Sylvester Stallone may be looking to get some payback from Arnold Schwarzenegger.
While they are friends now, the two literal biggest movie stars in the world in the 1980s were actually huge rivals, a rivalry that ultimately led to Schwarzenegger convincing Stallone to make the action comedy “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.”
“In the ’80s, he was just a rival. It was all about who was making bigger movies, who had the bigger definition in the muscles, who had more box office success, who kills more people, who kills more people creatively, who has bigger knives, who has bigger guns,” Schwarzenegger told Jimmy Kimmel on Monday. “In the end I started running around with guns that were only mounted on helicopters or on tanks. It was crazy. It was all out war.”
So when Schwarzenegger started moving into comedies like “Twins” and “Kindergarten Cop” in the early ’90s, Stallone had to do the same. One movie Arnie was initially approached about was the 1992 action comedy “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot” starring Estelle Getty of “The Golden Girls.” The film is about a tough guy cop who finds his absent minded and kooky mother obliviously wandering into the height of danger without a second thought.
“I read the script, and it was a piece of s—. Let’s be honest. I say to myself, I’m not going to do this movie,” Schwarzenegger explained on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” “Then they went to Sly, and Sly called me, have they ever talked to you about doing this movie? And I said, yes, I was thinking about doing it. This is a really brilliant idea, this movie. When he heard that, because he was in competition, he said, ‘Whatever it takes, I’ll do the movie.’ And of course the movie went major into the toilet.”
Just how bad was “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot?” The movie tanked at the domestic box office, making only $28.4 million. And in his half star review, Roger Ebert did not mince words.
“Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot” is one of those movies so dimwitted, so utterly lacking in even the smallest morsel of redeeming value, that you stare at the screen in stunned disbelief,” Ebert wrote. “It is moronic beyond comprehension, an exercise in desperation during which even Sylvester Stallone, a repository of self-confidence, seems to be disheartened.”
On Wednesday, Stallone actually responded to Schwarzenegger making fun of him by saying he’s planning to write (which he notes is something Schwarzenegger does not), direct and produce a sequel just for Arnie called “Stop Or Your Grandmother Will Beat Your Ass.” And no, he’s not hurt that he got tricked into starring in “the worst movie ever made.”
“Does it bother me? Nah. Is it burnt into my memory like a horrible scar? Nah. Well, maybe just a little bit,” Stallone said.
Watch Schwarzenegger talk Stallone and his new film “Terminator: Dark Fate” on Kimmel above, and check out Sly’s response below.
“Stop Or Your Grandmother Will Beat Your Ass.”
— A tribute to @Schwarzenegger https://t.co/KM0qLvJFM9 @jimmykimmel @JimmyKimmelLive pic.twitter.com/QnmeCaMX3g— Sylvester Stallone (@TheSlyStallone) October 30, 2019