Stallone Weighs in on Movie Violence, Inducted into Action Hero Hall of Fame

Thirty years ago, Sylvester Stallone broke onto the Hollywood scene with a powerful debut film - Rocky (1976). Stallone both wrote and starred in Rocky, which was hailed as a critical success and was an instant cult classic, winning the academy award for Best Picture.

Sylvester Stallone quickly capitalized on the buzz around his first film and launched a towering acting career, starring in a total of six Rocky films and nearly as many Rambo pictures.

Stallone has been the quintessential action hero since portraying the ultra-violent killing machine - John Rambo - who returns home from Vietnam to find that he is reviled for his service to his country. He flips his lid, as they say, and unleashes the lessons of war on a little northern town and its sheriff.

From the first explosive arrow, Stallone owned the title of "action hero".

In fact, Sylvester Stallone recently became the first inductee to the IGN "Action Hero Hall of Fame" at this year's Comic Con (July 2010).

Being one of the all-time record holders for "most blood spilled in a 90 minute film", you may be surprised to hear about Sly Stallone's attitude regarding violence in the movies.

At his induction into the action hero pantheon, Stallone is reported to have drawn the line at serial killers, saying that serial killers were "insidious".

Movie violence is ok, by Stallone's standards, as long is it is "heroic".

One might wonder exactly where to draw the line between psychopathic killing and massive, repeated unapologetic killing.

Rambo, who kills south Asians by the dozen, commits acts of violence in the cause of good and so his violence is not "insidious". American's have long hailed the gun as a tool of justice. So Stallone's take on movie violence is not new in that way. Heroic violence has been the model and the gold standard for every action hero, from Batman to Van Damme.

The portrayal of "heroic" violence in American cinema has often been uncomplicated. The dire situations concocted in the plot do enough to explain why it is good for Rambo to knife that guy when he isn't looking and why it is fine for Steven Segal to break neck after neck after neck...etc.

Only recently has a television show directly challenged the notion of heroic violence as simple and necessarily virtuous. The show 24 featured a character - Jack Bauer - whose actions were questioned again and again, despite the fact that they were carried out with the best interests of the country in mind.

The line between Jack Bauer and a serial killer is very thin in the context of 24. We are forced to ask if what he is doing is morally and ethically right, despite the dire scenario into which he is cast.

It is precisely in the serial killer genre that we discover an exploration of the twisted emotional nuances and hidden psychosis that enable people to justify violent crime. Is the type of violence displayed in serial killer films insidious? The answer is undeniably yes. Stallone is right about that.

It is insidious. It is pernicious. But the messy psychologies of serial killer characters are closer to the truth than the far-fetched, cut-and-dry heroics of action films.

In the end, one cannot disagree with Stallone's opinion entirely. But we can also see the convenience of his attitude. Stallone has built his career on mindless "heroic" violence. In fact, he went back to the directors chair to make a new action film being released in August of 2010 - The Expendables.

The new action movie promises to be big on explosions and violence, but light on any nuanced explanation as to why war is necessary, how violence feeds into permanent psychological trauma, and what really is the moral (insidious?) difference between a person who kills twenty people in five minutes and the one who kills two people in two hours?

Sources:
www.imdb.com

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