Sylvester Stallone & Arnold Schwarzenegger - Escape Plan Exclusive Interview

Aside from Arnold's appearances in The Expendables, I think I'm right in saying that Escape Plan is the first time that you two have shared top billing on a movie. I'm interested to know how you both came to be involved with this project and why it was the right film for you to finally collaborate on. Of course, I just read the script and it's hard to find something in the genre that's different. This was different. Even though it's contemporary, it's futuristic at the same time. It sounds like a contradiction in terms, but it's true. The most important thing is who are the players, who's going to be your competition, your antagonist, and eventually your buddy in this. Arnold, of course. When he complied, it was green-lit immediately. There was no one else considered. He was the guy. For me, it was A. Sly was in the movie and we were trying for decades to do a movie together. Finally, we found the script. We did The Expendables together, but this was starring throughout the whole movie. That was number one, working with Sly. Number two, with Michael Halfstrom. The director is a very talented director. He's very organized. He's done great movies. When I met with him, I could see he really had his act together in directing what his vision was of the movie. And number three, Mark Kenton, who is the producer of the movie and who we have worked with when he was the head of Warner Brothers. We have done many movies for him and now he has his own independent production company. So we trusted him and he always has great projects. We wanted to work with him, so those are the three reasons really. The story was terrific. I read that one of the reasons the pair of you enjoy working together is because you push each other. You kind of push the best out of each other. Could you expand on this a little bit and explain why it makes for such a fruitful relationship? Because we have very healthy egos. We're very competitive. Everything we've accomplished in our life has been through struggle and overcoming the odds and just not willing to settle for second best. And rarely do you get those two kinds of personalities together. So when you see, for example, when Muhammad Ali fights anybody, it's okay. When he fights Joe Frazier, everybody has to see that because they know it's two indomitable forces. And out of that can only become a great scenario, a great scene, period. Yeah, I think the competitiveness really pays off. I remember that in the 80s when the action genre started getting going and we were very competitive. As a matter of fact, one time in the mid-80s we ran into each other and I said to Sly, I said, I think that on Commando I killed more people than you did on Rambo. And he says, oh, absolutely not. I said, I killed 97 people. I said, well, I killed, yeah, you're right, 93 only killed. I said, okay, you won this one. Next movie, I said, I'm going to kill more people. He says, but the next movie comes around, I will be killing over 100. So I said, don't worry, you're never going to catch up. So this is how it went, you know, who has more muscles, who has bigger guns, who can shoot more people, who can kill more, who can kill people more in a most unique way. It's more in the box office and all of this, it was just competitive all the way around. It seems like you have fun with it now as well, that history, because there's a lot of humour in this film as well, isn't there? Arnold, I particularly think of the moment when you're on the helicopter and there's a great close-up and a huge machine gun. Lots of people shot on top of the boat. How important is this comic relief in a film like this and how much of it came from you guys just having a blast on the set? Well, I have to defer to Arnold because he really developed action comedy and humour in very dramatic situations. My character, Rambo, is not exactly a ball of laughs, but his characters could pull it off and I think it has to do with his personality. Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, this was one of those moments when I saw it written in the script, that I talked to the director and I said, we can really make something out of that. And first of all, a very intense moment where, you know, I wipe out all those guards that are up there on the top of the prison. But then, number two, it's good to have the smirk there, to have a certain kind of sense of humour about the whole thing. And then to do the buddy thing, because he then is all of a sudden below me and is coming up from the water. And now, you know, we are handing guns to each other and killing more people and all this. So it became a really great action scene that you could do together. But he did invent, he's modest, he did invent the one-liner. That's one of his major contributions. They didn't have those before, really. Okay, and finally, guys, we're here in Bulgaria because you guys are filming Expendables 3 at the moment. I was wondering what more you could tell me about that and how exciting is it to work with new Expendables like Harrison Ford? I think it's fantastic. I think this film, and there's a young director named Patrick Hughes, and I said to him, forget the other two Expendables. You must approach this not as a continuation but as an original. Bring all your sensibilities, because if you feel as though you're trying to catch up to somebody or imitate something, it's just going to dull you. So he's made this thing, the music, the image, the casting. Arnold's has been incredibly impressed. I'm impressed because so many times we work with directors that will go, again, louder, again, faster, instead of a man who literally is so specific. The young Expendables, this is a big gamble because only one of them really has acted a lot. The rest are world-class athletes, world champions. But they have something that you cannot manufacture, whether you go to acting school or you just walk around with a bunch of bluff and bravado. They have fire in their gut. To be a world champion, you have to have something really, really powerful, especially a physical. You have to endure pain and still want to triumph, and they've got that. I thought, if they can get that across on film, just a glint in the eye, and they have. I think that this one, since I've been part of all three, not as much time as Sly has, but I was part of it. But this one, I think, has a really good sense of humor, but it also has a lot of new talent. I, for instance, worked with one guy yesterday at the scene with Jet Li. I was telling Sly, I still can't figure it out. I've seen him do this scene of disarming this guy and pulling his guns out, shooting this guy and shooting five guys over his shoulder. He's done it so fast that I could never see the moves. I'm trying to watch exactly when he pulls the gun, how he does it. This must be the fastest guy around. You have that kind of talent, martial arts, and to use those martial arts moves. Then with weapons, with knives and with guns, machine guns and all that stuff. The way he goes and moves around the corner, the way he takes guys out, jumps down the steps. It's so quick. To have all of these different talents, like Dolph Lundgren has his own style. With his knife always, with all the wildness in his face. Bringing all of them together and to have that many action stars is really extraordinary. Gentlemen, absolute pleasure to speak with you. Absolutely.