Sylvester Stallone has had quite a career, but in his decades playing gung-ho hero’s like John Rambo and The Expendables’ Barney Ross he has never taken on the role of a major superhero, something he says is down to the way he looks. Stallone has been no stranger to comic-book movies, but when asked about being almost cast in Richard Donner’s original Superman movie, the Rocky star told THR:

"I don’t look like any comic-book character. Like I could have never played The Terminator. No one would make a robot with a crooked mouth and voice that sounds like a pallbearer. It just doesn’t work. But yes. Who was the guy Sam Jackson ended up playing? Yeah. I thought I could have done something like that, where I’m not the main guy."

Stallone has played characters who are “not the main guy” in both the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Universe, and he did play the lead in low-key superhero movie Samaritan, so while he has never been cast in the roles of the likes of Batman or Superman, that “crooked mouth” has delivered many iconic lines in the other parts that he has played over the last five decades.

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Which Superhero Movies Has Sylvester Stallone Starred In?

Sylvester Stallone as Samaritan and Javon Walton as Sam in the Amazon Prime Video movie Samaritan
Amazon Studios

Despite his reservations about ever playing the leading man as a clean cut superhero, Stallone has made his presence felt in a number of big comic book movies. Stallone has appeared in all of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, playing Starhawk and despite the appearance being not much more than a cameo role he will also appear in next year’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3.

In addition to this, Stallone made quite an impact as the voice of King Shark in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, so much so that fans instantly called for him to be given his own spin-off. With Gunn now heading up DC Studios, anything is possible and we can only hope to hear Stallone reprising that role sometime in the future.

Outside the DCU and MCU, Stallone has played the lead in two less family friendly superhero movies. His first was 1995’s Judge Dredd, a film that was a notorious box office bomb, but has since grown into the definition of a cult classic. This year he appeared in the title role in Samaritan. Very much in the same “superhero” vein as M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable trilogy, Samaritan is by no means a flashy film about a guy in a cape, and instead centers on a 13-year-old boy who believes that his next door neighbor is a superhero thought to have died years earlier. While the movie gained mixed reviews when it was released in the summer, it was the perfect way for Stallone to get the lead role in a superhero movie, something he clearly feels he isn’t exactly cut out for.

Will Stallone make another foray into the world of comic book movies again? Who knows, but after wrapping up his role in The Expendables franchise and having stepped away from appearing the Creed movies, Stallone could have the time on his hands to dip his toe in the superhero pool one more time.