Sly Stallone Voice Mail Clarifies Subtleties Of Rambo 5

Leave it to the media to get the story wrong. Last week, the web was swarming with talk that the new Rambo movie would be just a big dumb action flick. Hard to imagine anyone would believe such talk.

After leaking details of the rich and interwoven themes he planned for the fifth installment of the Rambo cycle, auteur Sylvester Stallone was dismayed to pick up his internet and find Harry Knowles’ Aintitcool readers comparing the planned film to of all things Universal Soldier. And unfavourably! And somehow getting it into their brains that Jonathan Rambo would fight robot soldiers in this latest installment.

But it got so bad that Stallone himself was forced to call the nerd king and leave a message roughly stating: You pathetic ignoramus. Forgive me for thinking you and your legions of imbeciles could grasp the complexity of my planned meta-text about the meaning of violence, and how within physical expressions of interior alienation, the signifier folds back upon the signified, forming an eternally comingled metaphor for destruction’s interdependency. Somehow, I thought that was clear enough to everyone, but I suppose I’ll have to hold your hand through every inch of this journey.

If you want to listen to the voicemail yourself, Knowles has posted it on his site. Some excepts:

I appreciate you posting that but I think there’s been one slight confusion because of all the talk back, I think the majority of these individuals misunderstood. It’s not Universal Soldier; it’s not me fighting some super solider. It’s actually a feral beast. It’s a thing. It’s this amalgamation of fury and intelligence. And pure unadulterated rage. It’s before men became human. This is when they were still inhuman, and so what he confronts is something that is one’s virtual nightmare but in no sense of the world does he go against quote a Dolph Lundgren or Claude Van Damme, a Universal super soldier. He’s going against a feral beast.

That’s what makes it uniquely different. It’s like man conscious fighting this dark, dangerous, uncontrollable subconscious.

I wish somehow you could take this message and give it to people that what they assume is Stallone or Rambo battling a squad of super-soldiers is just the opposite. It’s your worst nightmare. You’re battling your primitive self, which has a lot more cunning and power than you can ever imagine.