Sylvester Stallone went on record saying Escape Plan 2: Hades was the worst production he’d ever been a part of throughout his entire half-century career, while Dave Bautista admitted he only signed on for the chance to work with the Rocky and Rambo legend. So, what did the pair do next? Why, they agreed to return for threequel The Extractors, of course.
If ever there was a Sly-driven IP that didn’t need to exist beyond one movie, this was it. After all, the entire selling point of the original Escape Plan was the novelty of seeing Stallone share top billing with rival-turned-BFF Arnold Schwarzenegger for the first time ever, and there clearly wasn’t any more mileage in the property beyond that.
The Extractors was savaged by critics and shunned by fans of the genre, with the leading man’s Ray Breslin back again to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a tech mogul from a high-tech prison facility that also ends up with his girlfriend being captured for plot-related reasons, leading to yet another interminable infiltration that sees everyone involved doing nothing but go through the motions.
Stallone has been in worse films that this, which isn’t a compliment given his spotty track record accumulated over decades of absolute dreck, but it appears Netflix subscribers are willing to give Escape Plan 3‘s wretched response a bye, seeing as FlixPatrol has named it as one of the streaming service’s most-watched titles around the globe. Mercifully, though, there hasn’t been a fourth chapter… yet.