What sets Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone’s action heroes apart from one another?
Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
At a certain point, you cannot think of one without the other.
For action fans they are yin and yang, the flip sides of the same sweaty bicep.
While they bear some superficial similarities, their star personas are actually quite different.
Stallone, unlike Schwarzenegger, is not suited to playing pure archetypes.
In his action movies, he has to overcome adversity to transform himself into a superman.
This focus on Rambos bruised humanity is highlighted in the first film in the franchise,First Blood.
Rambo is a drifter who is antagonised by a sadistic, small town sheriff.
ThroughoutFirst Blood, Rambo is never presented as the one-man-army he would become in the sequels.
This psychological dimension is also rooted in another convention of theRamboseries: the self-surgery sequence.
If the hero is wounded or tortured, it is ritualised as a masochistic form of spectacle.
In each movie of theRamboseries, Rambo has to perform self-surgery on himself.
Think back to the scenes in theRambomovies in which Rambo has to perform self-surgery.
This becomes a problem when Stallone is cast in the role of a pure action hero.
The best example of this disconnect isCobra(1986).
An urban action film along the lines of theDirty Harryseries,Cobrais Stallones attempt at a pure action archetype.
Beyond the movies obvious flaws (covered in a recent episode of the podcastHow Did This Get Made?
)Cobradoes not work because it negates the very things that make Stallone watchable.
During two major action sequences inNighthawks, Stallone is even dressed in drag.
With Stallone, its about the characters journey to become a superhero.
Thats his essence as an action hero, and the defining element which separates him from his Austrian rival.
Hence the focus on high concepts and genre films.
Only in an outlandish situation would someone of Schwarzeneggers speech and physique work as a protagonist.
Part of the fun of watching Schwarzenegger is seeing how this superman deals with a particular herculean task.
There is no real need for a deep character arc or introspection in these roles.
Predatoris an example of the Schwarzenegger persona at its zenith.
Once the Predator turns up, the movie begins stripping Schwarzenegger of his superhuman sheen.
In the films extended climax, Dutch has to prove his superiority by outsmarting his foe.
It is only at the climax of a Schwarzenegger movie that he can appear to be more vulnerable.
The most emblematic example of where Schwarzenegger went wrong isEnd Of Days.
Jericho Cane is an over-the-hill cop with a tragic past, who drinks to mask his pain.
When Schwarzenegger steps too far out of his established persona, his movies suffer.
While age may have made Schwarzeneggers image somewhat outmoded, I would not count him out yet.
