Sylvester Stallone created a franchise that spawned from Rambo: First Blood. But he soon felt the iconic action hero was coming close to his end.
When Sylvester Stallone was going to kill off John Rambo
Rambo: First Blood wasn’t supposed to be the beginning of a film series. The movie’s mercenary John Rambo was initially slated to die in the first movie, which would’ve been more in line with the source material. The film’s director, Ted Kotcheff, initially had no plans to tinker with Rambo’s natural conclusion.
“I conceived of First Blood as Rambo’s suicide mission,” Kotcheff said according to Yahoo. “The film was basically conceived as Rambo’s tragedy, that mirrored the tragedy of so many of the veterans that I talked to. I met guys that actually later on killed themselves. His tragedy mirrored their tragedy, and how they came to this sad conclusion to kill themselves.”
Stallone was adamant that Rambo shouldn’t have died in the first movie. But in 2012, MTV News asked the actor if he was planning on finally killing off the character.
“Yeah,” he responded simply.
He hinted at where he planned on taking the character after his 2008 movie Rambo.
“He’s in Arizona on the border. It will involve him going into Mexico. I don’t think Rambo likes Mexicans,” Stallone hinted.
The last Rambo movie would be 2019’s Rambo: Last Blood. But the film seemed to take a bit of a departure from Stallone’s initial plans for the character.
Why Sylvester Stallone refused to kill off John Rambo
It seemed Stallone had a couple of major reasons for avoiding Rambo’s early death. Quentin Tarantino called out Stallone years ago for changing Rambo’s fate. But Stallone told the filmmaker he was out to make a franchise with the character. On an artistic level, Stallone also believed that killing off Rambo could’ve sent a bad message for veterans who’d see the movie.
“I just don’t think it should [have been] done,” Stallone said. “It sends out the wrong message. Every Vietnam vet who sees this [ending] goes, ‘The only solution is death. Death is the only thing that awaits us at the end of the tunnel.’ I don’t think that’s the right way to do it. [Kirk] was like, ‘Yes but it’s artistic.'”
Kotcheff shared that Rambo’s death was actually even filmed. But after seeing the audience’s reaction of the scene, Stallone spoke to Kotcheff personally about the take.
“We shot [the original ending]. It was incredibly moving, after all we’d been through. Sylvester got up and said, ‘Ted, can I talk to you for a second?’ He said, ‘You know, Ted, we put this character through so much….All this, and now we’re gonna kill him? I said, ‘Sylvester has a point,’” Kotcheff recalled to Entertainment Weekly.
Why Sylvester Stallone wanted to revive John Rambo in ‘Rambo: Last Blood’
Stallone gave the character a satisfying and solid conclusion in Rambo. But the actor felt there was still so much to be done with the character. He’d resurrect his tormented soldier in the 2019 flick Last Blood to explore what stories the franchise still had left.
“You can totally end the story with him going home, having that shot of him going down the driveway, which is completion. But a character like that — does he ever really go home? I jotted down on a Post-It: “He came home, but he never arrived,” and I went, there’s a movie here. The warrior can never find peace. He just can’t,” Stallone said in a Variety interview.
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