The six movies Sylvester Stallone would love to delete from history: “Let me think”
Most actors have one or two movies they wish they’d never made, but it speaks volumes about the sheer level of complete and utter dross Sylvester Stallone has churned out over the years that he listed no less than six of his own films as ones he’d rather see erased from the collective cinematic consciousness.
You could even say he’s being generous, restricting it to a mere sextet, because he’s made a lot more shitty pictures than that. Obviously, he’ll always be remembered as one of the industry’s definitive action heroes, and even if he wasn’t, the Rocky franchise would have secured his Hollywood legacy anyway.
However, Sly has become much more synonymous with the Razzies than the Academy Awards. His three nominations at the latter, which all came from the ‘Italian Stallion’, are dwarfed by his 34 nominations at the former, including 12 wins, and one apiece for ‘Worst Actor of the Decade’ and ‘Worst Actor of the Century’ for the 1980s and the period between 1900 and 1999, disrespectively.
With that in mind, those movies must be pretty bad for Stallone to wish they’d never existed, and they are. All of them are completely indefensible; they were torn to shreds by critics, almost all of them were shunned by audiences, and one of them was the punchline to one of the greatest pranks ever pulled by one star upon another, with his former arch-nemesis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the orchestrator.
When he was asked if there were any films he’d made that he wished he hadn’t, the concerningly vascular veteran was honest. “Let me think,” he paused. “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, Oscar, Get Carter, Driven, D-Tox, and certainly Rhinestone, which I wish had been Romancing the Stone.”
That’s a risible comedy that Schwarzenegger hoodwinked him into starring in, another risible comedy that he wasn’t tricked into making, a pointless remake that he tried to defend despite the bountiful evidence to the contrary, an expensive box office bomb that couldn’t find a good review to save its life, an awful psychological horror that he admitted was doomed, and a catastrophe that only Dolly Parton managed to emerge from unscathed.
The most concerning thing is that, even though he named a whole six films as his professional nadir, the three-time Oscar nominee made those comments a while ago, and he’s churned out even more subpar genre movies since then. Realistically, the list has only expanded in size, although he hasn’t openly berated his own work since then. On the other hand, some of it definitely deserves to be.
Those are the movies he regrets making, but spare a thought for anyone bold, brave, or foolish enough to subject themselves to Alarum, Armor, the second and third instalments in the Escape Plan series, Backtrace, the fourth Expendables movie, or Grudge Match. Stallone may not have openly disowned them, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t objectively shite.
Every performer with a long career makes a couple of missteps, but it’s almost impressive that Sly has managed to weather so many storms and been spared a sentence for committing so many crimes against cinema.
