Why Sylvester Stallone Got Booed While Promoting Rambo 3

Sylvester Stallone was still one of Hollywood's biggest movie stars in 1987, but he spent most of the year smarting from the embarrassing failure of "Over the Top." The Menahem Golan-directed film aspired to be the "Rocky" of professional arm wrestling, but failed to take into account that no one watches professional arm wrestling because it is dreadfully boring. While Stallone had weathered bombs before (most notably the misbegotten country music comedy "Rhinestone"), "Over the Top" was so relentlessly awful that it made him look foolish.

Stallone needed a sure thing, so he threw himself into "Rambo III." A sequel to "Rambo: First Blood Part II," the second-highest-grossing movie of 1985, seemed like a license to print money. And sending John Rambo to Afghanistan to rescue his mentor, Colonel Sam Trautman (Richard Crenna), who's been taken prisoner by the Russians after a clandestine military operation goes bad, sounded like a solid hook.

There was just one problem. The at-the-time Soviet Union was undergoing a political transformation thanks to the reformist leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, and he was determined to get his nation's troops out of Afghanistan. This was obviously a wonderful development, but the timing couldn't have been worse for Stallone. "Rambo III" was released on May 25, 1988, only 10 days after the Soviet Union began its complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. While the world was breathing a sigh of relief, here came Stallone with a jingoistic, kill-the-Russkies action flick. The media was not pleased, which led to Stallone getting booed while promoting the film.

In a video interview with GQ, Sylvester Stallone recalled the making of "Rambo III," which, if you've seen it, is stuffed with practical stunts and pyrotechnics. "There was absolutely no special effects in it," he said. "It's all ... no CGI, I mean. It was very, very dangerous. Very boiling hot." Though Stallone seems proud of the film (I think, for all its sturm-und-drang, it's kinda dull), he knew he was in for trouble once they hit post-production. This became clear when he began doing press for the movie. Per Stallone:

"[F]rom the time we were editing to the time it came out, Russia, who had been in a cold war with us for 40 years, decided to come over and shake hands and kiss and make up. And now everyone goes, 'What is Stallone trying to do? Start another war with Russia?' And I mean, I would come into press conferences, people would boo like, 'Well, what are you trying to do?' I go, 'Have you ever heard of the Cold War? What am I trying to do?'"

Stallone's response doesn't make a lot of sense, but what could he do? "Rambo III" was too far down the road in pre-production for him to scrap the script and find a new locale for his lethal Green Beret to completely level. Unfortunately, moviegoers weren't hot on "Rambo III" either. The film grossed $189 million worldwide, which was well off the global $300 million take for "Rambo: First Blood Part II." With the world heading into a post-Cold War era, the jingoistic heroics of John Rambo felt outmoded. And so the character went away until 2008, when, riding a successful wave of nostalgia from 2006's "Rocky Balboa," Stallone brought him back with the ultra-bloody "Rambo."