The latest – and most likely last – Rambo movie finds Sylvester Stallone not only in front of the camera in the lead role but also wearing multiple hats behind-the-scenes as writer, producer and director. The first Rambo film, First Blood, took audiences by storm in 1982 and was followed shortly thereafter by Rambo: First Blood Part II in 1985. Rambo III entered theaters in 1988. Flash-forward 20 years and we have the fourth film of the series, Rambo, the first movie of the franchise to be directed by Stallone.
Rambo is set in Thailand and finds the reclusive John Rambo living a solitary, peaceful life working off the Salween River. However his simple life becomes complicated when he agrees to become involved in an effort to free rescue villagers and missionaries from the merciless Major Tint and his Burmese army.
Sylvester Stallone Press Conference
Did you have to go back and rewatch the previous Rambos to get back into character?
Sylvester Stallone: “Yeah, you know kind of just the ponderousness that comes with aging, the sense of weight, the sense of knowledge, knowing too much, the lack of naiveté, which happened in my life, sort of set the stage for me. I wanted Rambo to be this heavier, bulkier [version]. That's why his first line in the movie is pretty negative. He's given up. He has nothing.
The other Rambos I felt had a bit too much energy. They were a little too spry. I'm not trying to run myself down, but there was much more vanity involved. Tank tops…it was all about body movement rather than just the ferocity and the commitment of what he was doing. This character to me is much more interesting. I like First Blood and I like this one, just like the first Rocky and the last Rocky Balboa. Everything in between was kind of trying to figure out what I should do.”
Talk about the tone. Can you enjoy the gratification with the realistic depiction of violence?
Sylvester Stallone: “If you notice over the opening credits, I had to live up to a certain kind of responsibility because people are dying as we're making the film. Therefore, to just have me running through the film doing these extraordinary heroics, I thought would demean what they're going through. So they had to have their moment where you see a village that is decimated. That's what happened. As a matter of fact, it's even worse. The other thing was do you do a film about a caper? Like they wanted to have the corrupt CIA guy and he was trying to sell plutonium rods. I said no. The biggest and most interesting crisis in the world is the human crisis. It never gets boring. Just like Shakespeare. You don't need a gimmick. It's just man against man, just their intolerance of each other.”
Can you discuss location scouting before the movie and the shooting conditions themselves?
Sylvester Stallone: “Funny you bring that up because the location scouting was truly hell. We had to go to places where we were not going to be so confrontational with Burmese agents that are all over Thailand, and they're very, very sensitive to their image. Especially down in Mae Sai where people have disappeared. It's a serious situation. The Thais were very, very worried about their image, so we decided to go up north to Chiang Mai, try to find something that would sort of be obscure to both of them. We wouldn't be in their faces.
But the locations themselves were so inland, sometimes we would have to use elephants to get inland. We spent days on the river. We couldn't afford to find ‘extraordinary’. In the mountains would have been great to go up to these areas, but just something that felt as though this would be Rambo territory, would be as rugged as his life had been and bleak, but also serviceable for some of the actors who I didn't want to put them through the kind of hell that they had to be put through. But it was a lot of work. It took four different trips back and forth. 18 hours each way is a lot of scouting back and forth, a lot of jet-lagging.”
What made you decide on that particular war zone?
Sylvester Stallone: “Well, it’s pretty much unknown and yet it’s one of the most brutal situations in the world. The reason it’s still unknown is that the Burmese are so rich that they spend millions of dollars with Washington lobbyists to keep all of this mess quiet. It reminded me the subject of The Magnificent Seven. You have one little small area with peasants being overwhelmed by this brutal military force, which is only second to the Chinese, and the fact that they are holding out and they are picked out because they are Christians and Rambo is an Atheist at this time - he had lost most of his humanity. So I thought this could be a great setting for the new Rambo movie.
Overall, rather than trying to do something about Iraq or Afghanistan, which I thought would have been an insult to the rightful men who are fighting - to think that a fictional character can come and change everything - I thought this would be more real. First I was going to do something about Mexico and that situation at the border with rising crime and drug cartels. But I thought it was a different type of problem, this human trading. Also, I wanted to do something more spiritual and visually interesting.”
Did you do your own stunts? How hard was it this time around?
Sylvester Stallone: “Pretty hard indeed! I did everything but one stunt! The one where I’m supposed to jump off the hill during the explosion when the big bomb goes off. I really thought the stunt guy was going to die. I felt bad. And we had to do it twice, and it was very slippery. You will have to look at the ‘Making Of’ when the video comes out because there were so many injuries during the shooting, like snake bites, cuts, and so on. But this made this movie such a great adventure because of all of these incidents. Everyone at first hated it and was scared. I said I know, but I said this is like a war and you’re all going to be sad to go home. ‘You’re going to go home and look at your husband or your wife and kids and tell them you have it so easy, you don’t know. So don’t even complain to me again!’”
Page 2: Stallone on the 'R' Rating and the Rambo and Rocky Franchises
