First Blood

[greenman]

It looked like Sly was about to embrace the whole post-modern, ironic, satirical '90s action bandwagon with Demolition Man, but he then backed away from it for some reason. He's an objectively better actor that Arnie, he has great comic timing, but his attempts at out and out comedy in the early '90s were woeful.

Arnie could've probably sold Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, but Sly just looked embarrassed to be there. Arnie was much more adept at sending himself up, possibly because, unlike Stallone, he's always been entirely at ease with being a charismatic popcorn turn. Stallone never quite managed to work out how to be an action hero and a serious auteur at the same time.

I think there is more of a sense of "serious actor slumming it" in his blockbuster career than Arnies, on one hand not wanting to look foolish in nominally serious roles and the other thinking in terms of what he thought the market wanted to see rather than what he wanted to make.

Arnie by comparison I think naturally fit into the larger than life direction action films went in the mid 80's, Commando, Running Man, Total Recall, etc. Seem like films that are less cynical to me and enjoying what they are. That did as you say also make a shift into comedy easier which sustained his career for awhile longer when the bottom started to drop out of the action market.

If Demolition Man had come out 10 years earlier I suspect this career could have been rather different but ultimately it ended up more as a foot note to a genre that was dying out. Judge Dredd almost seemed to be the reverse for me, as if there wasn't the belief the concept was serious enough to sustain itself, I suspect a late 80's version of that staring Arnie might well have worked better.

[BeardFaceMan]

I got into a ongoing competition with my friend to see who could sketch the best Rambo movie posters. I drew First Blood.

[SavageHedgehog]

He's an intelligent, interesting man, an actual artiste if you will, who has nevertheless spent much of his career churning out boneheaded dogshit. He is, of course, fully aware of this. He's nothing if not charmingly self-deprecating when it comes to his artistic failures, and that's why he's such a fascinating paradox.

This is a man who was once touted as the new Brando. He was a critically-acclaimed actor, writer and director who eventually turned his back on artistic integrity and became a blockbusting cartoon of his own making. At sporadic points throughout his career he's sought to remind people that he can actually act, write and direct. And then he goes and spoils it all by making something stupid like [insert any number of films here].

I'm not for a moment suggesting that Stallone should've devoted his career to making gritty, serious dramas, as that would've denied us of some highly entertaining, well-made schlock, but his filmography should be more impressive than it is.

Sorry for the ramble, I haven't slept properly in days. I'm delirious. Stallone wrote and starred in Rocky, which is a masterpiece. That's more than I'll ever achieve.

Now might be a good time for him to finally realising his passion project of writing and directing (but no longer starring in) a biopic of Edgar Allan Poe. I'd love to see him pull that off, it would be a real shock for a lot of people if he did.

[Mister Six]

I'd love to see Sly at any age trying to look like this:

[bgmnts]

Stallone may be a better but Arnie has way more charisma.

[greenman]

Stallone may be a better but Arnie has way more charisma.

He's certainly more naturally likeble and in terms of physical acting as well just as good as Stallone in stuff like Terminator and Predator.

[A Hat Like That]

I'd leave Magnum Force out of that, which questions the values of the first more than the first questions its own values. Both very good films, I also think The Enforcer is very entertaining, the other two less so.

I'd even go with Sudden Impact as really rather nuanced as well.

The only one that's certifiably not is The Dead Pool, but then again that's got a frikkin' harpoon gun.

[Head Gardener]

[H-O-W-L]

If Demolition Man had come out 10 years earlier I suspect this career could have been rather different but ultimately it ended up more as a foot note to a genre that was dying out. Judge Dredd almost seemed to be the reverse for me, as if there wasn't the belief the concept was serious enough to sustain itself, I suspect a late 80's version of that staring Arnie might well have worked better.

The oversilliness of Judge Dredd and Stallone's mugging throughout it fucking infuriated me as a 2000AD fan because it was right in the proper era for a Judge Dredd movie to do fucking amazingly, and it's why the far superior Dredd (2012) did far worse theatrically-- wrong era.

[Steve Lampkins]

I watched this tonight and it was absolute dog shit. The whole film limped towards the last 15 minutes which was basically an 18 version of Home Alone. Well I did laugh heartily throughout, but I'm not sure that they were going for that. To add insult to injury, the closing credits were bizarrely clips from the actually good Rambo movies.

[Phil_A]

One decent Stallone performance no-one seems to remember now is in 97's Cop Land, opposite a not-quite-yet phoning it in De Niro and Keitel. He's really good in it!

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

One decent Stallone performance no-one seems to remember now is in 97's Cop Land, opposite a not-quite-yet phoning it in De Niro and Keitel. He's really good in it!

Cop Land has already been mentioned a few times in this thread...