Sylvester Stallone reveals what war veterans tell him on the street because of ‘Rambo’: “You don’t know what you’re doing”
Hollywood icon Stallone has discussed the criticism he gets from real-life war veterans over his character’s exploits in ‘First Blood’.
Sylvester Stallone emerged as a major Hollywood idol in the mid-1970s, when he starred in and wrote the screenplay for Rocky. The film became an instant classic and catapulted the Italian-American actor to global fame.
From Rocky to Rambo
In the following years, Stallone cemented his status as one of the most recognizable faces in action cinema, thanks not only to the Rocky sequels, but also First Blood - a Vietnam War film that is among the most effective at exploring the conflict, despite not actually being set in the Southeast Asian nation.
The film introduces us to John Rambo, a Vietnam War veteran, and is considered one of the best action movies of the 1980s.
Stallone portrays one of the many soldiers who returned home to the U.S. from Vietnam, only to be rejected by society. Unintentionally, he becomes the target of a small-town police force that hunts him down.
“You cannot take on half the world with a knife”
During First Blood, Rambo showcases all his survival skills in the wilderness - but, according to Stallone, his character’s exploits have prompted real-life war veterans to stop him in the street and take him to task over how unrealistic they are.
“They say, like, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’” the 78-year-old revealed in an interview on NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
“‘You cannot take on half the world with a knife. It just doesn’t work... You cannot take a gun that usually is mounted on a helicopter, hold it with one arm, wrap bullets around your neck and run through the woods naked, and actually accomplish anything.‘”
First Blood - watch the trailer:
How many Rambo films are there?
First Blood spawned a series of films that never quite matched the popularity or quality of the original. In Rambo: First Blood Part II, the soldier is released from prison and returns to Vietnam on a near-suicidal mission.
In Rambo III, John Rambo fights alongside the Mujahideen against the Soviet Union. It’s one of the key films of the Ronald Reagan era, along with Rocky IV, also starring Stallone. Finally, Rambo and Rambo: Last Blood depict a warrior past his prime, and the films didn’t perform as well as expected.
Article originally written in Spanish, before being translated with the assistance of AI, and edited by William Allen.
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