To call Sylvester Stallone a movie star is an understatement.. He’s an icon, an indelible part of the Hollywood history.. Since his rise to success in the late 1970’s, Stallone has made more money for moviemakers than just about any A - lister in the industry, and created some of the most famous characters in movie history.. In 2006, he resuscitated his first and probably most famous role with Rocky Balboa, a cathartic close to the boxing - movie series that helped him achieve superstar status.. And now, Stallone continues another franchise that started decades ago with Rambo..

Sylvester Stallone may be in his early 60’s now, but that hasn’t stopped the action star from taking the necessary risks and treading through dangerous terrority to make Rambo, the latest installment in the popular series..

Twenty years after the last film in the series, John Rambo ( Stallone ) has retreated to northern Thailand, where he’s running a longboat on the Salween River.. On the nearby Thai - Burma ( Myanmar ) border, the world’s longest - running civil war, the Burmese - Karen conflict, rages into its 60th year.. Rambo lives a solitary, simple life in the mountains and jungles fishing and catching poisonous snakes to sell.. He has long ago given up fighting, even as medics, mercenaries, rebels and peace workers pass by on their way to the war - torn region.. All that changes when a group of human rights missionaries ask Rambo to guide them up the Salween so they can deliver food and medical supplies to the Karen tribe.. Weeks after the journey, Rambo learns that the same missionaries are being held captive by the Burmese military, outside diplomatic reach.. Accompanied by a group of Church - hired mercenaries, he agrees to go up the river again, feeling a responsibility to rescue the captives despite his reluctance for violence and conflict..

Despite nineteen years having transpired since the last Rambo installment, Stallone and producers Avi Lerner, Kevin King and John Thompson were confident that audiences would still connect with Rambo’s personal fortitude.. Stallone explains..

“ Rambo harkens back to that mythic one man who has been chosen to do a job that he really doesn’t want to do, but he’s been born to do it.. He imparts a sense of virtue that’s immediate.. Bad and evil should be punished and the weak should be protected.. It harkens back to the stories we all grew up with, the mythology of good and evil..”

“I thought the Burmese setting would be ideal because it’s a story that’s not just about Rambo.. It’s actually happening.. It’s true.. From the time I heard about it and began researching it, I thought, ‘ If I could just combine the two - raising awareness of the Karen - Burmese civil war and giving the audience a good adventure story - that would be perfect..’”

Tomorrow’s Entertainment just got off the phone with Stallone.. Sly is a pretty cool, down to Earth, guy and we really appreciated his time.. Stallone talks about some of the challenges of bringing Rambo back to cinema screens, Burma and why the film’s violence isn’t gratuitous in any way.. He also talks about the cultural significance and influence the Rambo films have had over time and on his daughters, as well as which other of his part characters he might like to revisit..

How ya doing?

” Very good.. It’s been a great couple weeks.. It’s nice to go out and promote something you enjoy, and not have to lie for seven hours a day, like we usually have to do, and we’re not fooling anybody..”

Where to start? The new Rambo has had a long journey to the screen, various studios involved, etc..

” And I don’t know any of them either.. [ Laughs ] What happened was Weinstein came about 12 years ago.. They said, ” Would you want to do a Rambo?” I said okay.. He goes, ” We’ve got this great idea where Camp David’s attacked..” I go, ” I’m out..” It just can’t be.. There’s something about nature as part of the character.. There’s something about the primitive man.. He’s almost like an Indian.. Set in the city, I just didn’t think it would fly.. So it died for 10 years, resurfaced.. At one time, Mark Burnett was talking about doing it when I was doing The Contender and then that didn’t work.. Then I called Harvey Weinstein and talked about these missionary groups that were going to Afghanistan.. I said, ” This is interesting..” No, never got called back on that.. So Avi Lerner bought it, New Millennium.. He was open to this whole idea.. The thing was, I was going to do something about Mexico. Actually the whole Coyote Mexican, remember the people disappearing in Juarez and that whole world.. So we went that way and I said, ” No, not working.. I need something more international..” So I did research and found that Burma is one of the great hellholes on the planet.. But no one knows about it.. It’s exotic and it’s near Vietnam.. The synergy was perfect so that’s why..”

Did you have to go back and re - watch the previous Rambo’s to get back into character?

” Yeah, you know kind of just the ponderousness that comes with aging, the sense of weight, the sense of knowledge, knowing too much, the lack of naivete which happened in my life, sort of set the stage for me.. I wanted Rambo to be this heavier, bulkier, that’s why his first line in the movie is pretty negative.. He’s given up.. He has nothing.. The other Rambo’s I felt had a bit too much energy.. They were a little too spry.. I’m not trying to run myself down but there was much more vanity involved.. Tank tops, it was all about body movement rather than just the ferocity and the commitment of what he was doing.. This character to me is much more interesting.. I like First Blood and I like this one, just like the first Rocky and the last Rocky Balboa.. Everything in between was kind of trying to figure out what I should do..”

Talking about Rocky Balboa.. The name change for Rambo, I could explain to the fans at home about it, but would you like to explain it to them?

” Yeah sure.. Okay, well everyone knows that Rocky Balboa was the closing chapter to that character.. Hence we went for the artistic approach in naming the movie.. That was the journey coming to an end.. They talk about making Son of Rocky and all that, but no.. I got so lucky with the final image, with the rack focus and the fade - that’s it.. I can’t go any further with that.. It’s a miracle it even got made, I’m just so grateful it got financed.. It’s my finest moment, I’m so happy with it..

” But as you know, Rambo was to be called ‘ John Rambo ‘ as this started out to be the closing chapter for this character.. But the more we worked on it, I got that passion back for the character.. So I told them ‘ I’d love to go back to Rambo again.. I think the character has more in him..’ You don’t get to play that kind of character very often.. At first it was stereotyped but now I’m really proud to have done it.. It’s timely.. Ten years ago it wouldn’t have been right.. So we changed it to Rambo.. As I would love to go back into role for at least one more movie.. But as I said, if we went with John Rambo, fans would think that’s it..”

What made you decide to do another Rambo movie now?

” You know, careers have peaks and valleys and you harken back to the things that you’re sort of known for.. I mean, every actor would like to say that they’re Daniel Day Lewis and that they have this incredible pallet, but quite often you’re known for certain things.. I said to myself, ‘ Boy, if I could end my career on something, I’d like to finish up the loose ends on Rambo because the last one in Afghanistan didn’t work and the last Rocky didn’t work.. So I wanted to focus on these two and as fate would have it the world has gone through a transition in the past twenty years where maybe ten years ago this wouldn’t have even been acceptable, but right now with this inundation of violence, the constant bombardment of it on CNN everyday, I think there’s a kind of frustration building up and it needs a release.. So that’s why.. It was just time, good timing..”

Now that there’s been around 20 years since the first three films, and there’s been time for some perspective, what do you make of the cultural and political impact the character had in the 1980’s and, specifically, how do you feel now about Rambo III given that the film was set in Afghanistan and obviously has relevance to what’s going on there now?

” We’ve changed drastically.. I think the action films of today, the real ones like the Bourne films, are brilliant.. I think Paul Greengrass is a genius, I just marvel at what he does.. And Matt Damon pulling it off was amazing, especially when, at the beginning, no one thought he could do it.. But it’s completely different.. They’re much more technologically orientated, to keep the energy going.. Back then it was pretty simple.. It was much more mano - a - mano, who kills who first.. So, I thought that this might be interesting to revisit today.. An entire generation has no idea, really, who Rambo is; it’s like someone’s grandfather.. Old school, mythic, meet you at High Noon, there’s nothing fancy about it; it’s pretty savage, and whoever is the most savage wins..”

“The 20 year thing, of course you’re fighting ageism, which is too bad, because about 78 million people are baby boomers and they control about 98 per cent of the wealth, and yet we don’t make films for them.. I didn’t make this film for them.. I thought they would go and see Rocky Balboa.. You know who went to see it? 25 - year - olds.. It’s like: “ Let’s go back and see what Grandpa used to do!”

” The biggest problem in doing Rambo III was that I thought [ at the time ], let’s show Russia’s Vietnam.. We already did our Vietnam, and of course we did a fantasy version of it where Rambo gets to fight his own war, which was a particular American dream that had nothing to do with reality.. The last one, though, was almost supposed to be real and I learned the hard way that when you start making a film that deals with immediate politics, two weeks before the film opens, Gorbachev comes over and gives Reagan a hug, kisses Nancy on the cheek, the word “ Perestroika ” comes out and now I’m the Red Baiter.. Honestly, I walked into a press conference in Australia and I got booed.. I’m like: “ This is Russia!” They were dropping Napalm for 10 years on the Third World.. Cold War - 50 years.. But they were blaming me.. I didn’t know I had that kind of power.. And I swear to you, I was like: “ Oh my god, in Burma are they suddenly going to declare peace?” But no, I realised Burma are never, ever going to declare it; it’s a whole different trip..”

Do you ever imagine a world where you shot the ending of the book First Blood and didn’t have Rambo with you all these years?

” Yeah, I think about it all the time.. I had that debate with Quentin Tarantino who thought I made a mistake.. I said, ” You know, on an artistic level, you’re probably right..” But at the time, I had spent a lot of time doing research with veterans and it seemed like this terrible, nihilistic ending that just reveled in complete despair.. At that time, we had almost a quarter of a million Vietnam suicides.. So I thought, do I want to just end it on that note? Or make him more of a victim who has been created to do a job, does the job, comes home, gets ” You know what? You no longer fit in..” It’s like you train a pit bull.. Take a dog, turn him into a killer, now what do you do? You’ve got to put him down.. What happens if that pit bull gets loose? And you realize it’s not as bad as you think.. You can somehow redeem him.. I thought that was more of an interesting story.. Again, as Kirk Douglas says, ” Not artistic, but commercial..”

Was it challenging making these iconic characters - Rocky and Rambo - relevant 15 years later?

” If I were trying to go after a youth audience and trying to find something hip, using certain music and whatever, I think that would be pretty obvious and be rejected.. There’s some things that never change and are universal truths.. As you get older, they become more and more apparent about how difficult life is and like the speech in Rocky about taking punches and life gives you punches.. The young people who would support Rocky more than even people my age I think really enjoy and embrace those kinds of lessons.. I think the lesson that is somewhat presented here, that war is hell and there is no winner ever and unfortunately people just have to find it out the hard way, will translate.. And eventually after a man takes that journey, a woman takes that journey, you always hope that you can go back home, that there’s still some gateway back to peace, peace of mind where you can start to rebuild.. That’s the only thing I hope works.. I think it does work because they’re just universal truths that never, ever change.. No matter what society is, just everybody wants freedom, everyone wants peace of mind but it comes at a horrible price..”

People have said that this is one of the most violent movies that we’ve seen in a long time..

” Not one of the most.. The most.. I worked very hard for this. [ Laughter ] I’m only kidding.. It is.. But again, when you’re hit flat out, and I don’t know if you’ve seen it on YouTube, but the people who have some footage from Iraq - when you’re hit with a fifty caliber, you are literally emulsified.. It’s not like a little bullet hole - ‘ Ouch, it hurt..’ You’re gone.. I wanted to, again, show that when people go to see situations of great violence, it’s horrifying.. They’re not slightly wounded and like, ‘ Oh, yeah.. I have a little designer cut..’ I wanted to show how brutal it is.. CGI was necessary because we couldn’t even put that much explosive on people..”

” I also don’t think it’s gratuitous violence [ in this film ].. Gratuitous violence is a guy dressed up with a meat cleaver chasing 10 teenagers around the woods for 10 hours, that’s gratuitous.. This is war and civil war, as you all know, is by far the most vicious of all wars for some reason; it’s just much worse.. The exploits in the film are violent, but they don’t compare to what these people have gone through.. The immolation of not hundreds of monks, but thousands of monks in the last few months, they’ve just been torched off the planet.”

The violence here is incredibly graphic, was it hard to bring this in with an ‘ R ‘ Rating?

” I couldn’t believe it first of all.. When babies are being bayoneted and people are getting killed.. I thought this will never go.. We presented it but I did have a caveat with the MPAA.. I said, ” Guys, this is happening today.. If we’re ever going to do something responsible where art has the ability to influence people’s awareness, impact the lives of these people, don’t dilute it.. Don’t water it down.. It’s got to be uncomfortable.. It is uncomfortable.. It’s miserable.. It’s distasteful.. It’s horrifying.. But if you’re not going to do it, don’t do the movie.. Don’t do violence light.. It’s just wrong.. Don’t cut away too soon.. Just let it sit in.. I want people to feel it..” To their credit, they allowed this film to be as truthful as it could..”

 

 

Can you talk about the tone of the movie? A lot of people might go in expecting the gratification of seeing Rambo return and kill a lot of people, but the way you depict the violence is really unflinching and intense..

” If you notice over the opening credits, I had to live up to a certain kind of responsibility because people are dying as we were making the film.. Therefore, to just have me running through the film doing these extraordinary heroics I thought would demean what they’re going through.. So they had to have their moment where you see a village that is decimated.. That’s what happened.. As a matter of fact, it’s even worse but I said, ” I don’t know if that other stuff would fly today.. I think the audience really wants something that’s hard hitting but has a semblance of reality..” We went too far in the old days.. We got away with murder.. ” Jump out of a plane? Well, I don’t need a parachute.. You use mine..” And you made it.. Somehow you made it.. You landed on a convertible roof and you did it.. I said no, this time I’m going to really show it and the violence has to be extraordinarily brutal because we see people beheaded on television.. How much harder can you get? You cannot water it down, at least I didn’t feel.. That was a big bone of contention really.. The other thing was do you do a film about a caper, like they wanted to have the corrupt CIA guy and he was trying to sell plutonium rods.. I said no.. The biggest and most interesting crises in the world is the human crises.. It never gets boring.. Just like Shakespeare.. You don’t need a gimmick.. It’s just man against man, just their intolerance of each other..”

I had to laugh recently when I read about fans and media asking you what happened to the scene where you punch the guy’s head off.. Of course we here know that it was the machete..

” I know, that’s an optical confusion.. It was was definitely the machete and it was such a bad print, it looked like I punched his head off.. I kept reading blogs and said, ” Guys, look closely.. No one can punch someone’s head off..”

You were once quoted as saying that studios were sceptical about returning to these characters at your age - but some of their exploits do seem to suggest you don’t know you’re 60?

” [Laughs] No, no, no, guys - you’re a lot tougher than you think.. The difference is, I’m lucky.. I’m under the gun.. I’m under pressure to perform.. If I didn’t have this goal, believe me I’d be more than happy to sit upstairs and stuff 25 croissants down my throat and wash it down with a pint of beer.. If you looked at me when I was on my way to film Rambo, I was about 20 kilos heavier, I was massive and I had to put that weight on because I knew when I got to the jungle that the heat would take it off.. But again, it’s all goal orientated.. If you don’t have a goal, it’s very, very hard to just keep in shape..”

” I was talking to one of my fellow, superstar, up - and - coming, sex - symbol actors who was losing his hair, and the next time I saw him he was covered.. I asked: “ What did you do?” And he said: “ It’s a matter of fucking economics..” [Laughs] It’s got nothing to do with vanity, it’s to do with making a living.. In my business, I’ve been identified with a certain kind of physicality.. I can’t expect to be Daniel Day - Lewis or go to Russell Crowe land or something like that.. I don’t do what they do, they can’t do what I do and it took me a long time to figure out that you can’t do everything.. You can end up looking like a bit of a fool..”

Are people surprised by your artistic motivations because the characters are so physical?

” I don’t know if that’s quite apparent but I know what you mean.. If there isn’t some kind of thought behind it, because muscles are easy.. Anybody can do muscles.. You just go violence, violence, violence, violence, action, action, action.. But if you can find those little moments in between that connect to the people that aren’t so physical, that’s what takes the time and that to me is the challenge and that’s what I love about it.. “

Okay, about the beginning of the film.. Why did you choose to open the film with documentary footage of real events in Burma?

” I was dependent on the audience not knowing anything about Burma even though two months ago we now learned about the genocides of the monks.. So I just wanted to bring them up to date and there’s nothing more impressionable than when you actually see real newsreel footage that shows you’re not just doing a film that’s a fantasy.. It’s for real.. It’s like showing Vietnam and then you actually go into the film.. So I thought that it would add a little bit of gravitas to it and just bring you up to speed.. It was going to be more elaborate with a voice over, but I thought, ‘ Okay, just keep it at that..’ And then the second scene is the race in the rice paddy which is just saturated in color and then bang, we’re into the beginning of the film..”

In the black and white nightmare sequence, you used a clip from the unused ending of First Blood where Rambo gets Trautman to kill him..

” Oh, you caught that.. You’ve got an eye for detail..”

By putting that in there, are you telling the audience and fans that Rambo dreams he wishes it would’ve ended there and that Trautman would’ve killed him?

” No, no.. We actually tried using that ending.. It was at one screening only in Las Vegas and it didn’t go over very well.. They had to literally go back and rebuild the entire set.. I begged.. I said, ‘ Don’t do this again..’ Anyway, they did it.. But I thought in the dream sequence, and I don’t know if it’s coming across or not, but accept who you are, this is who you are.. This is it.. Finally Rambo does.. I kill for myself.. I don’t kill for my country.. It’s just like, ‘ Stop using this excuse that I’m a hero.. I’m not.. I’ve just got this penchant for violence inside of me that has to come out..’ While he was in the dream it was like, ‘ Put me out of my misery..’ If he could’ve done it all over, he wishes that Trautman did shoot him because he cannot come to terms with the fact that he’s a killer.. Flat out..”

 

 

Can you discuss location scouting before the movie and the shooting conditions themselves?

” Funny you bring that up because the location scouting was truly hell.. We had to go to places where we were not going to be so confrontational with Burmese agents that are all over Thailand and they’re very, very sensitive to their image.. Especially down in Mae Sai where people have disappeared.. It’s a serious situation.. The Thais were very, very worried about their image so we decided to go up north to Chiang Mai, try to find something that would sort of be obscure to both of them.. We wouldn’t be in their faces but the locations themselves were so inland, sometimes we would have to use elephants to get inland.. We spent days on the river.. I just wanted to try to find something that hadn’t been - we couldn’t afford to find extraordinary.. In the mountains would have been great to go up to these areas, but just something that felt as though this would be Rambo territory, would be as rugged as his life had been and bleak, but also serviceable for some of the actors who I didn’t want to put them through the kind of hell that they had to be put through.. But it was a lot of work.. It took four different trips back and forth.. 18 hours each way is a lot of scouting back and forth, a lot of jet lagging.. But we found, we were using these [ Karen is the closest I can find ] natives that were showing us these very, very obscure areas that had never been seen before..”

How many cameras did you use?

” In the last battle I had 9.. Normally it would be 3, but I find that with 3 you start to overlap so 2 would be the best.. Three is sort of getting clumsy unless you’re going for inanimate objects with the third camera.. Like, ‘ Okay, there’s a shoelace and an empty bottle..’ Somehow you work that in which we never did.. It’s that kind of thing..”

Did you do your own stunts? How hard was it this time around?

” Pretty hard indeed! I did everything but one stunt! The one where I’m supposed to jump off the hill during the explosion when the big bomb goes off.. I really thought the stunt guy was going to die.. I felt bad.. And we had to do it twice, and it was very slippery.. You will have to look at the ‘ Making Of ’ when the DVD comes out because there were so many injuries during the shooting, like snake bites, cuts, and so on.. But this made this movie such a great adventure because of all of these incidents.. Everyone at first hated it and was scared.. I said I know, but I said this is like a war and you’re all going to be sad to go home.. ‘ You’re going to go home and look at your husband or your wife and kids and tell them you have it so easy, you don’t know.. So don’t even complain to me again!’”

 

Did you suffer any injuries?

” When you see the making - of - I did this stupid stunt where I’m running down a hill and there’s this giant explosive wave following me and I’m rolling down the hill.. All you’re thinking is: “ Please don’t let a stick go through my eye..” But I was almost at the bottom when I smacked into a log.. I checked I had 10 fingers and 10 toes, they were intact and I thought “ perfect”! But then, bang, I smacked my head into a bamboo tree and fell onto this cactus that punctured my arm and the next thing I know I’m in the hospital with this haematoma from my chest to the end of my arm.. I was what you could call a true blue blood.. It was completely blue.. But accidents could happen when you’re walking into your motor home and you find something in your toilet that could eat you.. You know, I saw 11 people on a moped, but no one got killed.. Back home, you’re in a car with seatbelt on and one crash and bang: you’re dead.. It’s crazy and yet this is how people live out there..”

Is it true that a lot of the cast were hospitalised during the shoot?

” Yeah, many, many people were on saline drips.. It was very dangerous.. Even the bushes are dangerous - and the butterflies.. Everything.. We had so many fires.. It was called the burning season.. In Burma, they burn the country to the ground because they don’t want to cut trees.. Why? Because chainsaws are illegal! It’s OK to smash peoples’ skulls in with machetes, but you can’t own a chainsaw! Even in Cambodia and Thailand, people were having problems.. But the biggest problems we had were snakes.. And if you leave your chair, you came back and something huge was sitting on it with a 1,000 legs..”

Did you shoot anything especially for the DVD?

” Yeah, we did.. We had this fellow there following us the whole time, chasing the snakes and dealing with these cobras.. They get loose on the boat and then you’d have fun with them.. There’s just odd, odd stuff.. We got caught in these monsoons and we had a leading lady trying to pull moss out of her eyes and mouth.. So that’s going to be a very interesting DVD because we had someone there probably sixty days which is a lot of footage..”

What was the most challenging in making this film?

” Well, we had a crew in Rocky of about 60 people.. There was 570.. That’s how hard it was to move through the jungle and everything else.. It was the hottest temperatures in 94 years.. They called it the burning season.. I even wrote lines in there about when they’re going up the river and it’s always hazy and foggy.. That was the burning season.. The entire country’s burning to the ground.. They can see it from satellites.. They had to send in military.. It was just out of control.. It was just burning and burning and burning their land.. Every time we cleared it, people were just getting sick.. There are 165 different snakes in Thailand, 90 that were poisonous.. So we lived with the constant problem of people being bit.. Centipedes which are the size of your shoe being found in your shoes.. It was a rough, rough - Julie Benz coming from Dexter went, ” What?” Welcome to action films.. But it was extremely difficult but the Thais were just - you know what it reminded me of? I was watching the making of David Lean’s film, Bridge Over the River Kwai, how much you just had to truck and use brutal manpower and get inland.. There’s nothing glamorous about it.. I’d watch these men shoulder these giant generators and cut trails with a cigarette in the mouth, no shoes.. You could never have done it anywhere else on the planet.. Believe me, when we were starting to get all the threats from the Burmese, I said, ” Can’t we shoot this in Puerot Vallarta?” I tried, you don’t know.. You don’t know..”

What was the most challenging aspect of doing this film?

” For sure it was the ongoing threat of the Burmese while we were shooting in Thailand.. There were a lot of secret police over there and they knew exactly what was going on.. And especially all these people, and I won’t mention names, doing drug dealing between the Burmese General and people on the other side of the river.. It’s really a bad and sad situation..”

” Life is very cheap over there.. You get shot and nobody will ever find you.. At first I didn’t worry about me, but I really felt bad for the crew because I thought that’s how it would start, with the intimidating of the crew.. And they did intimidate them.. For a while we could not get any Burmese to work for us at all, until one man stepped up and it opened the flood gate.. All you see in the movie is authentic.. Real amputees who had lost their legs in land mine accidents.. The man who started to show the other Burmese they had to do it was the one playing the villain in the movie and actually in real life he is a rebel fighter.. But by doing this film his family was arrested and put in jail in Burma..”

 

So how do you define Rambo as a character?

” He goes down to see his father who, by the way, is a full blooded Indian.. I decided not to shoot it because I thought it would end up being a double epilogue, but you realize where he came from.. He came from a society that was absolutely archaic compared to the modern man.. So it’s as though he was going to go back into the world where he existed [ in the first place..] It’s a primitive existence, a hard existence.. It’s not surrounded by people.. It’s surrounded by horses and nature, whatever.. That’s where he belongs.. When he’s confronted with people and society, the rage and that indignity start to build up.. What it is, is that he defends people that can’t defend themselves.. It isn’t like he goes out and looks for trouble, but he embraces it.. That’s why when the missionaries came up he was so conflicted.. ‘ You’re not going to change anything, but I’ll take you there..’ It’s like the warrior needs to war..”

And the veteran’s journey for Rambo?

” Well the veteran’s journey is - [ sighs ] I wouldn’t say this is a veteran’s journey; it’s more like the veteran mentality of the Vietnam War.. The soldiers today I think are vastly different, a different breed, you know, I think they’re a little bit more aware, the other guy’s a bit more naïve, and they went headlong into these crazy situations, I mean look at the death toll.. It’s fifty two thousand, it’s like, by today’s standards, it’s unbelievable.. And a quarter of a million suicides after that, from just people that were damaged by the war.. But you bring up these - it’s just in his attitude, and his demeanor, that you know he’s still quite destroyed, or distraught I should say, by what he’s been through, yet he can’t escape it.. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t..”

Was that shot during the final credit sequence the last thing that you shot and what were you thinking when you took that long walk?

” You mean back to the house? Yeah, that was by far the last scene.. That was the last shot.. I thought that he goes down and looks up the road and his journey was over.. In other words it’s like an odyssey, like, for lack of a better term Ulysses who went through all these different trials and tribulations and in the end everybody sort of thinks, ‘ Can I ever go back and have one more chance at trying to relive my life even though there’s not much of it left?’ So to me it’s a kind of happy ending.. It’s a little smirk..”

Were you reflecting on Rambo’s entire journey?

” Absolutely.. But it was also very tentative for me, like, ‘ Do I do this?’ There’s an excitement about going back to see your father, but you also haven’t seen him in 30 years and it’s kind of like what I do every time I go home at night.. [ Laughs ] Am I going to be welcomed or not? No, I’m just kidding.. But I’m happy with the ending.. Why? Well I’m 61.. So I might not be able to make another movie, I’m hoping, but if I don’t get around to doing one, at least it can be seen as a happy ending..”

” I have a very, very bizarre idea.. It’s probably so absurd, but it’s got to formulate a little bit.. If I told you I was going to do one about a sixty one year old boxer, you’d go, ‘ Yup!’ But if you find the right formula almost anything is feasible.. It’s just coming in there and making the audience go, ‘ Okay, that’s possible.. That is feasible..’”

 

What do you think you’re legacy will be when all is said and done?

” The legacy? Who’s legacy? Mine? Oh, God.. It’s ying and yang.. I think that some of the upcoming actors will look at me as this archaic, kind of like prehistoric creature that belonged to a certain bygone genre that no longer exists because now we’ve become much more scientific, less personal.. Most of my peers were very physical.. Arnold [ Schwarzenegger ] and Bruce [ Willis ] - they were just more hands on.. I think that a lot of actors today are hands off and they’re more intellectual.. So I think that it’ll be like what it’s like when you go back to the Natural Museum of History and you’re looking at a Pterodactyl..”

What do your daughters think of your films?

” Tell me if this is bad: my five - year - old went to school and this little boy took her chair and she said to him: “ If you do that again, I’ll cut your head off..” Is that bad? I think it’s time to rethink what she watches.. She’s saying things like: “ I’ll blow you up if you do that again..” See, what happens is that they sneak in while I’m watching the dailies at home, and they’re listening, so they think it’s normal behaviour.. They’ve become little Rambettes, or Rambolinas, so we’ve had to go back to watching those Spongebob Squarepants DVD’s.. They used to really cry, now they’re like [ yawns ]: “ Oh, another death..” I swear to god, I’m going to need to detox them..”

 

So you’ve returned to two of your characters - are there any other ones you’d like to revisit?

” I think the biggest mistake I ever made was the sloppy handling of Judge Dredd.. I think that could have been a fantastic, nihilistic interesting vision of the future.. With all the pop culture, that really bothered me a great deal.. I think Cobra could have been interesting a on certain level, only because I always thought of him as Bruce Springsteen with a badge [ laughs ].. I wouldn’t have minded going to see if my fellow in Copland’s life turned out okay..”

Hmm.. So Cliffhanger and Demolition Man sequels?

” [ Laughs ] You mean Cliffhanger 2: The Dam.. There’s been rumors.. Nothing official, and nothing I can talk about yet.. But I will get back to you.. As for Demolition man, [ Laughs ] if Wes is up for it, sounds like a interesting project..”

Were you surprised about the influence the film has had, particularly on things like forthcoming British comedy Son of Rambow?

” I love that movie; I just saw it.. And I’ll do whatever I can to support that movie.. I thought it was really clever; really clever..”

We hear the trailer for that film is going to play in front of yours?

” [Laughs] Bullshit! Can you imagine that? This is what you grow up to be?”

Well I guess we better wrap things up! Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk to us about your latest installment for Rambo..

” No, thank you for letting me talk about it and the making people aware of life around us..”

Rambo was released on the 25th January 2008.. You can check out our review here, which was awarded 5 out of 5..