Stallone tones down The Expendables 2

Yesterday brought great news from the film industry with the announcement that Cormac McCarthy sold a spec script. Today brings negative news regarding one of my most-anticipated films of 2012, The Expendables 2.

Earlier today, director Sylvester Stallone confirmed that his upcoming sequel to the 1980’s action star reunion film, The Expendables 2, will be presented not as an R rated film like the first, but with a more family friendly PG-13 rating.

How is it possible that the sequel to one of the coolest films of 2010, which is set to increase the insane star power of its lineup by including Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme, can be downgraded from the R rating of the original to a PG-13 rating? The original was conceived as a PG-13 film, but somewhere along the line, Stallone wizened up at converted it to R by sprucing up some action bits, livening up the language, and adding digital blood effects. It seems strange that Stallone would go back to the PG-13 format, which will limit the violence, gore, and language, when the The Expendables was very successful even with the R rating.

Apparently, Chuck Norris petitioned for the lower rating in the sequel. See, Chuck is a nice guy, no matter what your t-shirt says, and he doesn’t want to be involved in a project with gratuitous violence. Stallone acquiesced and made some changes to the script to tone things down for The Expendables 2.   

The action fan in me doesn’t want to see the film neutered to a PG-13 rating. It seems a shame to have the likes of Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Liam Hemsworth, Randy Couture, Dolph freaking Lundgren, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the aforementioned Stallone, Van Damme, and Norris all appearing in one film without letting them all go ballistic. As it is, this news is a bit disappointing, but I’m going to go with the mantra “In Stallone We Trust”. I mean, you can blow up half of the free world and still maintain a PG-13 rating as long as you don’t show people being blown to smithereens. Here’s hoping that we get a good blow-‘em-up film in August, even with the lower rating.