Comic Con 2010 - Sylvester Stallone target of Twitter attack for The Expendables

Stallone 

While Sylvester Stallone's new movie The Expendables has many at Comic Con 2010 in the USA excited, the movie's unofficial debut at Comic Con created enough buzz to upset South Americans. As of this writing, Sylvester Stallone represents not one, but three trending topics on Twitter. In order, "CALA BOCA SYLVESTER STALLONE", "Stallone", and just plain old "SYLVESTER" appear on Twitter.

Why? Many tweets are like this "top tweet":

nataliagoficial - CALA BOCA SYLVESTER STALLONE is a brazilian campaign to protest the actor Sylvester Stallone, for trying to denigrate the Brazilian image.
about 2 hours ago via web

But the problem is The Expendables isn't out yet, so the people launching the campaign haven't seen the movie. Plus, at Comic Con 2010, Stallone said to me that it wasn't a political message movie. OK, he was referring to mercenaries at the time, but if you think about it, mercenaries should take offense, too.



In developing a war story, which The Expendables is to a degree, it's almost impossible not to come up with a political message, even if the movie's not about delivering one. In writing The Expendables, Stallone's 63-years of World view has accidentally bumped up against the hypersensitive 21st Century consumers of Internet news.

I'm not calling Mr. Stallone old, just making a point that you have to remember, he played a man in John Rambo who embodies the American soldier's "us versus "them" view at a time, the early 80s, when America was sending hired killers to upend political revolutions in Central and South America.

Perhaps The Expendables would have had even more impact if the focus were North Korea and not a fictional country in South America. But it's too late for that now. The Expendables is set for release on August 13th, and will undoubtedly be helped by this buzz.

Stay tuned.