How do Sylvester Stallone's Escape Plan movies rank, from worst to best? As one of Sylvester Stallone's numerous action movies series, the original Escape Plan debuted in 2013, with Stallone playing security expert Ray Breslin, who specializes in testing prison security settings. The real selling point of Escape Plan was the film marking the first on-screen team-up of Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger (their prior collaborations on the first two movies in The Expendables ensemble franchise aside.)
While Escape Plan was only a moderate hit, it was followed by two straight-to-video sequels, Escape Plan 2: Hades and Escape Plan: The Extractors. Stallone returned as Breslin for both films, with the two sequels taking Breslin on new missions in different prison complexes with new enemies and allies to send him on other elaborate missions. While Schwarzenegger didn't return for either of the Escape Plan sequels, 50 Cent came back as Breslin's associate Hush with other action movie stars like Dave Bautista, Daniel Bernhardt, and Max Zhang coming aboard.
The middling success of the Escape Plan franchise makes the series quite unique among Stallone's other franchises, and the reception of the two sequels has definitely been much weaker than that of their theatrical predecessor. Still, while not reaching the same iconic heights as Rocky, Rambo, or The Expendables movies, Escape Plan has brought its own strengths to Stallone's filmography as a prison-based action movie franchise. Here are the three movies in the Escape Plan trilogy, ranked from weakest to strongest.
Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018)
Sylvester Stallone is not exactly fond of Escape Plan 2: Hades, referring to it as "the most horribly produced movie I've ever had the misfortune to be in" on Instagram. Hades is indeed a massive downgrade from the original Escape Plan and an all-around failure as one of Stallone's prison action movies. In Hades, one of Ray Breslin's security associates Shu (Huan Xiaoming) ends up in a top secret prison, with his fellow inmates and Breslin formulating a plot to escape. Though Stallone returns and Dave Bautista boards as Breslin's ally Trent DeRosa, they're largely on the outside and more away from the central story than might be expected.
Escape Plan 2: Hades' flat script and thin characters also make the film a chore to get through with none of the prison break machinations of the original Escape Plan to registering any real viewer enthusiasm. It might be easier to overlook that if the movie had some strong action sequences, but those offered by Hades are utterly destroyed by fast and chaotic editing, a cardinal sin of action movies that somehow continues to persistently destroy promising efforts. Straight-to-video action movies outdo their theatrical counterparts significantly more often than not these days, but despite its promise as a Sylvester Stallone-Dave Bautista team-up, Escape Plan 2: Hades is exactly what straight-to-video as a term of derision is intended for.
Escape Plan: The Extractors (2019)
Considering just how bad Escape Plan: Hades ended up being, the existence of Escape Plan: The Extractors is an impressive bucking of the odds against it. While Escape Plan: The Extractors does improve on Hades, it still ends up being a relatively bland action movie. In The Extractors, Rey Breslin and Trent DeRosa are back for another prison and kidnapping retrieval mission with Shen Lo (Max Zhang), an ex-bodyguard for a Hong Kong security firm. With The Extractors bringing martial artists into the cast like Zhang and Daniel Bernhardt of the Bloodsport franchise, the movie at least compensates greatly for the horribly edited fight scenes of its predecessor. Stallone and Bautista also get to much more clearly display their action hero chops in Escape Plan: The Extractors, and the movie showcases some generally solid action scenes, including fight scenes with all of the four bringing their all.
That being said, the lower budget (even more so than Hades) hampers Escape Plan: The Extractors' ambitions, especially in the actual prison at play in the film. Stallone and Bautista are also again relatively underutilized, and while Zhang, Bernhardt, and the supporting cast do what they can, The Extractors' much more low-level story does not get things into high gear like it should. Escape Plan: The Extractors is ultimately a downgrade for the franchise in terms of scope and generally a shadow of Stallone's success with the Rocky movies, but still an undeniable step up from the low point of Hades. While it is likely the final installment of the Escape Plan series, it still deserves credit for that.
Escape Plan (2013)
Escape Plan was the action movie dream team of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger that audiences had yearned for since their Terminator and Rambo days. While it arrived too late into their careers to strike while the iron was hot, Escape Plan at least brought them together in a generally entertaining prison break-out. Stallone's security expert Ray Breslin finds himself facing a challenge in breaking out of the world's notoriously inescapable prison "The Tomb" (which was the film's working title), overseen by the ruthless warden Hobbes (Jim Caviezel). As Breslin puts together his plot to escape, he acquires an ally in his fellow inmate Emil Rottmeyer, played by Stallone's action movie contemporary Arnold Schwarzenegger, an associate of mysterious outside Good Samaritan Victor Mannheim.
Escape Plan plays like a reverse-heist movie and actually keeps its action scenes relatively tempered, but they still deliver when they hit. Of course, Stallone and Schwarzenegger's first proper team-up is what audiences are on-board for, and not as explosively bombastic as their Expendables adventures, the two have clear fun as frenemies forced to band together. Escape Plan also takes quite a few twists and turns in its story, from the location of the Tomb itself to the truth behind Rottmeyer's imprisonment in it. Escape Plan is more of an intellectual sleuthing caper than an outright action movie, and its uneventful stateside theatrical run didn't result in it leaving the kind of impression that might have been expected on its two stars' careers as a latter-day entry in Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger's action movie stardom. In the end, Escape Plan gets the job done as a prison escape thriller, and is the best of the Escape Plan franchise.