Schwarzenegger and Stallone reissue their rivalry on television

There was a time when if a listener in the mood for a fight wanted to irritate Carlos Pumares, all he had to do was ask him who he preferred, Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger. The response of the recently deceased driver of star dust It used to consist of one of his recurring attacks of anger and several outbursts, against the two stars and also against the daring person who had proposed such “stupidity.” It was a time, the eighties and nineties, when both actors became the most sought-after in Hollywood, and their films, the highest grossing. They competed in everything, from the collection to the number of henchmen killed on screen. “We were like little children. We competed over who used the biggest knife or the biggest firearms held in one arm, over who had the most muscles, the best definition, the least body fat. We fought over stupid things,” explains Schwarzenegger in Sly, the documentary produced by Stallone himself in which he tells his life, and also in Arnold, the docuseries in which Stallone appears telling more or less the same thing about that continuous pulse. The premiere of both productions has coincided last year with the first fiction series starring each of them. The old rivals, now in their seventies and so friendly, are trying to dust off the dust and return to their old struggle, now on television.

The race to renew his laurels on the small screen was started by Stallone with the premiere at the end of 2022 of Tulsa King, available on Sky Showtime, a police series with traces of comedy and a light appearance, but which with the passing of the episodes gains in darkness and nuances – not in vain its creator is Taylor Sheridan (Yellowstone) and its roster of screenwriters includes Terence Winter (Boardwalk Empire)—in which he plays an old gangster banished by his bosses to Tulsa (Oklahoma), where his old-school tricks, confronted with a modernity in which everyone seems like soft men by comparison, are enough for him to become the master of the gang. city. And last spring, Schwarzenneger premiered on Netflix Fubar, a crude, pyrotechnic action comedy—written by Nick Santora (reacher)—in which he plays a family man and superspy, a character similar to the hero of one of his greatest hits, Risky lies, who discovers that his daughter works for the same agency as him and that, like him, she had hidden it from the entire family. The platform launched at the same time Arnold, three chapters in which the actor himself tells his life, and months later he released slya feature film framed like that of its old competitor in the thriving subgenre of the hagiographic documentary, where the person portrayed is not only the main testimony, but also participates in the production, the one in which titles such as They call me Magic Johnson, BeckhamLegacy: Jerry Buss' LA Lakers —direct response promoted by the franchise itself to the HBO series victory time– either This excessive ambition, about C. Tangana's last tour.

The similarities and differences between both productions function as a correlate of those between their two protagonists. Schwarzenegger was born in the small Austrian town of Thal in 1947, into a humble family, and, like Stallone, born a year earlier in an equally modest home in New York, he always had a tense relationship with his father, who had belonged to the Nazi party. That of the protagonist of Rocky He was a hairdresser with a military background, and in sly His son suggests that his treatment of him became brutal.

Both were fascinated as children and adolescents by the peplum starring American bodybuilders who emigrated to Italy to make their way on the screen playing Hercules and other colossi. But Sylvester always wanted to dedicate himself to cinema, and Arnold became a bodybuilder, to become, in the seventies, the most successful in history, while his future rival tried to carve out a career as an actor that did not take off until he sold his script for Rocky, for which he would be nominated for an Oscar in 1977, he made it a condition that he had to be the protagonist. When Schwarzenegger decided to make the serious leap to the big screen, the New Yorker was already a Hollywood giant. Conan the barbarian, The film that turned the bodybuilder into a movie superstar was released in March 1982. Two months later it was released. Rocky III, and after half a year, Cornered. Terminator would arrive in the fall of 1984. Rambo, in the spring of '85. The pulse was set, although Schwarzenegger from the beginning opted to be a machine of destruction, a role tailor-made for someone who had been predicted would never succeed in front of the camera because his acting skills were almost non-existent. While Stallone, since his first incarnation of the Italian Colt, had initially been typecast in roles of underdog, of a loser who, against the odds, ends up triumphing. “Things happen in my films that don't usually happen in real life. “I am in the business of hope,” he says. That's why he rejected that John Rambo died at the end of cornered, as in the novel on which the film was based. “At that time, 20,000 Vietnam veterans committed suicide a year,” he recalls in the documentary. “And I wasn’t going to contribute to that.” What came next, the jump to increasingly testosterone-driven and crazy action, and the conversion of his heroes into Reagan icons, was the result of Stallone's inability to stop in time (“I don't know how to stop,” he admits), of the crazy race with its European rival and economic voracity. “I wanted to make the genre something that was lucrative and that would go around the world. And so it was,” he says.

The jump to comedy was the most extravagant turn in that perpetual struggle, and it only worked out well for Schwarzenegger, who came forward. Both in sly like in Arnold Something is remembered that the two have often told with laughter on television: that when the Austrian received the script for Stop or my mother shoots, he dismissed it immediately, but pretended to be interested. Stallone took the bait and accepted the role to avoid another success from his competitor. The film was one of the most resounding failures—with the public, and even with critics, which is saying something—of his career.

Arnold also abounds in the leap of its protagonist into politics, and even recalls that in 2003, in the middle of the electoral campaign, Los Angeles Times He published testimonies from six women who accused him of sexual harassment. Schwarzenegger admitted to having “behaved badly at times” and having done “things that he considered a game” but that he acknowledged had offended people to whom he apologized. He was still missing Me Too, so that was enough for him: he became governor of California with 48% of the votes and four years later he was re-elected with an absolute majority. In the documentary, the protagonist even acknowledges his infidelities and even talks about the secret son that cost him his marriage.

In Sly, On the other hand, there is barely a reference to the death of Stallone's first-born son. His incursions into his private life end there and in the mentions of his relationship with his father and the search in the public's appreciation for a substitute for the paternal recognition that the actor never felt. After all, the parallel lives of the two rivals can be told, and are told, as stories of success and personal improvement that reflect the p
ower of faith in oneself and exemplify the fantasy of the American dream, the one of which Stallone never takes off in his stories underdogs. Although Schwarzenegger, more generous than his colleague, recognizes that he would not have gotten where he has without the help of many people who bet on him. And, against the odds, he not only denies that he is what he has called a self-made man, but he says that he is repelled by that concept because it is false.

The television adventure of both stars, far from the status they once had but whose legacy is evident – ​​before the body counts (body counts) John Wick his were there, and without his muscles of steel we wouldn't have those of Vin Diesel or Dwayne Johnson amassing banknotes by the bucketload—he has signs of continuing. So much Tulsa King as Fubar They will have a second season. And, in the absence of references to his personal life in Sly, its protagonist has also premiered, on Sky Showtime, The Stallone family a reality in which he co-stars with his third wife, Jennifer Flavin, and the three daughters they have in common, and in which he acts as an endearing patriarch.

Of course, the two giants have other open fronts. The New Yorker manages a portfolio full of film projects, not only in front of the camera, but also behind it (where he is not new: he has directed eight feature films and written the scripts for more than twenty). The Austrian, without giving up the screen, has been taking advantage of his fame for some time to launch political reflections and inspirational messages on the internet and now he has taken another step as a guru with the publication of The power of being valuable (Active Company), a self-help book in which he gives advice to be successful in life. They may no longer be around to hold incredible one-armed machine guns, but they're still going strong.

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