Sylvester Stallone Once Felt Marvel Films Were Firework Shows Compared to Old Action Movies
Sylvester Stallone starred in a few iconic action movies during his prime years. And the actor felt his era of blockbusters had something that current franchises like Marvel lacked.
Sylvester Stallone thought Marvel lacked the subtleties of past action films
Stallone has been mostly unimpressed with modern day action films, especially when the vast majority of them have been superheroes. The actor felt like he came from a time where action films were a bit more grounded, focusing on character work as much as spectacle.
Many of Stallone’s past action movies also dealt with real backgrounds and practical effects that might have added authenticity to his films. Meanwhile, he believed that the superhero movies of today relief too much on CGI.
“These films now are scientific. They’re made by techno-wizards. They don’t have to interact with actors to the extent you used to, because the machines do the work. And that’s not to denigrate the actors. In a Marvel film, you’re not going into the subtleties. You’re dealing with a canvas so big, so huge, that it becomes to me almost like watching a fireworks show,” Stallone once told Variety.
He credited classics like Dirty Harry and Bronson as features whose characters carried the action and the movie in the absence of CGI. Stallone hoped to achieve a similar effect with his last Rambo film.
“With this Rambo I’m looking at something much more simplified: Like man-on-man, in cave. It’s pretty simple. Really basic, no CGI,” he said.
Why Sylvester Stallone considered ‘Rambo: First Blood’ one of the first action movie
Stallone also felt the first Rambo film included everything that he liked about action films, and what he disliked about Marvel. The actor made a conscious decision to do a lot of character work for the feature. This was necessary since his character remained silent throughout the vast majority of the film.
“That’s why I think First Blood is one of the first action films. I relied on body acting to tell the story. The character never talks, but you know exactly what’s going on through the other characters. They’re almost like narrators in his Greek tragedy. The guy never stops moving, and that’s what I call an ‘action film.’ There’s not one CGI shot. The audience goes: That is pretty special,” Stallone once told The Hollywood Reporter.
What convinced Sylvester Stallone to star in his first superhero film as a leading man ‘The Samaritan’
Although he’d had certain issues with modern superhero films, Stallone has made a few exceptions. He made an appearance in one of James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies. He also offered his voice for King Shark in The Suicide Squad, which was also directed by James Gunn. In 2019, Stallone starred in his own superhero film. The Samaritan was released on Amazon Prime, and had no ties to Marvel, DC, or any other comic book property.
It was an entirely original idea where Stallone played an aging, retired superhero. But what drew Stallone to the project was how different it was from other big-budget superhero features. This was a smaller, more compact film that had more in common with the action films that he used to do.
“It’s not set in some super fantastic universe,” the actor to SyFy Wire. “It’s set among brick and concrete and identifiable situations in the neighborhoods we live in. And that’s what I liked about it. You could be standing next to him on an El or a bus and not even know you’re sitting next to some fella here that can literally lift the bus up. There’s a kind of simplicity to it, and it’s a simmering boil.”
