The two movies that plagued Sylvester Stallone’s career: “The worst”
It would have been a fitting end to the real-life Rocky story had Sylvester Stallone won his Oscar in 2016.
Hollywood was buoyed with, let’s face it, overzealous expectation at the thought of Stallone bringing a life-like fairy tale to the grandest awards stage in the industry. But despite the drama, it felt like a very real possibility that Stallone was in contention for winning ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for his turn in Creed, which was, for all intents and purposes, a rather boring and predictable spin-off to the Rocky saga.
Ultimately, it felt heartening because until then, Stallone was never really considered an actor’s actor, so to speak. Even though the first Rocky swept up ‘Best Picture’ in ‘77, along with ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Editing’, it was never because of Stallone’s vast acting range but for the grit that laced the storyline, mirroring the against-all-odds life Stallone had lived himself.
So come ‘16, when his acting chops had grown sharper with age, and he turned in a performance that was circulating critical acclaim and subsequent Oscar buzz, it felt like the entire cinema world fell dewy-eyed as they watched this redemption arc reach full circle. Then, Mark Rylance deservedly won, crash-landing Hollywood back to Earth and reminding us all that the world isn’t one big comeback story, but a right hook to the mouth that ruins supposed justice.
Despite the loss, the community acceptance was enough for Stallone, who, prior to his nomination, had been turning out a string of simply terrible films. Action dramas were cut and pasted into every script he read, pigeon-holing him into this narrative archetype of the underdog brute willing to overcome all powers with whatever might be required. While these projects would have certainly paid well, it wasn’t lost on Stallone just how stale his career was becoming.
“I made some truly awful movies,” he once said, “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot was the worst. If you ever want someone to confess to murder, just make him or her sit through that film. They will confess to anything after 15 minutes”.
Stallone went on to admit that Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot is “the worst film I’ve ever made by far”, doubling down further, “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. In some countries, China, I believe, running Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, once a week on government television, has lowered the birth rate to zero.”
Clearly, the film was at the very bottom of the pile for Stallone, but lucky for him, it’s probably one of his least-watched. However, the film that sits at the bottom with it fared slightly differently, jumping off the back of his commercial marketing to entice action lovers into the cinema, which, for Stallone, is a deep regret, as he admitted, “Escape Plan 2 was truly the most horribly produced film I have ever had the misfortune to be in”.
I would love to disagree with him, for it seems like he’s spent enough time beating himself up about it. But to be honest, I can’t really bring myself to do so. I, too, believe that both of those movies are truly awful and deserve to be labelled as such by the man himself, yet I am willing to let the past live in the past, and try to enjoy Stallone’s career twilight through the lens of his Oscar near-miss.
