Stallone on what's happened to Rambo in the last 20 years:

"Well, last time we saw him he was in Afghanistan and he was disenchanted about America. He felt America was like a big parent that had no use for him, who just threw him away. America used him and told him, 'We don’t need you anymore.' He is this angry and disillusioned soul that believed in a cause and realizes it’s all been a waste of time. I had a big speech in the movie, and I cut it. He was speaking about how war is natural and peace is not. How war is the consequence of a bunch of men on top who start the war but it’s not really your war. It’s old men starting the war, young men doing the war and nobody wins, everybody in the middle dies, and you think that God is going to make all that go away - just go home. But Rambo can’t talk like that! I can talk like that, but not Rambo... These are the dilemmas I had to face. I put lots of philosophy about what’s going on in Iraq and Afghanistan about our senior citizens who are starting these wars but don’t have to fight them. In the end, who wins? This one still has his house, his family, he is still a congressman, and this family over there is destroyed. So Rambo has [had] it, he is fed up with politics. So this is where he is at. He is a bitter individual. About the girl in this Rambo, well, it was more of a love story in the first draft and I just thought it’s not right. I just thought instead that some people are born to be protective, and his job is just to shepherd these people through this and get them out alive. And maybe in the end they understand how brutal this world is, and it’s not this idealistic thing that we can all join hands and be a united world. It’s always going to be a conflict, and it does not go away. Peace is an accident, again, war is natural. And it’s sad, and you may not agree with me, but look at how much time it takes to make peace and how in one minute you can make war! Rambo is trying to tell how she is too unrealistic, it’s going away - and Rambo learned that the hard way."

Stallone on how action heroes have changed and the Rambo kill count:

"Ah, I did kill more in Rambo III. The body count... I tried to make this one 'short and sweet.' Just kidding! Just short and brutal like these battles are. They don’t go on forever. It’s a massive explosion of violence and then it’s over. Visually, the metaphor is there for you to get the story. As far as the 'old school,' well, we went as far as we could with the 'old school' in the '80s and then it became too big, and then everyone was in a tank top and it was me against 800 guys. Then you went into the CGI generation with superheroes flying. The generation of young men watching these movies changed. The young actors doing these heroes didn’t want to do the action heroes the way we were doing them. They found their own niche, and now this is gone. You can’t do more than what they have done with these $200 or $300 million movies. So now the cycle for 'old school' movies is back. It reminded me very much of the late ‘60s when Coppola and Scorcese, and De Palma all said, 'Let’s go back to the old school thing, with a simple straight ahead story.' And that’s what I think has happened. It’s almost fresh to do this type of old school movie with Rambo. It’s very simple to follow and it’s plausible. Eighty percent of this movie could humanly be achieved to the contrary of other action movies with CGI and bigger effects."

John Rambo versus Jason Bourne?

"He’d murder him! Jason Bourne is for breakfast! Ha, I’m only kidding, I love Jason Bourne. This is a fantastic series, and Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon are fantastic. They have done an incredible job with this franchise. I thought it wouldn’t work but it gives you an idea of what can be done with real talents. You don’t need gigantic muscles. It’s fantastic stuff!"

On why it took so long to get Rambo off the ground:

"Yes, a long time. I think Miramax bought it, way back, from Canal+, or from Carolco, and they wanted to make it where Washington, D.C. is attacked, like with spaceships! But Rambo is a creature of 'nature', he lives out there. The terrain is as important as the character. So it didn’t work and they didn’t talk to me for 10 years. And then after 9/11, I thought there was something interesting with Afghanistan and about missionaries and built a story around that. But it didn’t get their approval and so another two years passed. I know it takes forever. And then Avi Lerner from Nu Image bought it from them and asked me what I wanted to do. And this is when I thought about the border war in Mexico. But I thought, after all, it would meet some disapproval, that it was another type of conflict - and then Burma came to my mind and I called Soldier of Fortune magazine and found something romantic, mystical with Burma. Something foreboding, like in Apocalypse Now, not that Rambo is in that league, but the idea of the journey up the river. So it was worth the wait, so much worth it."

Stallone on how Rambo could have been a revenge story given the end of Rambo III:

"Indeed. At first I thought we could have done a film about a Soviet Union Vietnam, which this was with Afghanistan. And everything went okay until two weeks before the movie when Nancy Reagan gives Gorbachev a kiss on the cheek and it’s the attempt at reform and the Perestroika. And suddenly I’m the trouble maker - but in this movie I really thought there was too much action and not enough thoughts. And this is the biggest problem in most action movies. You think more is better, but it’s not true. Most of the time you should reduce the amount of action to the profit of the story. This is what people expect the least, that you will have more soul in an action movie. Also, he didn’t leave any message in Rambo III, there is nothing you could have taken with you as a message. This one I felt something had to be said. This is the best movie I have ever done by far and it meant the most to me, by far."

Stallone on what he'd like to do next:

"Well, I’d love to do a remake from an old action movie, like one of the Charles Bronson movies. I have a script for Death Wish, for example. Make it more contemporary. Also, I optioned this book called ‘The Lion’s Game’ by Nelson DeMille, and it’s about Al Qaeda. It’s a Jason Bourne type movie about the tracking of a terrorist across the country, and it’s a brilliant book."

On the spirituality within Rambo:

"The idea of taking what is a very simple story: man’s brutality, what keeps a group going when your entire family has been killed, that’s the spiritual aspect to the movie. That’s the thing people underestimate; why indigenous groups rarely lose and because they have this faith. I thought bringing the missionaries with their faith also was a good idea. And to show that maybe God doesn’t love everyone equally, you have to earn that, to earn God’s love."

Sylvester Stallone on whether he belongs to one particular faith or religion:

"Well, I belong to a gym." [laughs]