The Expendables 2 Behind The Scenes -- Bodybuilding.com

[music] Hey, Bodybuilding.com. What's up? This is your boy, Terry Crews, and I am sitting here with UFC Hall of Famer Randy Couture, and also with the living legend, Dolph Lundgren, and we are here to promote and tell you about the biggest action movie of the summer, coming to you August 17th, 2012, in theaters, and we will also let you know how we got ready and how we prepared for the biggest action movie of the summer, the sequel, "Expendables 2." Here we go. [music] Hey, I'm Dolph Lundgren. I play Gunner Jensen, who is a Swedish drunk who kills people for a living, and he managed to sort of become part of the team in this picture, instead of being this kind of offbeat character in the first one. So it's a lot of fun for me. Have the biggest knife of everybody, I think, and I'm the craziest. Well, you know, I am Terry Crews and I play Hale Caesar, who is the weapons specialist in the group. In the group, all of us, we all have our own specialty, and with me, one of the unsung characters in the movie is my AA12 shotgun, which is one of the best guns ever created of all time. I'm Randy Couture. I play Toll Road in "Expendables 2." Toll Road is kind of a college-educated misfit, demolitions expert, and I think in a lot of ways, these crazy guys are his family, so he kind of sticks up for the guys, kind of pulls the unit together a lot. "Expendables 2" is lot different than "Expendables 1" in that everybody knows and is waiting for what's coming, you know? Everybody's waiting to see, you know, how much bigger and better, and the way it's different is that it is bigger and better. We added Chuck Norris to the cast. We added Jean-Claude Van Damme to the cast. We actually shot in Europe and basically blew up Bulgaria in many, many ways. That country will never be the same. [explosion blast] On the last picture, I was kind of the odd one out, you know, the crazy Swede who kind of ran off. I was with the good guys, with the bad guys. And on this one, I stuck with the group a lot more, so I got to know these two clowns--no, I'm just kidding, these two friends here. I got to know these two guys very well, and, you know, I know Sly from other movies. You know, you have to kind of keep joking and keep it light, because, you know, the conditions are very harsh. I mean, you're in some little town with the Bulgarians, you know, 30 degrees, and you're up at 5:00, you know, and so I really enjoyed the camaraderie. Well, that's the cool thing about "Expendables," that you have guys who are actually proficient in something real. They're not only actors pretending to be somebody, but they've actually done things in real life for real, and I think that's why the film is special, you know? And these two guys that other men, and women, I hope, look up to in real life, not just on screen. That's becoming more unusual these days in movies. I think that's why I'm really glad to be part of and I feel, you know, really proud to be part of it. When you see "Expendables 2," and it's one of those things when you see all your heroes, everybody that you've ever believed in when you've watched a movie, all in one movie. The power of that is just too incredible. It becomes more than just a flick, and I think on August 17th, it's gonna be literally like a mass for everybody to come and really see what this is all about. What you believe in your whole life, and what you always thought you would never see with all these names and faces together, and it actually happened. [music] You know, but I was gonna say, like, as far as training goes, what I learned and what you learn on movies is how to simplify your regime and how to make it more efficient. You know, when you do 4 months on a picture like we did, you become used to it, and it becomes part of your arsenal, you know, training. So any time I go away now, say, like to do another film or publicity, you kind of know how to simplify your workout. Keep it efficient, right? Break it down to the bare bones and the absolute essential things you have to get in. You don't have a lot of extravagant equipment or workout partners or things that you're used to having. You gotta just break it down, right down to the root of what you need to get done to maintain and stay in shape. No, I kept my training the same as what I would use to get in great shape for a fight. Obviously, it's a little different, a little less intense, a little less sparring-oriented, a little more strength and conditioning-oriented going into the film. But making a movie is a grind, just like a training camp for a fight. It's a long process, long hours, long days, and so you gotta not only physically but mentally be prepared for that, and I definitely think that approaching it like a fighter helped me out a bunch. I'm usually in pretty good shape, so I didn't train much different. I knew I had to stand next to this guy over here and this fool over here, so I had to build up a little more muscle. You know, like if you hit the bag and do a lot of sparring, as I usually do, you get kind of thin, you know, wiry, but, you know, in the film you want to look a little more muscular, so I think I probably--I was about 10 pounds heavier than I am now when I did the film. A lot more shoulders and arms, because that's what you see when you wearing the cut-off T-shirts and stuff like that. So that's kind of how my program changed. [music] Because we're all kind of on different schedules and different things you're dealing with, you can't rely on being free at the same time to work out together, so you have to kind of individualize your routine so you can *** it out, when you have the time to *** it out, and not be reliant on somebody else to make sure that you get your workout in. I think the most important thing to remember is, you know, you're talking about a guy who's proficient in martial arts, ex-NFL player, a UFC champion, but we're all actors now, you know what I mean? You're an actor. And the big thing is who cares how big the guns are, if you can't act and you can't emote, if you can't project that emotion and people can't identify with you on screen, you might as well just be in the background. You might as well be nothing. You can't really compare yourself to another person and do that kind of challenge, because your greatest enemy is yourself. It's the lines. It's getting your character, being the best character you can be and knowing your place in this whole scheme and script. It's not about the physical stuff. I think all three of us here, the physical stuff is the part we find easy. That's the easy part, that's the fun part, that's the part that we get to play those action scenes and actually throw guys and shoot stuff. That's the part that makes you smile, but actually kind of finding the root of your character, tapping into your stream of experience to be able in some way represent that guy and tell the truth, that's the more difficult part. That's the part that takes some time and energy to develop. And also, when you talk about the long hours, we weren't near a gym, so we had to ask if the hotel would extend their hours for us. And thank God, they did, because we were all panicking at first, like, you know, "How are we gonna get our workouts in?" It's not like in the States when you have a 24-hour place over here. It was very, very limited. Sly himself went down and made the arrangements with the owner, and they extended the hours early and later, so whatever we needed we were given, and I'm truly thankful for that. Actually, it was a really nice hotel. We had a great, great hotel. Really nice hotel, the gym was more than adequate. It had everything you needed. When we invaded that hotel and we invaded that place, you know, it changed the dynamic. I don't think it'll be the same because everybody saw, you know, how committed we were to health and fitness. I think in Europe, it's almost a given. You think in Europe that they're all, you know, European bodybuilding and that whole thing, but it's just not as big as it is in the States. It was a hard shoot, man. I ain't gonna lie. We're in, you know, Eastern Europe, and we were literally--we made sure we had our chicken ***, we had our vegetables, but there wasn't a lot of beef over there in Bulgaria. Beef was not a big deal, so we kind of had to--I had to improvise a lot, you know, lots of protein. Culturally, the food in Bulgaria was a little more akin to Greek food. All the vegetables were organic. They were grown right there. There was no crazy, big supermarkets like we're used to seeing. It was a little bit different, and I kind of liked it. It was a change of pace. Good Italian food. They were bringing the pasta right in from Italy. It was fresh. That was too good. [explosion] What's the plan? Track 'em, find 'em, kill 'em. [music] Here we go. Be sure to check out "Expendables 2" when it hits theaters August 17th. For more content like this-- make sure you check out Bodybuilding.com. [explosions] Whoo.