Star power is a helluva thing. It’s a cruel joke our universe plays on the blockbuster action hero hitting his golden years. Your Stallones, your Schwarzeneggers. The very quality that once made them gods among men — their ass-kicking vitality — now mocks them from the very screen kingdoms they helped build, like some sort of reverse Dorian Gray situation or just good ol’ fashioned mortality. So what’s a musclebound matinee idol in compression socks to do? Hang it up for good and admit the journey has come to an end, or ride their image like a face-shaped surfboard as far it will take them on an increasingly innocuous wave of VOD titles? (Or try to constantly get in good with Russia for some reason, like Steven Seagal?)
There’s a third option: pull one last scripted hurrah, trade real-world cinematic notoriety for a transition to TV, and turn the strategic move into a whole event that both flatters your legacy and acknowledges that while your star may be dimming in theaters, from the close-up distance of a living room, there’s still some shine. Hell, Sylvester Stallone pulled it off with Taylor Sheridan’s Tulsa King in late 2022, and now his lifelong-rival-turned-brother-in-arms Arnold Schwarzenegger is attempting the same with the Netflix spy-vehicle FUBAR, which is currently the No. 1 show on Netflix. But while Stallone has seemingly satisfied the TV gods and secured himself another season with a red-hot auteur, does his gym-crunchin’ compadre’s return to the screen achieve the same outcome?
FUBAR is an eight-part spy adventure created by Nick Santora (Reacher, Prison Break) about Luke Brunner, a recently retired special agent who gets pulled back into the business and discovers his estranged daughter Emma (Monica Barbaro) is also in the CIA. The show follows Brunner’s return to the field alongside Emma, while also attempting to repair his fatherly relationship and win back his family, which also includes his ex-wife Tally (Fabiana Udenio). So there are mission-of-the-week hijinks, a team of young experts, and jokes about an old guy doing things he probably shouldn’t be doing. The tone volleys between funny family antics and action-adventure of the spy-thriller variety, and it’s a fun enough premise that allows for multiple hands to be played in the same vein as Schwarzenneger hits True Lies and Kindergarten Cop, all delivered with the regularity of a TV procedural. Admittedly, I write this as a devout Burn Notice fan, probably one of the best examples of this kind of show done right, so believe me when I say I’m rooting for it.
The central conceit — an absentee dad with a particular set of skills and stubbornly out of touch with the world — is also solid enough to fuel Tulsa King, with Stallone’s mobster Dwight left heartbroken by the daughter he neglected in exchange for his mob allegiance that landed him in prison for decades. Despite the similar DNA — megastars playing aged, action dads — comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges. Yet we must, as therein lies the answer as to why Tulsa King feels more in sync with its star’s charisma, while FUBAR at times feels like grandpa got wrapped in a wet blanket.
Take the tone for instance. Whereas Tulsa King keeps a straight face as a member of the Sheridanverse and Stallone plays along under its crime-thriller rules, earning the heart and humor by putting character first, FUBAR somehow goes lighter while still packing in probably fifty more deaths. Again, this is fine because this is the show it wants to be. Frothy, punchy, and leaning closer to the type of show you’d see on CBS with the major bonus being that it stars essentially a human UNESCO World Heritage Site.
But while it should be fun to have this much Arnold all to ourselves and the series plays to his strengths, his presence both gets in the way of this show’s light procedural quality, while the actor simultaneously disappears in it. Not in like a method actor kind of way, but rather an ensemble member kind of way. Here’s the best I can explain: Either Arnold is so huge that him appearing again on our screens is an event in and of itself (which Netflix seems to support with an esteemed three-part documentary about Schwarzenegger premiering in a few weeks), or Arnold’s star has dimmed to the point where he can walk in the same shoes as a James Spader in The Blacklist or Hugh Laurie in House as an exciting, big personality now surrounded by a crew of hot, young quipsters. Arnold’s presence in not just Hollywood but all of pop culture is so huge, at times here he feels like when American celebrities show up in Japanese coffee commercials. Watching the documentary trailer, it can feel like the more thoughtful non-fiction piece is meant to remind us all of Schwarzenegger’s legitimacy, while FUBAR stunts on it like a pie to the face at the opera.
Don’t get me wrong, both shows are enjoyable and will find their respective audiences no problem. My litmus test for these things is my dad, a Latino Vietnam vet and lifelong comic book nerd who works hard, and has a pretty good sense of humor. He loved Tulsa King and highlighted the character traits of Dwight, like his affinity for reading that he developed in prison, as the springboard for his enjoyment. I know he’ll like FUBAR too, and I know it because it stars a cultural icon around his age, is slightly funnier than your average Adam Sandler Netflix movie, and cycles through enough plot threads with action, globetrotting tech, familial dynamics, and “manhood” to feel like an hour well spent. If Tulsa King is the cook’s own special marinated tri-tip served at a barbecue, FUBAR is the onion dip you’re just as thankful for because frankly you were really in the mood for onion dip that day and can’t really eat it otherwise.
So the metric we’re looking at here isn’t whether FUBAR should or shouldn’t exist. Hell, watch what you want and let the devil take the hindmost is my opinion. I had plenty of laughs with FUBAR and you might too. The metric we’re looking at is… does it live up to Arnold’s legacy? Does it effectively tap into his decades of unique allure (again, Netflix made a whole three-part documentary off this allure so there IS allure) to its best ability, or should we just be happy he’s coming around to chomp cigars at us again?
This is where Tulsa King wins out: Stallone’s performance feels like acting-acting. Like he’s digging deep to interpret a character and perform it for us. Stallone’s playing a character of a certain age out of sorts with the way things are done now and busting heads, and it all feels consistently rooted in his fictional presence. Here’s an example: In Tulsa King, there’s a whole morning-after scene where Andrea Savage’s FBI agent has an overtly consensual one-night stand with Dwight, who stays charming and respectful throughout, and she is immediately disgusted the next day to learn he’s in his 70s. Stallone comes off golden here: He’s still having some grown-up fun and getting dunked on for ageism. Everyone wins. Grandpas at home are loving it. FUBAR routinely makes jokes at the expense of Brunner’s age; there’s a riff about him saying “cuckolding” in an accurate old-timey way, but it sounds like “cockholding.” There are also jokes about him having Werther’s Originals, the butterscotch candy forever associated with filling bowls in old peoples’ homes.
FUBAR handles the discussion of age and relevance by making Brunner still able to kick ass with the best of them while also calling sex “hanky panky” and grimacing at his adult daughter seducing a mark in her underwear. He’s old-fashioned mainly for easy chuckles and yucks because that’s the show he’s in. It just kind of sucks that Arnold’s return to entertainment feels like a level down in all-around showmanship, right down to the frat boy puns his team’s constantly spewing. (To be fair, Fortune Feimster makes every single one funny, but gosh is she earning that paycheck.)
Sure, Tulsa King has that dull scene where Stallone is accidentally stoned, ranting like an out-of-touch old man on a lawn about “kids these days and their pronouns” but at least it’s fueled by a topic of relevance. (I could’ve done without that scene altogether but my name isn’t Taylor Sheridan or Sylvester Stallone, so “oh well,” I guess.)
So Tulsa King isn’t The Sopranos or Better Call Saul, but there’s material for Stallone to sink his teeth into as a performer. The premise without him still works as something unique to what Taylor Sheridan does well: set a story in a place that doesn’t get the television treatment so much, and give it pulpy spin. Here it’s the irony of a classic big city capo busted down to running an operation in the middle of nowhere America, and building a syndicate from scratch off of legal marijuana, an industry he has no experience with. That’s a fun concept, no? We’ve seen what Sheridan can do as a filmmaker, as a television auteur. Marijuana in a flyover state feels exotic in terms of something that’s likely happening, but we haven’t seen before, and the rest writes itself. Not only does having a star like Stallone work well, but if you think about it, Stallone has been curating his um, agedness, so that a return like this comes with less pressure, inviting everyone to watch the show as a show, and not some career move curiosity.
Looking back at Stallone’s career, you find that he’s been speaking to us about his age since the first Expendables movie premiered 13 years ago. That movie, literally about a cavalcade of leftover action stars teaming up to show they still got the goods, both acknowledged Stallone wasn’t helming any blockbusters anymore, while still controlling the narrative. (Schwarzenegger had a playful but inconsequential cameo in it as well.) Hell, even two years before that with Rambo and two years before that with Rocky Balboa, Stallone was placing himself on the periphery of stardom so that by the time he pulled his ripcord and opened the small-screen plan, we weren’t blindsided by the missing years like some tragic result of time-travel where your loved one steps out of a steaming contraption and is old now.
To contrast, Schwarzenegger popped up here and there in some OK action movies and a few “meh” Terminator sequels after his governorship ended, hosted Celebrity Apprentice in 2017, did some cartoon voice work, and only recently mentioned wanting to return to his star-marking role of Conan one last time. Over the last decade or so, Schwarzenegger mainly chomped cigars and became Chris Pratt’s father-in-law. Dude felt retired from being a Hollywood star. His return is a big deal and also no big deal.
Take a scene in FUBAR’s fourth episode “Armed and Dane-gerous,” where Adam Pally’s pretty funny Turkish prisoner “The Great Dane” falls in with the group, and he’s been slated as having a great relationship with everyone except Feimster’s Roo, who hates him for shooting off her toe once upon a time in a mission gone wrong. The group has a really fun interaction, like you’re watching a great sketch team bounce off one another, and Arnold’s just standing off to the side. You get a feeling you’re never supposed to have with a show like this: “I’m not sure they need Arnold.”
Look, far be it from me to reignite the long dormant rivalry of two blockbuster giants ranging back nearly 50 years. If you read the Wikipedia for said rivalry, you’ll see instances of flower-vase throwing at afterparties, saboteur claims of body-double usage, and you’ll see how that rivalry ended: when the two stars realized they no longer had the same box-office pull they once enjoyed. The glory days were over. Stallone and Schwarzenneger had been equally bested by that ultimate studio exec: Father Time.
There’s no way around it: The celebrities of yesteryear are getting older. At the time of this writing, Tom Cruise is 94 years old. But that doesn’t mean he’s going quietly. Neither should Arnold. At the end of the day it’s nice to see him back in the saddle, and this could just be the beginning of a big comeback, but the horse he’s riding makes him look like just another dude with a gun, instead of a legend on a stallion.