For a while now, there have been all sorts of rumours about Rambo V. It’s a sci-fi. No, it’s a straight-up Rambo flick, where Sylvester Stallone’s one-man army takes on all-comers and shoots them into the middle of next week. No, it’s this. No, it’s that.
So, when we spoke to Stallone exclusively for our cover feature on The Expendables, we took the time to ask him for the definitive take on the fifth big-screen adventure of the taciturn warrior, and discovered that it’s none of the above.
In fact, it’s not going to happen at all.
“I think Rambo’s pretty well done. I don’t think there’ll be any more. I’m about 99% sure,” said Stallone, which comes as something of a surprise. After all,** Rambo V** was considered to be something of an inevitability after the last movie, the ultra-violent Rambo, made $113 million worldwide in 2008. But The Expendables has made Sly think long and hard about his future; and Rambo doesn’t feature in it.
“I was going to do it,” he said. “I said I’d never talk about this, but with I feel that with Rocky Balboa, that character came complete circle. He went home. But for Rambo to go on another adventure might be, I think, misinterpreted as a mercenary gesture and not necessary. I don’t want that to happen.
“I’m very happy with the last Burmese episode, because I didn’t pull any punches on it,” he continued. “I wanted it to be what civil war really is – rough. You can’t candy coat it, and where do you go from there? So that’s [Rambo V] going to go.”
Stallone’s not done with Rambo completely, though. He told Empire that he’s at work on a director’s cut of Rambo which will restore twelve minutes to the movie, including a surprising outburst of loquaciousness for the mumbling man of action at the movie’s beginning.
“He does a speech at the beginning of the movie to Julie Benz where he lays out why his life has been a complete disappointment and why war is natural and peace is an accident,” added Stallone. “And how he just feels that his life has been a waste. It’s very important to hear that and I didn’t think so at the time. I’m going to go back and put in some stuff.”
For more from Stallone on The Expendables, pick up the new issue of Empire, which is on sale now.