... he didn't like the quality of the script, but what exactly was it about the script for this movie that made him dislike it, and how come he hadn't had a problem with say several other poor scripts he DID choose and accept for some of his rather disappointing movies?
shareinteresting. i'd guess the daylight script wasn't far off from a script like this.
shareMaybe he somehow found the tone of the movie uneven from reading the pages of the script?
sharemaybe fighting a female penguin
shareHe didn't have a problem with killing that treacherous lady cop in "Cobra" (1986).
sharetrue
shareBut then given how in his career Stallone chose some rather poor and mediocre scripts, like for movies like Stop or My Mum Will Shoot, Driven, Get Carter remake etc, I wonder what aspects of this film's script he considered poor.
sharemaybe it was too close to a die hard and bruce willis would have made fun of him, or too close to an undersiege.
share😂
shareStallone was trying to avoid action movies since he was entering his 50s and had said that it did not look realistic for him to be playing that kinda role any longer (which he obviously went back to and is still playing in his late 70s... and he's great!)
Anyways, Sly was trying to look for different characters, Daylight's Kit Latura was a NYC cab driver and former paramedic, who was just trying to help people survive this situation and get out of the tunnel, he wasn't shooting machine guns and beating an army of terrorists on his own.
Daylight was more Poseidon Adventure than Die Hard.
They are both weak scripts though, but from the actor's pov, I understand why Sly chose one over the other.
I'm a big Van Damme fan but Sudden Death is not a movie I ever feel compelled to rewatch. It's not that it's terrible; it's just that it's not particularly good.
Really, it comes off as exactly what it is: A cheap knock off of other, superior films.
I can understand why Sly passed. He had already made his Die Hard movie with Cliffhanger.
Also. Towards the end of Sudden Death, the bit with the helicopter seems to almost copy the helicopter climax from Cliffhanger.
shareI can't say I remember it well enough to comment on specific elements, but I'm sure you're correct.
This was really about the time that Van Damme's output started going to shit. He made his name with martial arts movies, and then, for some reason, decided he didn't want to be a martial arts guy anymore. No, instead, he wanted to be a regular action guy who occasionally threw some punches and kicks.
This shift started with Double Impact, which is kind of like a hybrid martial arts movie/straight action movie. And then it was mostly complete when he made Universal Soldier, Nowhere to Run, Hard Target and Timecop.
Sudden Death, to me, was the movie that signaled things were headed downhill, and while there have been some bright spots between then and now, he never really has recovered.
The script is godawful, one minute it’s a goofy comedy, the next innocent people are being executed in cold blood leaving their relatives traumatised, or a little girl is about to be shot in the head at point blank range. It’s a sickly sweet tonal mess.
shareSo basically speaking, in a nutshell, even though it does state that in this movie's "trivia", its quite possible that Sylvester Stallone refused to accept the role in this movie and star in it for reasons beyond him simply finding this movie's script quality, for a better word, "lacking". Correct?
P.S. Does Mr Stallone in your opinion, or in fact even, have a talent for choosing or even analysing correctly film SCRIPTS? Thanks.
Do you watch American sports?
shareErr, not very often, no, but how is this relevant here? To the subject of Sly's script choosing and script analysing abilities?
shareOkay that makes sense. So in American sports, particularly hockey and basketball, you play 4 rounds. Each round you play the same team at most 7 times. The first team to reach 4 wins moves onto the next round. This movie takes place during game 7 in the 4th round. Why would the terrorists plan this when they don't know if Pittsburgh will even make the finals, and also don't know that they will have to play the full 7 games? The story itself just doesn't make sense.
shareAnd also the fact that there seem to be little to no security in that hockey stadium and that when all the explosions happen outside the game doesn't get postponed etc.
shareAlso, check out the trivia for the Arnold flick "Eraser" (1996), for that one, Stallone apparently HATED its script.
share