Sylvester Stallone Made Major Changes To James Cameron's Rambo 2 Script

James Cameron tried to retain the social commentary aspects of "First Blood" with his script for "Rambo: First Blood Part II," but Sylvester Stallone made sure most of it was cut. Aside from having one of the most ridiculous titles in film history, "First Blood Part II" was where the franchise started to abandon so much of what made the 1982 original work. As the "Rambo" movies go, the second wasn't quite as ridiculous as the third, in which Stallone's Vietnam vet essentially takes on the entire Soviet army solo. But it did see the formerly pacifist John J. Rambo dispatch a full 75 bad guys, which, compared to his kill count of zero in "First Blood," is quite the shift.

After the first film's director, Ted Kotcheff, maintained much of the social commentary contained in David Morrell's original 1972 novel, "Part II" director George P. Cosmatos clearly tried to take Rambo in a new direction. But it wasn't just Cosmatos that helped Stallone's former Green Beret transform into a superhero. In fact, he arguably wasn't responsible for it at all. Cameron penned the screenplay for the 1985 sequel, and he took Sly's character from a reluctant warrior to a bonafide action hero (just as he did with Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley in 1986's "Aliens").

Except, Cameron had some help in that regard from Stallone himself, who had previously put Rambo's defining feature in "First Blood." Indeed, Sly only agreed to star in the first movie if he could re-write the script, which he did, removing the kills and making Rambo a much more sensitive and ultimately likable character. That changed with "Part II," and while you might think all the newly-added violence was solely Cameron's contribution, it seems Stallone had also decided Rambo needed to renounce his pacifist ways.

In the early 80s, production company Carolco — which would later put out James Cameron's "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," the greatest action movie of all time — tapped Cameron to turn Kevin Jarre's "First Blood" sequel story treatment into a full script. He wouldn't be working alone, though.

Rather, he would work on his version of "First Blood Part II" before his screenplay was heavily edited by Sylvester Stallone. In an interview with Terminator Files, Cameron once recalled how he accepted the "First Blood Part II" writing gig "for the money," adding, "That film put them on the map. I admire the film's success and I'm happy for everybody involved, but I always have to distance myself from it because it's not the film I wrote — it was substantially rewritten by Sylvester Stallone."

Cameron's draft, titled "First Blood II: The Mission," featured the same basic story as the final movie, with Rambo returning to Vietnam to rescue prisoners of war. But the original script was, to use Cameron's description from a 1986 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, "a lot heavier" and featured "a lot more character." According to the famed director, "They did wind up throwing out about the first half of it" but "kept a lot of the action," ultimately giving it a "superhero-type quality." For Cameron, it was important to maintain the exploration of Rambo's traumatized psyche from the first movie, but it seems Stallone's edits ensured most of that was jettisoned. As such, while it may seem as though Cameron was the man chiefly responsible for turning John J. Rambo into a superhero, it was in fact Stallone, despite having done all he could to keep the character grounded only three years prior.

You can read James Cameron's "First Blood II: The Mission" script online, where you'll see how clearly it differs from the final movie. For one thing, it opens on the Veterans Administration Hospital rather than a labor facility, with Richard Crenna's Colonel Sam Trautman finding John J. Rambo in an isolation cell in the hospital's basement. Immediately, then, Cameron's version was more focused on the psychological state of its hero, but Sylvester Stallone changed that.

Cameron also originally had Rambo working with a sidekick who provided comic relief and helped the hero with the more technological aspects of his mission. Word is that John Travolta was supposed to portray Rambo's companion, but the role was removed by Stallone, who instead included Vietnamese fighter Co Phuong Bao (Julia Nickson) as the character who assists Rambo on his mission to free the prisoners of war. Speaking of which, those prisoners had more fleshed-out backstories in Cameron's first draft, but Stallone cut most of this material in order to get to the action — again, in stark contrast to how he'd approached the script for "First Blood."

Cameron wanted to preserve that careful balance between action and making Rambo a sympathetic figure. His "First Blood Part II" script did contain more violence than the first movie, but it wasn't quite as gratuitous as Stallone's version. Interestingly enough, Cameron told THR that he managed to repurpose some of his original "First Blood Part II" screenplay for "Aliens" by having the characters "come back from something they were traumatized by," with the director adding, "There was a bit of that delayed stress syndrome stuff in 'Aliens' they didn't use in 'Rambo II.'"