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Why Escape Plan Is Stallone’s Worst Action Franchise

Sylvester Stallone has fronted several franchises over the years, but here’s why Escape Plan is his worst. Following the success of Rocky, Stallone had trouble following the movie up with a solid hit. Sequels weren’t really in vogue during this era, and he was advised against making Rocky II, with the original director John G. Avildsen flatly refusing to return. Stallone took the reins himself, and the sequel became another surprise success. Rocky Balboa is now Stallone’s most enduring character, and he has reprised the role many times over the decades, with 2018’s Creed 2 being the former boxer’s most recent outing.
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Stallone, maybe more so than any other Hollywood actor before him, embraced sequels both as a way to continue exploring the same character and for their in-built commercial appeal. Tonally, First Blood – which wasn’t the first movie to introduce John Rambo – and Rambo: First Blood Part 2 are very different, with one being a grounded survival thriller and the other being a bombastic war movie. This switch in genre allowed Rambo to become a cultural icon, however, and Stallone returned to the part a further three times. In 2010, he also created The Expendables series, which paired him with other beloved action icons like Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren and Arnold Schwarzenegger; the fourth entry is set for release in 2022.

Related: Every Sylvester Stallone / Dave Bautista Movie, Ranked

While Stallone seemingly had the midis touch when it comes to franchises, there have been a few non-starters, such as 1995’s Judge Dredd. The Expendables franchise paired Stallone with his former on-screen rival Schwarzenegger, but these team-ups weren’t fully satisfying since the latter’s role in each movie amounted to an extended cameo. Their first true pairing came with 2013’s Escape Plan, a prison movie that cast Stallone as a security expert mysteriously locked away in a supposedly inescapable prison; Schwarzenegger played a fellow prisoner who helps him put that theory to the test. The movie was a fun if forgettable thriller that did surprisingly well overseas, leading to the Escape Plan franchise, which sadly happens to be Stallone’s worst action movie series.

Sylvester Stallone Set for Escape Plan 3

The only thing of note the Escape Plan sequels did was pair Stallone with Dave Bautista – who later admitted to signing on to the films just to work with Sly. Escape Plan 2: Hades saw Stallone’s Ray Breslin and his security team imprisoned in the titular facility where inmates are forced to fight, while Escape Plan 3 (AKA The Extractors) saw Stallone’s – who has many movie regrets – Breslin breaking into an old prison to save his fiancee. Despite being produced for a reported $20 million and featuring a talented cast, Escape Plan 2 looks and feels very chintzy, with a boring storyline and repetitive fight sequences. Stallone himself later spoke out against the sequel, dubbing it the “most horribly produced film” of his career in an Instagram post.

Escape Plan 3 was received a little better and benefitted from a more grounded, practical approach to locations and fights. However, it’s still a very skippable film, and despite prominent billing, both Stallone and Bautista basically play supporting roles. Stallone seemingly agreed to make the third entry – which was helmed by his longtime friend John Herzfeld – as some kind of redemption for Escape Plan 2: Hades, but the trilogy is easily the worst franchise of Stallone’s career. Breslin isn’t a very compelling character, the setpieces aren’t memorable and there’s little fresh or inventive about any of them. Stallone himself didn’t write or direct any of the Escape Plan movies either, and given his creative stamp on the Rocky or Rambo movies, maybe this is partly the reason they didn’t live up to his usual standards. Either way, it appears Escape Plan 4 won’t be happening, which is probably for the best.

Next: Every Time Sylvester Stallone Was Tricked Into Making A Movie

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‘I am officially off the market’: When Margot Robbie revealed she made the ‘conscious’ decision of not dating actors


Margot Robbie revealed her decision to not date actors because of the media scrutiny that came with a public relationship of two high-profile actors
Back in 2015, A-lister Margot Robbie made a declaration that she would not be dating any actors. The actress may have alluded to her fiance Tom Ackerley, who she married the following year in 2016. In an exclusive interview with Marie Claire, she revealed that being in a relationship as an actor herself came with its own set of challenges. She believed that dating someone who was popular would add on to the media scrutiny.

Margot Robbie opened up on why she made a conscious decision to not date actorsTalking to Marie Claire, she claimed, “I am officially off the market.” She then shared the reasoning behind her decision and added, “I made a conscious decision not to date actors.” She continued to explain, “But not because I hate actors. That’s a nasty generalization to make, and that’s not the case. People take such an interest in your love life when you have a profile, it puts a lot of stress on a relationship.”
The Barbie actress continued, “So two people with profiles, I figure it’s just double the amount of scrutiny, and I’d like to avoid that at all costs.” This came after reports of her locking lips with Tarzan co-star Alexander Skarsgard started making rounds. It was reported that she was caught kissing the actor during the Sundance Film Festival.

Margot Robbie revealed she opted for a minimal lifestyle even after becoming an actorIn the interview, Robbie also opened up about how she was adapting to fame. She shared, “I have a normal 24-year-old life. If I were a waitress, I’d probably have the exact same lifestyle. I’d go to the same clubs I go to already, live in the same house with the same housemates, hang out with the same people.”
However, Margot Robbie tied the knot with Tom Ackerley who is an English producer and actor. The duo met on the sets of 2013 movie Suite Francaise where Tom was working as an assistant director. Post marriage, both of them launched their production company LuckyChap Entertainment.

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Monica Bellucci and Tin Burton at lunch in the restaurant in Selci Lama


For All Saints’ Day, the Hollywood star from Tiferno returned to his native Umbria to enjoy a moment of relaxation and then visit his parentsOn the occasion of the All Saints’ Day celebrations, the Hollywood star of Tiferno origin, Monica Bellucci, returned to her native Umbria to enjoy a moment of relaxation and to visit her father Pasquale and her mother Brunella.Flanked by her current partner Tim Burton, she went to lunch, together with about twenty old friends, at the Osteria del Musicista, which has always been her favorite restaurant, in Selci Lama.Menu dedicated to typical dishes of the area, which includes an appetizer with breadsticks lined with coppa, duck in porchetta and grilled pork livers, polenta with wild boar sauce accompanied by the very typical cappelletti in broth.To conclude, a dessert based on fried “ciaccia” with Nutella and roasted chestnuts.
Having paid the bill and greeted the restaurant owner and lifelong friend, Roberto Polchi, Monica brought home cappelletti and broth for a family dinner.

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‘Rocky’ Was Quite Different In His Original Screenplay, Sylvester Stallone Claims


Sylvester Stallone took his friend’s advice on a rewrite of the original screenplay to Rocky. A few tweaks later, he was on his way to major success.
In the new Netflix documentary Sly, Stallone discussed how he initially conceived of the project, which had a much harder edge. In the early version, Rocky was depicted as a “thuggish” character, inspired by Martin Scorsese’s crime drama, Mean Streets.

But Stallone’s perspective changed when a friend read the script and thought the boxer was too cruel for audiences to actually care about him.
Stallone recalled her crying.

“She goes, ‘I hate Rocky. I hate him. He’s cruel. He hits people. He beats them up.’”
Stallone took it to heart, and asked what he could do to soften the character.

“I said, ‘what if you stop short of it?’ Like, maybe he almost did. He could have, that’s his job, but he doesn’t?’ ‘That’d be nice,’” he added. “I said, ‘What if he had a girlfriend or something?’ ‘Yeah, that’s nice.’ So I go back, start writing that: ‘Girlfriend. Nice.’”
$117 million in box office later, a franchise was born.

Stallone also revealed that actor Dolph Lundgren sent him to the hospital during one fight scene in Rocky IV.
“Dolph Lundgren… he pulverized me,” Stallone says in the documentary. “Later that night, my heart started to swell—which happens when the heart hits the chest—and then my blood pressure went up to 260, and they thought I was going to be talking to angels. Next thing I know, I’m in intensive care, where I’m surrounded by nuns, and I thought, ‘OK, that’s curtains.’”
Stallone was in the hospital for nine days following the incident, praying for “one more round.”
“For the first minute of the fight, it is going to be a free-for-all,” Stallone told Lundgren. The Swedish actor joked in a separate interview that all he did was “obey orders,” explaining, “[Stallone] was the boss. I did what he told me.”
Doctors allegedly told Stallone that he received a blow to the ribs that made his heart rattle around in his ribcage, a condition typically seen in head-on collisions. “I did hit a bus, of sorts,” Stallone joked.

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