Expendables 2: 18 Possible Plots

The Straight Sequel

In A Nutshell: Sly was talking loud and proud about having Expendables sequel ideas up his bicep-hugging sleeve well before the first one was in the can. So, let’s suppose for now that we’re simply up for more of the same. Even though that's the one thing he says we're not getting.

Pros: Um...well, something else about knocking despots from power. Look, if you liked the first one, you'll be loving this.

Cons: And there's the rub, pretty much, if you didn't.

The Straight Prequel

In A Nutshell: We plunge deeper into events that led up to the first installment, via the buddies-at-war history of Stallone's crack mercenary team.

The Comedy Version

In A Nutshell: Sly brings a sack of his loveable old Rocky -isms to the table, while everyone else gets a fat quota of slick one-liners and slapstick pratfalls to deliver.

The Young Guns

In A Nutshell: A direct sequel in the sense that it takes place some years on, this time boasting a revamped cast cherry-picked from the next generation of long-in-the-tooth action men.

The Van Damme Vehicle

In A Nutshell: Sly desperately wanted buddy Jean-Claude in the first movie, but it never happened as the Muscles from Brussels claimed his character lacked depth. So this time, it's all about him. A one-man show, with thorny emotional issues aplenty.

The Sticky End

In A Nutshell: Same basic crew, but every member ends up shot to confetti, beaten to a pâté, or garrotted with their own tonsils. Relentlessly bleak, oddly satisfying.

The Alien Version

In A Nutshell: Space! They go into space! With more or less the exact same sort of task as in the first film. Only this time they've got plasma weapons, and the evil dictator has gills and can shape-shift at will.

The Low-Rent Version

In A Nutshell: Sly fails to secure the backing to make part two, and yet popular demand forces him to try. He stays true to the spirit of the original - a big matey '80s muscle-off - but he's got to trim that wage budget.

The Evil Expendables

In A Nutshell: What sort of shape would things take on if we were presented with a gang made up of the all-time greatest '80s villains, rather than heroes? (We don't know, but for some reason we're picturing a giant Spam with a curly moustache.)

The Oestrogen Expendables

In A Nutshell: Testosterone levels couldn't have run any higher in part one without viewers risking of spontaneous bollock multiplication. Bring on the shit-kicking she-wolves...

The Animated Version

In A Nutshell: Crotch-kicking cartoon time. We're basically imagining a weird, probably deeply unstable fusion of The Powerpuff Girls , Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and full-on A Scanner Darkly -style rotoscoping.

The Edgar Allan Poe Version

In A Nutshell: Sly has been banging on for years about making the definitive Poe biography. What if he's promised a crack at an Expendables sequel, but told that Poe is a definite no-go? Why, a mash-up of course...

The Survival Horror

In A Nutshell: Actually, thinking about the Poe thing (see 12), what if The Expendables sequel was done as a full-on modern horror? Armies of drooling, twitching undead facing waves of '80s action hero uzi fire sounds like fun to us.

The Quantum Leap

In A Nutshell: The mercenaries are guinea pigs for a sci-fi CIA mission, bounced back through time to bump off history's most evil dictators at the height of their voter-opressing naughtiness.

The Expandables

In A Nutshell: Ok, so not a title to be taken too literally - we're just thinking of a superhero spin-off, and couldn't resist the cheap gag. This is the one where all the main characters have fallen into a vat of radioactive goo or something, and emerged with weird powers. Like, er, being stretchy.

The Skankin' Years

In A Nutshell: There's a moderately-known ska band from California called The Expendables. We like the idea of Sly and co having to pull off a hit (a murder, not a popular single) that requires them to go undercover as said band.

The Wrestling Years

In A Nutshell: Since we've already got two real-life fighters and Mickey 'The Wrestler' Rourke in the cast, let's see what happens when the crack mercenary unit forms a sort of insane pro-circuit tag-team to finance their collective retirement.

The Making-Of

In A Nutshell: Shame to end it on a 'proper' idea - well, such as they are here - but this is arguably the one we'd actually really like to see. The story of the project, from concept to wrap party, and all the doubtless-amazingly-bizarre trailer antics we've been having weird nightmares about.