Seth Rogen Reignites the Stallone vs. Schwarzenegger Debate and the Internet Has Opinions
Seth Rogen has officially weighed in on one of Hollywood’s most enduring action movie rivalries, and he is not giving Sylvester Stallone much credit.
A clip from a recent episode of ‘Funny You Ask with Ike Barinholtz’ went viral this week after Rogen and his ‘The Studio’ co-star debated how many genuinely good films Stallone has actually made, and the answer landed somewhere that will not sit well with fans of Rocky or Rambo.
‘Funny You Ask’ is a weekly comedy-trivia podcast launched by Ike Barinholtz in March, which sees him put his famous friends through customized trivia battles based on their own interests and obsessions, blending rapid-fire questions with unscripted riffing. The Seth Rogen episode clearly took a detour away from the trivia format and into a full-blown Hollywood film debate.
As seen in the widely shared clip, the conversation started with Barinholtz suggesting the over-under on genuinely good Stallone films was around four, at which point Rogen chimed in with his own ranking. ‘Demolition Man’ made the cut as a good film in his view, though he was careful to separate quality from enjoyment, noting that ‘Tango and Cash’ is fun without clearing the bar of actually being good.
The debate quickly shifted into direct Schwarzenegger comparison territory, and neither man pulled their punches. Rogen argued that Stallone simply does not have the equivalent of a ‘Terminator 2’ or ‘True Lies’ on his filmography, describing Schwarzenegger as starring in legitimately great movies rather than merely entertaining ones. Barinholtz went even further, suggesting that ‘Predator’ alone outranks anything Stallone has produced.
The pair also took aim at what Barinholtz described as Stallone’s rough stretch in the late nineties and early two thousands, singling out ‘Daylight’ in particular, in which Stallone’s character is memorably named Kit Latura and is trapped inside the Holland Tunnel, as a low point in one of Hollywood’s biggest action careers.
That assessment might surprise some, given that Stallone is the only actor in Hollywood history to star in a number one box office film across six consecutive decades, having defined the sports movie with ‘Rocky’ and the action genre with ‘Rambo,’ before pivoting to ensemble work with ‘The Expendables.’
Rogen and Barinholtz have been close collaborators for years, currently co-starring in ‘The Studio,’ the Apple TV Plus satirical comedy about Hollywood that was renewed for a second season and has been praised for its sharp inside-baseball humor and Emmy recognition. The Stallone take is the kind of casual, conversational Hollywood hot take that the podcast format does best, and the clip’s viral reach proves the Stallone versus Schwarzenegger debate still has plenty of fuel left in the tank.
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