Jackie Chan Officially Becomes Expendable

When it comes to the Expendables franchise, all casting is fan-casting, which means all casting automatically sounds like bullshit regardless of displayed veracity.

For instance, about a month ago Sylvester Stallone's Facebook page had a long, barely comprehensible announcement stating that Nicolas Cage would join the film. Despite the message's very obvious battle with the English language, it seemed legit. Turned out it wasn't. But if Nicolas Cage does end up in the film it won't be surprising at all. Nothing is ever certain with this crap. They could wrap shooting only to quickly rewrite the entire plot simply because Clint Eastwood agreed to stop by and say "Make my Day."

And now we have word from Jackie Chan himself that he will appear in the next Expendables film, but only if he has a really big part and only if it's a "buddy-buddy" action film. Stallone, apparently jotted this down and threw it into the pile of other stupid actor demands that will eventually call itself the script for Expendables 3.

I'm actually in the process of discovering Jackie Chan's amazing early work right now, and I'm just about ready to explore his "buddy-buddy" themed American stuff, along with his "kiddie-kiddie" movies soon after that. In other words, I'm currently enamored of the guy. Which is why this hits me as bad news. While the Expendables series purports to showcase old action stars, I've found it mostly wastes them instead (save maybe for Mickey Rourke who was never that big an action guy to begin with). Adding Jackie Chan to the long roster of actors doing what amounts to little more than a cinematic convention appearance might just bum me out.