While never giving up was a major theme of the Rocky franchise, Sylvester Stallone once gave up hope on Rambo and its chances of hitting theaters. The Rambo franchise was a mainstay of Stallone’s early career, along with the Rocky films. While these franchises have cemented themselves in the action movie hall of fame, Rambo’s success wasn’t always so obvious to its lead actor.
The Rambo franchise is about John Rambo Stallone, a retired member of the US Army Special Forces who served in the Vietnam War. His military experience gives him unparalleled combat skills.
However, throughout the franchise, he overcomes the trauma that combat left him with. The fourth installment, titled “Rambo”, follows the titular character who is tasked with rescuing a group of missionaries from Burma. Rambo struggles with this because even though he has lived in the world for many years after Rambo III, he is forced to do what he does best: kill bad guys.
At first glance, this seems like another installment in the Rambo franchise.
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Rambo, however, did not shy away from the genocide occurring in Burma at the time, as the film depicted the killing of hundreds of innocent people. Violence was as much a reason for Stallone to want to make Rambo as it was for him because he thought the film would never make it to the silver screen. Stallone told The Hollywood Reporter that it was important to show the horror of something like a civil war in the quote below:
One film I’m truly proud of – it’s the best action film I’ve ever done because it’s the most truthful – is Rambo IV, dealing with Burma, where they’ve had a civil war for 67 years. But I got excoriated because the movie’s so violent. And it is violent. It’s horrifying. It’s children being burnt alive. That’s what makes Civil War worse than anything. It’s your neighbor, all of a sudden, killing you. I was really happy with that film and I never thought it would ever reach the theater. I thought, “They’re never going to show this.”
Could Rambo 4 Come Out Today?
Despite going down in history as the franchise’s most violent, it’s not the kind of violence that would prevent Rambo from being released in the modern era. Today’s audiences are more used to depictions of violence, such as in Squid Games or Deadpool. That being said, the topic will likely be the biggest obstacle to Rambo’s hypothetical 2024 release. The success of “Rambo” can largely be attributed to the hype generated during the 20-year hiatus of the “Rambo” series.
People were nostalgic for the action films of the 80s, which were usually full of excessive violence. And this feeling remains, as Stallone proved with his project Samaritan. However, this violence, combined with the real-life travesties taking place in Burma at the time, makes Stallone’s previous concerns about the film at least justified. While Stallone may be right to want to show the harshness of war, there is a way to do this without trivializing the tragedies that actually occurred.