With the cinema release a little over two months away, Millennium Films are tickling our balls once more with yet another action-laden trailer for the third in the Old-Men-Returning-To-Blow-Shit-Up series, Expendables 3.

This time we’re being treated to even more explosions, violence and action legends.

What is instantly different from the last trailer is the sheer amount of action on offer in this instalment. While the previous Expendables films were never lacking in the destruction stakes, the budget was always surprisingly low. This was reflected in a lot of the restrained action sequences, non of which have ever lived up to the likes of the helicopter escape in Rambo 2, or the island assault from Commando.

However Sly (Rocky) and co. are now promising up helicopter gunships aplenty, trains colliding into exploding bases galore, flying stunt-bikes, bar-room-punch-ups and our faithful Expendables shooting and knifing the shit out of everything in sight.

For once, this may actually live up to our expectations.

We’re also provided some context in terms of the characters. It’s clear that Wesley Snipes has to be recruited for some reason.  Sticking to a common theme in Hollywood these days, he’s naturally (wrongfully) confined to an ultra-impenetrable, super-secure, state-of-the-art prison that the ‘ables are going to find no problem breaking in and out of. Seriously filmmakers? Why not just put them in a normal prison. It’s probably harder to break than any of these fancy concrete Pentagon chambers (X-Men: Days of Future Past) or super-maxes on board oil tankers (Escape Plan).

As I confirmed in my previous post, Mel Gibson (Mad Max) is taking a turn at being baddie this time. While the trailer doesn’t show him getting all zany, anti-Semetic or screaming “GIVE ME BACK MY SON“, the former Expendable does demonstrate some dark, playful Bastardness, similar to the darker moments of Payback. He has a lot to live up to, compared to Van Damme (Hard to Kill) and Eric Roberts (Dark Knight), but I’m sure he can pull it off.

This time Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones) is clearly filling Chuck’s shoes as the comedic badass extended cameo. I think this is appropriate, considering that he does have the action chops, he’s more of the everyman actor than the rest of the squad.

The addition of other younger (and therefore less interesting) members does give me cause for concern however. Liam Hemsworth’s (Hunger Games)  Billy “The Kid” in the sequel was only there to appeal to a younger audience on a marketing perspective, and to die only to propel the revenge-motif in the narrative. But the stakes are higher now because three of them are at risk – apparently.

Well it maybe the case they’re all given time to be developed into full blown characters like Hudson from Aliens that we actually give a shit about when they die. Yet I’m betting they’ll get a choice few moments, the odd line, and they be up on the firing line, attempting to solicit an emotional reaction from us. As I’ve said before, the only way to penetrate the adamantium hearts of action fans worldwide is to kill off one of the core cast. That will get our attention.

Overall I’m still massively excited. Not as giddy-as-a-school-girl as I was when I heard Sly was Assembling the Action Avengers, but still pretty fucking excited. All the need to do is retain that self referential humour from the second film, up the body count from the first, and keep throwing in tons of actions, explosions and badass stunts. What more can a man ask for (beyond actual squibs)?

Expendables 3 is released on August 15th, 2014.