Sylvester Stallone Bashes 'Escape Plan 2', Shares Unchoreographed Fight Scene From 'Escape Plan 3'
Shade. Grudge Match. Reach Me. Sylvester Stallone has been in some major duds over the course of his nearly 50-year career in Hollywood, but according to him, none were handled worse than last year's Escape Plan 2: Hades, a sequel to the 2013 prison break film that teamed up with his former frenemy Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In a recent Instagram post, Stallone has some choice words for that sequel and shared a fight scene from the upcoming Escape Plan 3, revealing that the fight was totally unplanned, allowing him and an unrecognizable Devon Sawa to freely go head to head. Check out the brawl he calls "without a doubt the only fight I've ever done in my entire career without choreography or without knowing what's coming."
Escape Plan 3 Fight Scene
Ever wanted to watch Rocky Balboa pummel the stuffing out of the kid from Casper? Escape Plan 3: The Extractors is here for you, ya weirdos.
There's an interesting claustrophobia to this scene, almost as if you can feel the walls closing in on these characters, and Sawa's villain in particular feels like he'd love an escape plan of his own to get away from Stallone's relentless fists. While it's an interesting bit of trivia that this scene was filmed without professional choreography, the result isn't the kind of "holy shit, look at this" moment that action movie fans long for. Instead, the scene sort of unintentionally doubles as a reminder of how powerful actual choreography can be.
Look at any fight from the John Wick movies: filmmaker Chad Stahelski, a former stunt performer who spent years honing his craft before transitioning into directing, imbues his fight scenes with either a sleek visual style or a visceral physicality, neither of which are on display here. Admittedly, this movie seems like a low-budget, quick and dirty affair even compared to the first John Wick, which had two months to shoot. So again, while this style of on-the-fly filmmaking is intriguing and reminiscent of Harrison Ford's suggestion to throw out a fight scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark and for Indiana Jones to gun down his swordsman opponent instead, I'm still not convinced the final result is going to be enough to convince people to check this out. But hey, at the very least, it sounds like it'll be better than Escape Plan 2: Hades.
Escape Plan 3: The Extractors arrives on VOD tomorrow, July 2, 2019.