Stallone: 'Batman changed action movies'

Sylvester Stallone has claimed that the casting of Michael Keaton in Batman changed action movies.

Stallone, who can next be seen in ensemble blockbuster The Expendables, said that the genre "changed radically" when Tim Burton put Keaton in a muscle suit for the superhero role.

"It was that first Batman movie," he told the Los Angeles Times. "The action movies changed radically when it became possible to Velcro your muscles on.

"It was the beginning of a new era. The visual took over. The special effects became more important than the single person. That was the beginning of the end."

He continued: "I wish I had thought of Velcro muscles myself. I didn't have to go to the gym for all those years, all the hours wedded to the iron game, as we call it."

The Expendables, co-starring Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, opens in cinemas next month.