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But where Stallone has always suffered from taking his single handed exploits seriously, Schwarzenegger realized early on that by arming his heroes with comic, knowing one-liners, he made them that little bit larger than life. Stallone created the kind of heroes that fought in the 'real' world, whereas Schwarzenegger's characters played out such excessive and unbelievable fantasies as can only found in the movies. So when the increasingly excessive versions of the war scenario began to tire (Rambo III was a huge flop, despite a massive budget) Schwarzenegger made the transition from Hard-Man to Funny-Man with relative ease, whereas Stallone, (whose comic timing is not his strong point) floundered in the very forgettable 'Stop or my Mom will shoot' and 'Oscar'.

The eventual failure of the 'body-builder in war-zone' action pic, that forced our muscle men to try comedy towards the end of the eighties, allowed the action genre to construct an alternative vision of the hero. Enter Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson. Throw in a lot of wise guy dialogue, give the hero a black buddy to bond with, and a touch of text book pop-psychology, and the action hero transforms from Hard-Man to New-Man. This more 'realistic' version of the hero seemed to strike a chord; whilst it was fun to fantasize about having a physique Charles Atlas would be jealous of, we all knew we could never live up to such a exaggerated model of masculinity.
The New Man action hero was a comic, angst ridden philosopher, who had a normal job in the police force, and possessed a body more like your average kind of guy, and as such he felt pain and suffered in ways the Hard Man hero never could. Equally important, he could talk!|

However, our love for the super-body could not be so easily discarded. In the absence of Stallone and Schwarzenegger, Van Damme rose quickly from low budget kick-boxing star to fully fledged action hero, suggesting that the appetite for muscular performers was still strong.

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