Every Arnold Schwarzenegger Movie Ranked Worst To Best

18. Escape Plan

Escape Plan Arnold Schwarzenegger
Lionsgate

Back in the eighties and nineties, the thought of Schwarzenegger teaming up with Sylvester Stallone would've probably conjured the most epic-sounding movie ever. The duo were the action genre's two banner figures for much of those two decades, sharing an off-screen rivalry that drove each other to shoot for bigger, better, and often louder things on screen. Throw those two egos into one film, and the results should at the very least have been chaotic.

Sadly, it took a bit too long for Sly and Arnie to lock horns in a film, and when it did happen, the results were pretty forgettable. 2013's Escape Plan marked the third of four movie meetings between the pair (all others of which came in The Expendables series), but is the sole one dedicated to them as co-leads. While it functions fine as a low-stakes prison thriller, there's simply no excuse for it to be so grey and muted.

What should've been a ballsy, daft meeting along the lines of Stallone already accomplished with Kurt Russell in Tango & Cash instead plays out on autopilot, with Schwarzenegger and Sly straining against the confines of an unimaginative script and listless direction. It's fine - honestly, it is! - but they both deserved better than a rote prison plot and Jim Caviezel.

Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.