{"id":25935,"date":"2025-09-19T17:12:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T17:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/25935\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T17:12:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T17:12:07","slug":"stallone-wanted-to-use-ai-to-play-18-year-old-rambo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/25935\/","title":{"rendered":"Stallone wanted to use AI to play 18-year-old Rambo"},"content":{"rendered":"

The use of \u201cAI\u201d is a touchy \u2014 and often misinterpreted<\/a> \u2014 subject in the world of visual effects. But if there was one use for the emerging tech that I believe everyone could get on board with, it would be turning Sylvester Stallone into a teenage version of his gun-toting Vietnam vet John Rambo. I think I can safely speak for everyone on planet Earth when I say that we def wanna see what that. There’s no way that could go wrong.<\/p>\n

In a new interview with The Playlist\u2019s Bingeworthy podcast<\/a>, Stallone revealed that he actually went out and pitched the idea to studios just a few years back, but \u201ceveryone thought I was crazy.\u201d Why would bigwig executives think the idea of a 79-year-old man playing his 18-year-old self through the magic of de-aging technology would be crazy? Did they not see Robert de Niro in The Irishman, Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny<\/a>, or Sam Jack in Captain Marvel<\/a>? There\u2019s nothing weird about old guys fumbling around in the skin of young men at all. Audiences have never complained about that or the uncanny valley in general.<\/p>\n

According to Stallone, the idea was he could wind back the clock to explore the early days of Rambo, which, based on the brutal events of 1981\u2019s First Blood, would basically put him smack dab in the middle of the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI is sophisticated enough to go through Saigon to see him at 18 years old and basically use the same image,\u201d Stallone said. \u201cSo it isn\u2019t as big a stretch.\u201d<\/p>\n

If true, the only big stretch would be the warm-up to the septuagenarian\u2019s calisthenics regiment \u2014 and clearly Stallone isn\u2019t afraid of his hamstrings. But by his account, Hollywood has once again backed down from throwing $100 million at an idea that would probably gross $100 billion at the box office, give or take a few bucks. Why so afraid? Clearly the suits didn\u2019t see Tom Hanks play his 18-year-old self in Here. Yeah his character does more hanging around a living room rather than rolling around in jungle foliage with an M60, but still, proof of concept for TeenBo<\/a>. <\/p>\n

I will admit there are some reasons not to make a digitally de-aged Stallone Rambo prequel \u2014 mainly that the character of John Rambo, a trauma-ridden war vet with values to uphold, has lost all meaning over the last 43 years<\/a> as he evolved into a symbol of bloodlust and vengeance. (Rambo: Last Blood was a reprehensible, jingoistic disaster<\/a>.) But if you look past all that to the possibility of Stallone playing a smoothed-out JibJab version of his youthful self courtesy of AI facemapping, well, I think we\u2019re on the same page. Great idea.<\/p>\n

Sadly, this will not come to pass. Instead of picking up what Stallone was putting down, Millennium Media is moving forward with a Rambo prequel movie from Sisu director Jalmari Helander starring Noah Centineo (Netflix’s The Recruit) as the \u201980s action legend. Stallone wishes him the best.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very, very hard,\u201d he said of taking over an iconic role. \u201c[Centineo] may do a stellar job, but you\u2019re overcoming this because I went through it with Get Carter<\/a>. Everyone loves the original, and then you\u2019re always fighting that prejudice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whereas if Stallone were able to play himself at age 18, then everyone would love it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The use of \u201cAI\u201d is a touchy \u2014 and often misinterpreted \u2014 subject in the world of visual…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146,85,46,397],"class_list":["post-25935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}