Sylvester Stallone Explains Why He Joined GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 and He Teases His Return to the MCU
It was so cool to see Sylvester Stallone make his big MCU debut in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. It's already been confirmed by Marvel that he is playing Stakar a.k.a. Starhawk in the film. During a press conference I attended last week, Stallone talked about joining the film explaining:
"Well, you know… early on in my career I just always became fascinated with mythology and Joseph Campbell and you know, Man of a Thousand Faces and so on and so forth. So when I started doing Rambo, whatever, there was an evolution that takes place and each generation has to define itself and find its own heroes and find its own mythology and this is the new, this is this generation, and maybe even the next generation’s mythology and when Kevin invited me onboard I said, 'This is interesting because I haven’t gone here,' so I mean, I’m kind of earthbound, I’m terrestrial. You know what I mean? This is something that takes place in a whole other sphere where James and the Marvel people have created their own world, their own reality. So I said, yeah, let me visit. Let me drop in here and see what’s up, it's where the future’s going, you know, and it was great."
The legendary actor was then asked what kind of initiation he went through as a new member of the cast, and he talked about his experience of being on the set of the film, saying:
"Oh, the kind of initiation, what, it kept us all up all night, snapped up some wet towels. You know, donate blood, things like that. Actually, it was pretty painless. It was interesting because I love action films, but I haven’t ventured into the genre, so it was quite an experience. When I walked on the set, you know, you see robots and things and seven-feet woman, who is seven-foot tall and everything else, I thought it was great. It was a great vacation. It’s better than being up a tree in Burma. You know what I mean? Much better. Trust me."
As for whether or not we will see Stallone reprise his role again in the MCU, it's already been teased that his character is very important to the MCU, which means he could show up again at some point. You can read more details regarding his role in the MCU here. When Stallone was asked if he did any comic book research before he started work on Vol. 2, he gave an interesting answer:
"No I didn’t. Because it’s… I grew up on a different sort of superheroes, you know, like Elastic Man and things like that. They’re really horrible. You know what I mean? Like the guy is… to me it was wonderful. And so this one, I wanted to go in there, you know, clean slate and just do what the director wanted done and so now I’m starting to catch up on it, but I think this kind of being naïve allows you to be directed in a direction they want you to go, without any preconceived ideas."
Why is he starting to catch up on comics now? He was actually asked a follow-up question about that in which he laughed and said:
"I don’t know, thank God... Because I’m an optimist."
He's obviously optimistic about returning to the MCU. I don't think he'd be wasting his time on reading comics at this point, unless there have been some kind of early talks about him reprising his role at some point down the road. He is asked how many films he's signed on for during the interview, but he wouldn't really say anything on the matter. He just looked at Kevin Feige and said:
"I’ll listen to you. No. I’ll believe it when I see it... this is Hollywood. You know what I mean? It’s Hollywood."
Maybe he has signed a multi-film deal with Marvel, but he's not getting his hopes up about it. I would personally love to see Stallone come back for the role. I loved how they set his character up and it would work great for a spinoff film!