So I understand why Sylvester Stallone wants to make Rambo V PG-13 (and I’ve heard it around enough at this point to believe it) – he believes that such a rating would bring more money in than the hardcore bloody Rambo managed to make. But why the fuck does Stallone want to make Rambo V a science fiction movie?
Possibly looking to create a Rambo series analogue to the Rocky series’ robot, Stallone is going scifi with the next film in his Vietnam vet series. The film appears to be based on a book that Stallone previously optioned, Hunter by James Byron Huggins. Here’s the Aint It Cool supplied synopsis of Rambo V, which Coming Soon proves is very, very, very (like down to the word) similar to Hunter‘s:
John Rambo could track anyone – or anything – on earth. Now the military desperately needs him for a mission that his ultrasensitive instincts tell him he should refuse. A beast is loose somewhere north of the Artic Circle. It has already decimated a secret research facility and annihilated a squad of elite military guards. And the raging creature is headed south toward civilization, ready to wreak bloody devastation.
It’s a job that Rambo and his 22-year-old hunting partner, Beau Brady, can’t turn down, but they and a team of highly-skilled special forces kill team discover that the prey is a terror beyond their wildest imagination – a half-human abomination created by a renegade agency through a series of outlawed genetic experiments. It has man’s cunning, a predator’s savageness, and a prehistoric power that has transcended the ages. And even if Rambo and Beau survive its unrelenting hunger for human blood, they’ll still have to contront the grim reality that it may have grown immortal.
Ugh. This is, frankly, a terrible idea. While the Rambo films should always be heightened, they shouldn’t ever be science fiction or horror. Merging your genres at this late stage is never a good idea. I’m hoping that someone manages to convince me that this isn’t a disaster in the making, otherwise it looks like we’re in for the Stallone cyclical fall. It was nice enjoying his movies while it lasted.
By the way, that poster? Not a fanmade manip. It was supplied to AICN by Stallone himself.