Rambo 4 Almost Brought Back An Original Movie Villain

One version of Rambo 4 pitted Sylvester Stallone’s titular solder against the original film’s villain, Sheriff Teasle. First Blood was based on the novel of the same name by David Morrell, in which former Vietnam veteran John Rambo began his own private war on a small town. Actors such as Steve McQueen were considered for the role. Stallone eventually landed the role, and its huge success landed him a hit film outside of the Rocky series. Stallone would return for four sequels of varying quality, the latest being 2019’s Last Blood. There was a noticeable gap between 1988’s Rambo III and 2008’s possible fourth Rambo film, but various concepts have been proposed over the years.

Unused concepts for the sequel included Rambo having to save the President from the terrorist takeover of Camp David, or adapting the Homefront novel with Rambo replacing the main character. The eventual “Rambo 4” had Stallone’s soldier heading into Burma on a brutal rescue mission, but another version, entitled “Rambo: Frontier” by writer Dan Gordon (via Screenplay Archology), took a very different route. In this version, Rambo lived as a hermit in Arizona and reluctantly agreed to travel to Mexico to investigate the disappearance of his maid’s missing granddaughter, who was trying to cross the border.

Why Rambo: First Blood Is Still The Best Movie About The Consequences Of War

Rambo heads to Mexico and discovers that a girl has been kidnapped by human traffickers, and is horrified to learn that the man responsible, nicknamed “The Judge,” is none other than Will Teasle, the sheriff who became his nemesis in First Blood ” Teasle was played by Brian Dennehy, and while he wasn’t an outright bad guy, he was portrayed as a violent bully whose unnecessary mistreatment of Rambo led to the latter’s rage. The original film ended with Rambo fighting the sheriff after a brutal fight, but the script for Rambo: Frontier saw him end up in Mexico and become a brutal crime lord. This makes Rambo’s war particularly personal in

this version, as he feels responsible for all the chaos and trauma Teasle has caused in the years since he sparred with him. In this Rambo 4 scenario, the protagonist infiltrated Teazle’s territory at the end after rescuing his maid’s daughter and eliminating Teazle’s henchmen using a combination of explosive arrows and other brutal methods. In the final showdown, Teasle wounds Rambo before the two engage in a horrific fight that ends with Rambo strangling the villain with barbed wire. Some Rambo films had problems with memorable

villains, so in some ways bringing back the main character’s most famous enemy was a good decision. However, Teasle’s interpretation in Rambo 4 seems like a big leap from the character featured in First Blood, and the script doesn’t go into specifics about how he became such a monster. Ultimately, Stallone decided not to use the script because he didn’t feel Rambo would be ready to return to America, but much of the Border story was later reused in Rambo: Last Blood.