Sylvester Stallone reveals his favourite Arnold Schwarzenegger movies
It’s no secret that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone engaged in one of Hollywood’s most unforgettable feuds. Beginning in the late 1970s, the pair were constantly in competition as they battled to usurp the other for the role of cinema’s leading action star.
While some of their rivalry has resulted in downright cruel behaviour, such as Stallone allegedly providing a journalist with false claims that Schwarzenegger is a secret Nazi sympathiser, the pair have also engaged in some hilarious acts of deception. For example, Schwarzenegger convinced Stallone to star in the terrible movie Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.
Schwarzenegger revealed: “I read the script, and it was a piece of shit. Let’s be honest. I say to myself, ‘I’m not going to do this movie…’ Then they went to Sly, and Sly called me: ‘Have they ever talked to you about doing this movie?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I was thinking about doing it. This is a really brilliant idea, this movie.’ When he heard that, because he was in competition, he said, ‘Whatever it takes, I’ll do the movie.’ And of course the movie went major into the toilet.”
Stallone believes the film is “maybe one of the worst films in the entire solar system, including alien productions we’ve never seen… a flatworm could write a better script than Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.”
That’s only scratching the surface of Stallone and Schwarzenegger’s feud, which is so extensive that it has its own dedicated Wikipedia page. However, the duo are no longer enemies these days, sharing the screen multiple times in the 2010s.
Moreover, in 2022, Stallone revealed his favourite Schwarzenegger movies during a Discord AMA. His first pick was one of the star’s most iconic films, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, directed by James Cameron. He joked: “I tell him…I said you have the easiest movies in the world to do you just walk down the middle of the street punching the crap at everybody, and no one hurts you. […] Unfortunately, my characters all get beat up.”
Schwarzenegger’s role as the titular cyborg is one of his most celebrated performances, helping to launch him to further stardom. The movie was the highest-grossing release of 1991 and earned four Academy Awards, including ‘Best Visual Effects’ and ‘Best Makeup’.
However, Stallone is also a big fan of Schwarzenegger’s other Cameron collaboration, True Lies, from 1994. The action comedy stars Jamie Lee Curtis, Bill Paxton and Tom Arnold alongside Schwarzenegger, and it became one of the year’s most successful movies. According to Stallone: “True Lies was very, very good because he combined everything in that. The wit, the romantic aspect, the charm and then great action with a great director, so, that would do it.”
Watch the full AMA below.
