Stallone Designates Schwarzenegger The Superior 80s Action Movie Star After Years Of Debate

Sylvester Stallone now admits, after years of rivalry and audience debates, that Arnold Schwarzenegger was the superior action movie star of the 1980s. Fans of action movies were spoiled for choice in the ’80s, with Schwarzenegger and Stallone alone responsible for some of the decades’ biggest hits. While the former starred in movies like The Terminator and Commando, the latter gave audiences the character of Rambo and starred in Cobra. The two stars engaged in a public battle of one-upmanship throughout the decade and beyond before eventually becoming friends.

Stallone now concedes in Arnold (via IndieWire), Netflix’s new Schwarzenegger documentary, that his competitor was the better ’80s action star. Not only did Schwarzenegger’s movies tend to do better at the box office, but Stallone explains that Schwarzenegger and his impressive physique largely defined the decade’s new action star, who relied more on physicality than words. Check out Stallone’s full comment below:

“The ’80s was a very interesting time because the definitive ‘action guy’ had not really been formed yet. Up until that time, action was a car chase like ‘Bullitt’ or ‘The French Connection.’ A film all about intellect and innuendo and verbal this and verbal that.

“[Arnold] actually relied upon [his] body to tell the story. Dialogue was not necessary. I saw that there was an opportunity, because no one else was doing this except some other guy from Austria, who doesn’t need to say much… He was superior. He just had all the answers. He had the body. He had the strength. That was his character.

“I had to get my ass kicked constantly, whereas Arnold, he never got hurt much. And I’m going, ‘Arnold, you could go out and fight a dragon and you’d come back with a Band-Aid.’”

Related: Sylvester Stallone Admits Arnold Schwarzenegger Was The Box Office Champion

Schwarzenegger & Stallone’s Rivalry Explained

Both Schwarzenegger and Stallone have admitted to being competitive individuals, both on screen and off, and this clearly resulted in rivalry forming between the two stars. Both actors rose to prominence around the same time in the late ’70s and early ’80s, meaning the timing was perfect for a feud to begin. Talking to Forbes last year, Schwarzenegger said of the rivalry, “he just saw me as the enemy just in his own little vision and I saw him as the enemy and I had to get rid of him and he had to get rid of me and that was it.”

This rivalry even continued into the 1990s when Schwarzenegger actually tricked Stallone into starring in Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Schwarzenegger recently confirmed Stallone’s claims that he pretended to be interested in starring in the film so that Stallone would do it. Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot was a notorious critical and commercial failure and is widely considered one of Stallone’s worst movies.

Both Schwarzenegger and Stallone have since admitted that there were positive aspects to their rivalry, however, with both stars motivated to do more and make better films. The two action movie legends would also become firm friends in the 1990s and the two even worked together on the Expendables franchise. While Stallone has now conceded that Schwarzenegger was the better ’80s action star, both were undoubtedly pivotal figures in the shaping of action cinema.

Source: Arnold (via IndieWire)