes (yes, you read that correctly, 40 minutes) longer that original version, director Ronny Yu found a lot more story to tell, with none of it seeming gratuitous.