Sylvester Stallone fears modern superhero movies are killing off action films.

The Hollywood veteran found fame with his hardman roles in the Rocky and Rambo franchises, but he's adamant the genre is slowly dying away as cinema audiences would rather watch characters with otherworldly powers.

He tells ET Online, "The action genre unfortunately is becoming... let's just say it's fading away. You have the superheroes today which are possessed with all extraordinary powers - they can blink and a fireball comes out of there. It's great. And then you have a bunch of us which is just your basic male-pattern badness... Kind of like hands-on action."