The Correct Order To Watch The Escape Plan Movies

There's striking while the iron is hot, and then there's striking while the iron is much closer to room temperature. "Escape Plan," director Mikael Håfström's 2013 action film pairing Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger together for a long-awaited team-up, is the latter. By the time the duo combined their powers to play a prison security expert (Stallone) who is wrongly incarcerated (I sincerely hope writers Miles Chapman and Arnell Jesko patted themselves on the back for coming up with such a brazenly obvious dramatic irony) and has to break out of an illicit maximum-security prison with the help of a fellow inmate (Schwarzenegger), their glory days anchoring '80s and '90s macho-fests were long behind them.

Contrary to that, the first "Escape Plan" is actually pretty fun! Or, rather, it's fun in the same way that Stallone and Schwarzenegger's best action movie throwbacks are, in that the pair spend the entire film having a good time, yanking each other's chains, and never once taking any of the nonsense happening around them too seriously. It helps that you also have seasoned character actors like Vincent D'Onofrio and Sam Neill in the support cast playing things with their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks. Meanwhile, Jim Caviezel does his best impression of an Anthony Hopkins villain as the prison's eccentric warden (who you at least feel comfortable chuckling at, unlike the QAnon conspiracy theory-pushing actor in real life).

Anyway, the film only just avoided being a complete flop thanks to the international box office, so it's a shame we never got any sequels, yes siree Bob. What's that you say? Okay, fine, fine, enough wise-cracker antics. Here's the correct order to watch the "Escape Plan" movies.

Remember how I said "Escape Plan" was fun without mentioning it being well-crafted or necessarily even competently directed? Well, take away the joys of watching Sly and Arnie quip at one another, and you have "Escape Plan 2: Hades" and "Escape Plan: The Extractors." Both films went straight to the home market domestically and they absolutely look and feel like the kind of films you'd expect to find somewhere in the middle of a bargain bin. Stallone sleep-walks through each of them (when he even actually shows up at all), while Schwarzenegger skipped the sequels completely and was essentially replaced by Dave Bautista. Needless to say, there's a reason my man has since hooked up with honest-to-goodness auteurs like Denis Villeneuve, M. Night Shyamalan, and Gia Coppola, and has never looked back.

Have I failed to scare you off? Fair enough, fair enough. Here's the order you should watch them:

• "Escape Plan" (2013)
• "Escape Plan 2: Hades" (2018)
• "Escape Plan: The Extractors" (2019)

Who knows? If you set your expectations low enough, you might actually get a kick out of the "Escape Plan" sequels, especially if you've already got a soft spot for slapped-together, minimum-effort, direct-to-video action fare. (Do we still say "direct-to-video"? It feels a little weird, right?) With that in mind, if I might be so bold as to recommend some additional viewing for those willing and able to dive into the depths of this franchise? Everyone else can think of these as alternative options.

Once you've checked out however many "Escape Plan" movies tickle your favor, why not continue your trek down the rabbit hole of Boomer action throwbacks? My advice: Leave the "Expendables" films and go with the tasty junk food that is Walter Hill's "Bullet to the Head," a buddy romp pairing Stallone's grumbling New Orleans hitman "Jimmy" Bobo with Taylor Kwon (Sung Kang), a good-looking, wet-behind-the-ears detective from out of town who's in well over his head trying to navigate the city's underworld of corrupt businessmen and the legions of cops they've paid off to look the other way. Plus, Jason Momoa plays a stoic goon who gets in an axe fight with Stallone, so you know this movie can't be all bad.

As for Schwarzenegger, I can endorse his other 2013 offering, "The Last Stand." The setup is simple: Arnie is an L.A. cop who resigns in shame after a mission gone wrong to become the sheriff of a backwater Arizona town near the U.S.-Mexico border, only for an escaped drug kingpin to come racing towards the area in a desperate attempt to flee the country. What makes it a blast is "I Saw the Devil" director Kim Jee-woon, who brings a blend of quirky humor and high-octane thrills to the table, much like his work on "The Good, the Bad, the Weird." As with Schwarzenegger's big one-liner here ("You f***ed up my day off"), it's far from his best work, but it'll more than do in a pinch.