Sisu: Road to Revenge director Jalmari Helander has already proven his affinity for bloody and brutal action, which will hopefully make him the perfect filmmaker to helm the upcoming Rambo prequel. Discussing the action movie project, Helander has now revealed that the prequel, titled John Rambo, will bring something “different” to the iconic action hero.
Played, of course, by Sylvester Stallone, the Rambo franchise began all the way back in 1982’s First Blood, which introduced audiences to United States Army Vietnam War Veteran John Rambo, who finds himself at war with the law while traveling through the small town of Hope, Washington. Based on the novel by David Morrell, the Rambo franchise upped the action and violence more and more in its subsequent sequels, with audiences’ last adventure with Rambo being in 2019’s widely panned Rambo: Last Blood.
Now, Sisu director Jalmari Helander will attempt to breathe new life into the Rambo franchise. The upcoming prequel has already found its leading man in Black Adam and The Recruit star Noah Centineo, with Helander now revealing to GamesRadar+ that John Rambo will introduce what’s surely to be a jarringly “happy” version of the typically tortured character…
“Of course, it’s different, because we’re gonna start in a place where everything is basically pretty okay for Rambo. He’s happy and younger and all that, because we are telling the origin story. What would happen to him? Why did he become that kind of dude that we’ve all seen in First Blood? So it’s different.”
‘John Rambo’ Will Explore the Character’s Time in Vietnam
Bringing something different to Rambo is clearly Jalmari Helander’s main aim with the prequel. While we don’t know exactly what John Rambo will cover, the filmmaker previously revealed exclusively to MovieWeb that the movie will explore his time spent in Vietnam and the experiences that turned him into the action hero we know and love.
“I’m not sure. It’s going to be my take on Rambo, that’s for sure, but it’s a process. Still going on. I can’t answer it yet.
It’s a story about what happened to this soldier in Vietnam that made him the man we all saw in First Blood. But of course, it’s not like a drama of somebody having a mental breakdown, it’s, of course, an action film at the same time.”
And one thing we’re confident that Helander can pull off is action. The director has already demonstrated his affinity for the genre with the Sisu franchise, which centers on Jorma Tommila as Aatami Korpi, an action hero who has been likened to both Rambo and John Wick. Released in 2022, the first outing follows a mysterious lone prospector who, after being robbed by a group of Nazi soldiers during the last days of World War II, must wage a one-man war of his own. The action movie was met with critical acclaim and is now streaming for free on Tubi.
This year brings Aatami Korpi back for more bloodshed in Sisu: Road to Revenge, which picks up not long after the first movie and finds Korpi on a cross-country chase when he finds himself being hunted by the man who killed his family. Sisu: Road to Revenge is due to hit theaters on November 21 and currently holds a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 94%.