Rambo III was released in 1988 as Vietnam veteran John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) traveled from Thailand to Afghanistan and Pakistan on a mission to rescue his friend and former commander Colonel Sam Trautman (Richard Crenna), who had been captured by Soviet forces. . Due to Rambo’s travels around the world and changing environments, finding a suitable location for filming proved difficult. Stallone told The Los Angeles Times that he considered several locations in the American Southwest before deciding the atmosphere wasn’t right.
“We’ve been talking for a while about shooting this movie in Arizona or Nevada,” Stallone said. “But then I thought, ‘Hey, what is everyone going to do – go to the craps tables every night after filming?’ The production team then turned their attention to locations overseas. They visited Italy, Morocco and Australia, according to the Times. They even built and commissioned $5 million worth of sets in Mexico before heading to Israel. Not only did the
country offer the geographic diversity needed to represent the different corners of the globe depicted in Rambo III, but the film’s stars immediately knew it was the right location for the film.
“I got off the plane and said, ‘Yeah, this is it,’” Stallone said. “This looks like the kind of place where Rambo should be filmed.” Along with the impression Israel made on Stallone, Crenna said there was real tension during filming in Israel due to ongoing tensions there.
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“We drive through a military checkpoint each day to get to the set, then get into our soldier costumes and ‘go to war,'” Crenna said. “Then, when the jets fly overhead, we look up and wonder where they’re going — or where they’ve been.”
Temperatures during filming reached nearly 120 degrees
Sylvester Stallone co-wrote “Rambo III” along with David Morrell and Jean-Claude Van Damme collaborator Sheldon Lettich, and the trio picked up a Golden Raspberry nomination for the screenplay to go along with the Worst Picture nomination and Worst Actor Razzie win for Stallone. The main storyline centers around the war between the USSR and Afghanistan. Filming “Rambo III” in Israel’s active war zone provided the film some authenticity along with some challenges.
nature even posed an additional danger to the cast and crew of Rambo III. Part of the film was filmed near Sodom, where temperatures approached 120 degrees Fahrenheit and the large cast and crew consumed nearly 400 gallons of water per day.
The remote location of Rambo III filming also created logistical challenges. Transporting the heavy military equipment used in the film was difficult and expensive, and the cast and crew had to be
stationed nearly an hour away from the set, which was another half hour from the production facilities.
All of this combined to make Rambo III one of the most expensive films ever made, with a budget approaching $63 million. It ended up earning nearly three times that amount worldwide, making it a decent bet for Tri-Star Pictures when all was said and done.