Rambo can cope alone with a horde of internal and external enemies. Rocky may be defeated, but he will force himself to stand on his feet. Barney Ross will lead his team of mercenaries to save the situation. There were several times when death could have forced these people to say goodbye in the cinema, but this did not happen. Sly Stallone gave us three action heroes that you can rely on to survive, characters that are too difficult to kill, for better or for worse.
Rocky Balboa May Lose Fights, but He Wins as an Underdog
One of Stallone’s most famous characters was the man who came from nothing and overcame many obstacles to become a professional boxer, Rocky Balboa. Over the course of six major films, Rocky loses important people in his life: coach Mickey (Burgess Meredith), rival-turned-friend Apollo (Carl Weathers), and wife Adrian (Talia Shire). He is an ordinary man who loves his pet turtles and fights for a decent life – for himself and his family. In the face of defeat or tragedy, he moves forward. Although there were several situations when the Italian stallion himself almost died.In 1980, Stallone discussed early ideas about how to close Rocky III during an interview with Roger Ebert:RELATED:
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“He’s done everything he can and he dies when he gets on top. I don’t think people will want to see Rocky when he’s 80.” This was, in Stallone’s opinion, a satisfactory conclusion that could be reached. Plans changed and, on the bright side, Stallone went on to make Rocky IV, an over-the-top Cold War-influenced film. For Rocky V, Stallone returned to plans to kill off his boxer, writing the original script in which Rocky succumbed to a fatal head injury after a street fight and died in Adrian’s lap. This ending was scrapped by the studio faster than you can say, “Hey, Adrian!” In The Rocky Saga: The Distance, Stallone explained that he found the ending “depressing” but that he wanted Rocky to die in a “blaze of glory.”
The studio scrapped it for a pretty simple reason: from The Rocky Saga, director John G. Avildsen said how the head of the studio told him, “These people don’t die. James Bond, Batman, Superman. They don’t die.” So Rocky lived, returning for the recent Creed movies. In a 2022 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Stallone talked about the direction the Creed movies were going in. “I wish them well,” he said, “but I’m much more of a sentimentalist.
I like my heroes getting beat up, but I just don’t want them going into that dark space. I just feel people have enough darkness.” Losing Rocky, especially in his main series, meant the ending would be a bleak one, something the franchise isn’t known for. In the same interview, Stallone went on to say, “I want people to take away some sense of hope when they leave the theater. I don’t want my heroes to die.” The actor shares this point of view with another of his ’80s action heroes.
Sylvester Stallone Helped Turn ‘Rambo’ Into a Franchise
John Rambo was supposed to die in First Blood, as he does in the novel, but Stallone wanted a change. The theatrical ending remains heartbreaking as Rambo breaks down and allows himself to be captured. Stallone didn’t regret reworking the ending, telling Maclean’s how the acclaimed filmmaker rejected what First Blood had done: “I said, ‘Why don’t we take it to the very edge without destroying it?’ Quentin Tarantino said: “You are a coward, you should have killed him!” I said, “Quentin, you’re crazy. I want to do some sequels, brother.” Creating a franchise based on the Rambo character is exactly what Stallone achieved.RELATED:
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In the sequels, John Rambo had to face new conditions and threats. He was a fierce defender of those who needed his help, and an even tougher fighter for survival. In Rambo III, he is wounded and needs to stop the bleeding as quickly as possible, resorting to a very Rambo-esque method of stopping the blood loss: he cauterizes the wound with gunpowder and fire. If it’s not obvious, he’s hard to kill, and there may be no suitable death for John Rambo; that he can continue to live but remain alone in the world is a tragic element for the hero. Rocky and Rambo’s music could easily be overlooked in favor of training montages or fight sequences, but they are crucial to these central characters.
‘Expendables’ Is a Series With Stallone in Front of and Behind the Camera
In an Instagram post, Stallone wrapped up his role in The Expendables and called it his “finale.” Moving into the fourth installment, one might wonder what to expect given the movie star’s announcement, since Stallone directed the first film and co-wrote the scripts for the next two Expendables films. During the mission, Barney is in charge of flying the rescue plane while his team is on the ground, until the plane is shot down and right-hand man Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) discovers Barney’s burned corpse. Watching this happen, the major death happens off-screen, meaning he can’t stay “dead” for long. Except he kind of does.
The plot twist that Barney faked his death comes too late in the film. He comes back to save the day at the last minute when Christmas is about to die, and it’s a strange ending to this installment. Barney then tells his friend the story of how he got out of the plane. The body that Christmas found, burned to ashes, belonged to the lowly mercenary Jumbo Shrimp (Mike Moeller), who had turned Barney on the bad side, taking his treasured skull ring. So Barney took petty revenge too far by hiding Jumbo on the plane until the right fiery moment was needed. As a sick joke, it doesn’t work, especially since Barney has never been that dark of an anti-hero.
There’s no denying that Stallone brings a strong, nostalgic presence to his returning characters, so it was a mistake for Expend4bles to limit the star’s screen time.
Rocky is close. Rambo and Barney are warriors. Like an Achilles heel, the actor-writer-director cannot kill his heroes. He told their stories creatively, and they are either too close to his heart or the studio’s wallet. As for Barney, while he didn’t have a hand in writing the fake death, it was a case that deserved a rewrite to either make it permanent or release Barney into the story much earlier. The franchise isn’t all that bad, but when they put out weak and repetitive entries, it might be better if one of those action heroes died in a strong sendoff.