Stallone blames Batman

I came across an interesting article about Sylvester Stallone's upcoming movie, The Expendables, today. The article talks a lot about the various stars in the movie, but the interview quotes at the beginning are what caught my attention. Stallone says the 1989 Tim Burton Batman movie marked the beginning of the end of the classic action hero, big muscular guys. The special effects and fake muscles of the Batman suit made it unnecessary for stars to spend a lot of time working out to look impressive on screen.

What do you think, is Stallone right? Did special effects replace the need for an impressive actor, or was the decline of the 80s style action movie due to some other factor?

Other factors exist:

1. The 80's ended after an incredible ten year run. Everyone had high hopes that the 90's would top the 80's with the introduction of hovercraft and flying cars becoming available to the average consumer. Flying vehicles never happened and people went into a depressive slump which brought on laziness.
2. Laziness became incredibly fashionable in the 90's.
3. With laziness came a mentality change. Lazy people found it difficult to associate with people of muscular builds as muscles posed as a contradiction to their own lifestyle.
4. Geo-political policy changes destroyed the centuries old labor based workforce, brining about yet more laziness as manual laborers found themselves unemployed.
5. It was easier to throw a cheap muscle suit onto a skinny actor than to find a truly well built athletic individual who could act.

I like Stallone, but I think he's gone way overboard here. It's not Batman's fault. It's just the way it is. Action movies are just like anything else...there is a time and season for them, and they seem to have fizzled out there for awhile. All the action heroes of days gone by have gotten older and less active it seems. Well maybe not all of them, but let's say some of them possibly. And so far, there hasn't been any, or many, to replace them. I think everyone would like to have Batman's instant buff body, so to speak, but Batman also uses his brain and his instincts which probably helps him more than anything.