Stallone acknowledges that Schwarzenegger was a better action star: “He had the body and he had the strength”

beatles against Rolling Stones? Barca against Real Madrid? Dad against mom? Nonsense: if you lived through the 80s and 90s, you know that these dilemmas come to nothing compared to the one that forced you to choose between arnold schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone like your favorite action star. A controversy that has now returned to the fore… with one of those two stars graciously throwing in the towel.

It turns out that Stallone is one of the guest stars in arnold, the documentary of Netflix about the life of Schwarzenegger. During his testimony (via IndieWire), ‘Sly’ traces a fine analysis of the evolution that the industry experienced from the New Hollywood of the 70s to the eighties empire of the blockbuster … and, incidentally, he admits that his friend adapted to the new state of affairs better than he did.

“The ’80s were a very interesting time because the ‘action star’ was not yet defined,” comments Stallone. “Until that time, ‘action’ was a car chase as in bullitt either French Connection. An intelligent film, with nuances, with dialogues about this and that”, comments the protagonist of Rocky.

However, he continues, the turn of the decade brought with it a radical mutation: “You depended on your body to tell the story,” recalls Stallone. “The dialogue was not necessary. I saw that there was an opportunity there, because nobody was doing that except that other Austrian guy who did not need to talk much. It was superior. She had all the answers. She had the body. He had the strength. That was the character of him.”

And precisely, continues the actor and director, it was Schwarzenegger’s rocky physique that allowed him to withstand everything that was thrown at him on set. “They beat me constantly, but Arnold never hurt himself”, remember. “I’d say, ‘Arnold, you could go off and fight a dragon and you’d come back with a Band-Aid on.”

Diplomatic as always, ‘Arnie’ intervenes to acknowledge that Stallone came before him and paved the way for this type of cinema. “Every time he released a movie like the second of Rambo, I had to find a way to get over him,” he says. “Without Stallone, I might not have found the motivation to make the movies that I did in the ’80s, or to work as hard. I’m a competitive person.”

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