Stallone's Maga moment: The bloody battle to make Rambo II

Telegraph

22-05-2025

Rambo was meant to die. Sylvester Stallone's traumatised Vietnam vet – harassed by small-town cops for being a bit scruffy and triggered into fighting a one-man war – was supposed to shoot himself. That was the scripted end to First Blood, Rambo's 1982 movie debut, which reworked the similarly fateful conclusion to David Morrell's original novel, published ten years earlier.
But there was uproar from a test audience when Rambo died. It was, according to Stallone and director Ted Kotcheff, a near riot.
'The audience was going to tear them apart! They'd invested their emotions in the character for 100 minutes,' says author Nat Segaloff, who details the entire Rambo phenomenon in a new book, The Rambo Report (covering five Stallone films, three Morrell novels, and a whole lot of bulging cultural muscle).
Stallone and Kotcheff had been savvy enough to film an alternate ending in which Rambo lives, albeit in handcuffs. The audience reaction ensured that John J Rambo would survive to fight another day.
Yet when the character returned three years later for Rambo: First Blood Part II – which premiered 40 years ago – he was a different man: a throbbing, glistening, ultra-violent hunk of Eighties-style machismo; the personification of Ronald Reagan's America and the country's changing relationship with Vietnam.
'The first film, closer to the tone of my novel, presents him as an anti-hero,' says Rambo creator David Morrell, who – coming to the US from Canada – was inspired to write First Blood by Vietnam news reports and protests he saw while lecturing at Penn State. 'The second film – partly because of the change in political atmosphere in the United States – made him into a superhero.'
The sequel sees Rambo recruited from prison and sent back to the jungle to rescue missing POWs. He essentially gets a second crack at 'Nam. 'Sir, do we get to win this time?' Rambo asks.
'This time it's up to you,' replies Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna), encapsulating the idea that it was gutless politicians, not the troops, who lost Vietnam, as well as the can-do Reagan attitude that made America great again (the first time around).
'There were cheers from the audience at that line,' says Morrell.
Rambo: First Blood Part II outgunned the original film at the box office, though it was criticised for its generic foreign villainy and blatant jingoism. It was branded 'a right-wing fantasy', endorsing the myth that there were POWs still held in Vietnam after the war – a myth that morphed into an ultra-conservative conspiracy theory.
'The jingoistic thing is definitely there,' says Morrell. 'There's no way around it… There's an anti-bureaucratic theme which you can balance with the jingoism. No question it's a controversial movie. If it wasn't so darn well-made we might have stronger objections.'
Indeed, Rambo II (as it's best known) is an astonishing piece of guts-and-glory cinema. It lit the fuse on an explosion of Eighties action and made Rambo the muscleman of the cultural and political moment. Even Reagan was a fan.
Back during the production of the first film, Stallone and Kotcheff had pure-hearted reasons for keeping Rambo alive.
'They didn't want veterans watching the film to believe that suicide or death was the only way out,' says Segaloff.
But, as noted in The Rambo Report, Stallone knew there were potential sequels. He was, of course, already three Rockys in by this point. Rocky III was in the can and would open just after First Blood wrapped. There had been doubt about Stallone's box office power outside of the Rocky series, but First Blood hit big and Rambo II was put into action. The sequel would have a bigger budget – a reported $25.5 million – with Acapulco on the Mexican Pacific coast doubling for Vietnam and George Cosmatos taking over as director.
James Cameron was hired to write the initial screenplay, which Cameron did while waiting for production to begin on The Terminator. Incredibly, Cameron wrote scripts for both Rambo II and Aliens – plus Terminator rewrites – all at once, across three months, switching between different desks for each project.
Cameron – interested in layered, fleshed-out characters and 'Nam trauma – put Rambo in a mental institution and added a comedy CIA man, Brewer, tipped to be played by John Travolta. For Stallone, though, there was too much talk and not enough action. He jettisoned much of Cameron's set-up and dropped Brewer (though he and Travolta were pals after Sly had inexplicably directed the Saturday Night Fever sequel, Staying Alive).
David Morrell used some of Cameron's version as the basis for his novelisation of Rambo II, which – unusually for a novelisation – combined Cameron's script, the shooting script, and Morrell's own material. Cameron later said that Sly's Rambo II was 'almost like they were parachuting into 'Nam to pick up a six-pack of beer'.
Stallone took credit for the POW rescue mission story, inspired by a letter he received from a distraught wife. Her husband had been missing in Southeast Asia for 16 years.
Stallone, like other stars, was sold on the myth that missing-in-action soldiers were still being held in 'Nam. 'I'm convinced that the MIAs are alive. Living in Laos,' he told Time in 1985. 'There's been a great avoidance of the issue. The country has been shoving it under the mat and forgetting it.'
The POW/MIA issue dates to the mid-Sixties, when POW wives formed action groups – later the National League of POW/MIA Families – to raise awareness and gather information. Richard Nixon's administration declared that up to 1,400 soldiers were POW/MIAs, suggesting they were being held captive rather than dead. As noted by historian Rick Perlstein, it was a useful bit of spin for Nixon, an effort to further sway opinion against the communists. More questions were raised about supposedly missing POWs as the US withdrew from the war. But there was no evidence of any POW/MIAs. The myth's lasting legacy was spawning the idea that the government wasn't telling families the whole truth. (The National League of Families currently states that 1,572 men are still unaccounted for.)
'The unintended consequence was that the National League of Families and other groups go, 'A-ha, the government's holding out on us!'' says Bill Allison, a history professor at Georgia Southern University, specialising in the Vietnam War. 'By that point, in 1973-74, we'd had the revelations of My Lai, which the army tried to cover up, and Watergate. Political sides will latch onto some kind of narrative they can exploit, and there's nothing worse you can say in the United States than, 'We've left American service members behind.' It was an easy jingoistic thing to latch onto.'
Ross Perot, the businessman and proto-Trumpian presidential candidate, got actively involved and fuelled cover-up theories. There were hearings, investigations, and delegations. Celebrities wore bracelets in support of the POW/MIAs. All the while, tricksters in Southeast Asia cottoned on, selling false information and phoney dog tags to desperate American families.
'Then these movies start coming out,' says Allison. 'And if Americans learn their history from anywhere, it's the big screen.'
Indeed, Rambo wasn't the first Hollywood star to hunt missing POWs. Gene Hackman did it in Uncommon Valor (1983) and Chuck Norris did it in Missing in Action (1984). Offscreen, Clint Eastwood and William Shatner helped fund a POW-finding mission by Vietnam vet and crank Lt Col Bo Gritz, who failed to find any evidence. (Gritz is often called the inspiration for Rambo, but Morrell confirms that he definitely wasn't.)
Rambo might not have been the first to search for missing Americans, but he was the most successful. In the sequel, he drops into 'Nam, immediately wins a fight with a snake, and swiftly finds a campful of American POWs. In true Eighties-style, the Soviets are the puppet masters, with Steven Berkoff's sadistic Lt Col Podovsky pulling the strings and doling out the torture.
But – even with the Soviets on hand – the real villain of Rambo II is CIA man Murdock (Charles Napier), 'a stinking bureaucrat that's trying to cover his ass', according to one character.
To Murdock, the mission is a box ticking exercise. He's not interested in actually recovering POWs and, when Rambo defies orders, Murdock orders a helicopter to abandon him and a POW – proof the troops could have won in Vietnam if it wasn't for the pen-pushers.
Rambo symbolically shoots up Murdock's office and computers at the end. 'Mission accomplished,' he growls.
David Morrell knew that Rambo II would be a success when he received an unexpected FedEx delivery one morning. It was a videotape of the film's pulse-ratcheting helicopter action.
'I was a professor at the time,' he recalls. 'It was eight in the morning, and I was getting ready to teach. But I was stunned watching this. Andy Vajna [the executive producer] kept saying, 'This is going to be a big movie' but I didn't believe him until I saw this. My wife was in the kitchen feeding our kids before school. I went in and said, 'Andy's right, this is going to be a big movie.''
Morrell wasn't bothered by how his character had changed from the novel to the first film and changed again more drastically for the sequel. In First Blood – which channeled the anger and disillusionment over Vietnam – Rambo was a victim, unable to switch off the war or shake the image of his friend's guts exploding over him. In Rambo II – now a flaxen-haired patriot waging Reagan's tough-on-communism foreign policy – he's up for the ruck. 'A pure fighting machine with only a desire to win a war that someone else lost,' describes Colonel Trautman. 'If winning means he has to die, he'll die. No fear, no regrets.'
Interestingly, Stallone's other franchise character, Rocky Balboa, followed a similar trajectory. Rocky and Rambo were outwardly defined by brawn and violence but were vulnerable and lost beneath the beefy exteriors. But, as the sequels rolled on, they became indomitable heroes – templates for the mega-muscled icons of Eighties action, all pumped up by the decade's sense of excess and conservatism.
For Rambo, the sequel also marked an intensely violent rebirth. In First Blood he doesn't kill anybody. 'Anyone who dies, dies of their own folly,' notes Nat Segaloff. But in Rambo II, he kills 70 villains, going on the warpath with an arsenal of guns, knives, a rocket launcher, his own bare hands, and an explosive bow-and-arrow that makes one villain literally burst into a shower of flesh. The moment that Rambo emerges from a rock-face, camouflaged by mud, and knives a Soviet soldier, is a particular primal pleasure (two years before Schwarzenegger caked himself in muck to fight Predator).
'It's Stallone porn,' jokes Allison about all the biceps and beat-ups.
Stallone prepared by working out four hours a day and trained in archery and SWAT combat techniques with the Los Angeles police.
Co-star Julia Nickson, playing doomed field operative Co Bao, recalled that Sly was like 'the unofficial Mayor of Acapulco', driving around in his 'Sly-mobile', charming the locals, and knocking back slammers at the local disco.
There was tragedy on the film, though. While filming an explosion, special effects man Cliff Wenger Jr slipped on wet rocks at the top of a waterfall and fell to his death. Elsewhere, the crew contended with corrupt officials who demanded bribes to allow US helicopters into the country, and a Mexican general who insisted on drinks with Sly in return for using his hangar. As noted in The Rambo Report, Stallone declined the invitation – at which point it was suggested that the general would shut off their electricity.
Rambo: First Blood Part II blasted its way into cinemas on May 22, 1985. It's a tremendous action film not just for the testosterone-jacking violence and killer lines ('To survive war, you gotta become war'), but also the work of legendary British cinematographer Jack Cardiff and rousing, call-to-action score of Jerry Goldsmith.
It made $300 million and detonated a cultural aftershock that Time magazine dubbed 'Rambomania' – a spin-off cartoon, action figures, toy guns, and Rambo III (i.e. Rambo goes to Afghanistan) in 1988.
Rambo had embodied a change. Previous films about Vietnam – The Deer Hunter (1978) and First Blood – were about the war's trauma and depression and the agony of re-assimilation. 'This was popular culture shaping American perceptions of the Vietnam experience,' says Allison. 'That idea of the damaged veteran became ingrained.'
But released just a few years later, Rambo II is a story of rampant heroism. Given a second chance at the war, Rambo wins it. The film could also be called Vietnam II. And Rambo wasn't alone in giving 'Nam a positive spin. As daft as they seem now, The A-Team were Vietnam vets who drove around Los Angeles doing heroic odd jobs (while hiding from the government – those ruddy pen-pushers again). Over in Hawaii, Magnum PI's crew were functioning, well-adjusted vets who sometimes went back into action to sort out the POW/MIA issue.
David Morrell points to a change in national mood with the end of the Iran hostage crisis in 1981, with the hostages released minutes after Ronald Reagan's inauguration.
'It did a lot for giving America a sense of accomplishment,' says Morrell. 'When Rambo II came out, it represented that new attitude – a cinematic version of those hostages returning.'
Bill Allison also points to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Washington DC, dedicated to the fallen soldiers, which was established in November 1982, and Reagan's comments, saying, 'These were men who died for freedom... We are beginning to appreciate that they were fighting for a just cause.'
'It changed the view of the Vietnam veterans,' says Allison. 'We could see them not as wounded but as healing.'
Rambo II continues in that spirit. Making his big climactic speech, Rambo wants just one thing for the vets to begin their healing process: 'For our country to love us as much as we love it.'
It's little wonder that Reagan himself enjoyed Rambo's adventures. After the release of hijacked plane hostages in June 1985, Reagan said, 'Boy, after seeing Rambo last night, I know what to do the next time this happens.' Reagan also declared that Rambo was a Republican. (Stallone disagreed, insisting that Rambo is 'totally neutral'). A signed poster of Rambo II is held in the Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, along with prints that depict the president as 'Ronbo' – a meme for the times – with Reagan's head stuck on Sly's meaty, tooled-up physique. (Donald Trump sold similar merchandise during his Presidential campaigns.)
Rambo's political heft went beyond the United States. David Morrell recalls that his Rambo books – including novelisations of Rambo II and III – were hugely popular in Poland. A reporter told Morrell that during the Eighties, when Poland was part of the Eastern Bloc, they smuggled Rambo videos into the country and wore bandanas to demonstrate against Soviet soldiers. When the Berlin Wall came down, someone had sprayed 'Rambo' on a piece of concrete.
The success came with controversy, too. In Denmark in 1986, leftist demonstrators defaced Sly's private jet with graffiti, protesting Rambo as a symbol of American militarism. Closer to home – literally outside Stallone's home – concerned parents protested the release of a Rambo action doll.
'When Sly was making Rambo 4 [2008], he phoned me and said in retrospect he was uncomfortable with how warfare was glamourised in the second and third films,' says Morrell.
The fourth (intensely violent) film was more in keeping with the subdued tone of Morrell's original novel. A fifth film, Last Blood, followed in 2019. In Rambo II, Rambo says he's going to live 'day-by-day'. But 'film-by-film' might be more fitting. Each instalment speaks to the politics of its moment. An origin story is currently planned, directed by Jalmari Helander, the man behind Sisu, perhaps the finest – and most visceral – one-man-army film of recent times.
'First Blood Part II is wish fulfilment for the people who think we should have won Vietnam,' says Segaloff. 'But in subsequent films he becomes the empowered avenging angel who rectifies wrongs that the government can't because of diplomatic or military reasons – but which he can do as the lone saviour.'