After rising to fame with ‘Rocky’ (1977), a film that he himself scripted, Sylvester Stallone continued his career to become an action film legend thanks to ‘Cornered’released in 1982. Being an adaptation of the novel ‘First Blood’, by David Morrell, it underwent important changes upon its arrival to the big screen, and one of the biggest was, precisely, that of the leading actor , since the list of suitors who were considered for the role before “Sly” was really long.
The main favorite was Al Pacino. The New York actor of Italian origin even started conversations with the production team and Ted Kotcheff, director, but he set a condition that no one was willing to fulfill. The then veteran actor (he was over 40 years old) wanted Rambo to be a character with serious mental health problems, and in the face of refusal, he rejected the role. Everyone knows his rivalry with Robert de Niro, who came from two very important roles in ‘Raging Bull’ and ‘Taxi Driver’, so he would probably want to match himself with his great rival with a performance to match.
But he was not the only one, and we found other big names among those who were tested to give life to Rambo, who at that time was not yet John, as we will discover. These were nothing less than Clint Eastwood, Chuck Norris, Terence Hill, Dustin Hoffman, John Travolta and of course, his own Robert de Niro. The refusals of all of them were the ones who ended up giving the role to Stallone, who would leave his mark beyond his performance in front of the cameras.
And it was a miracle that Stallone accepted, since the first cut of the film lasted no less than 3 hours. After cutting it down and finally staying at the final 93 minutes that it lasts, the legendary actor gave the go-ahead for its screening in movie theaters.
John Rambo was John thanks to Stallone
The name John Rambo could hardly have been more coincidental. Morrell, author of the novel on which the film is based, still did not have a clear name for the protagonist of his work, until his wife brought him a basket of apples, one of them being the Rambo Apple species, a word that he liked so much that he adopted it for the character. Therefore, in the book, this is simply Rambo, so he was missing a first name, which is not mentioned in the written work.
The name John was Stallone’s own idea., a name that was not chosen, as far as is known, for any specific reason. Curiously, John Rambo ended up dying in the book… like practically all the characters, something that in the movie, as we could see, changed radically.
