With Rambo set to blow-up theaters on January 25, we recently caught up to Sylvester Stallone in Beverly Hills at the film's press junket where the man they call "Sly" dished the dirt on everything from getting Rambo off the ground and how the character has changed to "old school" actions heroes, the Rambo kill count, and how John Rambo would stack-up against Jason Bourne.

Sylvester Stallone on the current political climate in the United States:

"Well, I think it can’t get worse! It has to get better, there is no question about it. It’s like, unfortunately, history has to repeat itself over and over. We had the same thing we’re seeing today with Vietnam. So change will be good, it’s like cleaning the house and getting rid of the old ideas and coming up with new ones. So I think it will be a positive situation. Unfortunately, right now it’s a painful situation and it could have been avoided with a little bit of intelligence. Also, in regards to Rambo, we had the same situation when Rambo II came out and it was the Reagan era with many tensions and conflicts. And it just seems the country goes into a certain mood when you have a situation and it lends itself to a film of this nature. It seems to come together and, aside from politics, which I’m not a genius about, it was inevitable and it’s going to be a new day soon. I just hope it’s not too late to keep America - to be respected around the world, to get that respect back."

Stallone on why he chose Burma given the tension of the war zone:

"Well, it’s pretty much unknown and yet it’s one of the most brutal situations in the world. The reason it’s still unknown is that the Burmese are so rich that they spend millions of dollars with Washington lobbyists to keep all of this mess quiet. It reminded me of the subject of The Magnificent Seven. You have one little small area with peasants being overwhelmed by this brutal military force, which is only second to the Chinese, and the fact that they are holding out and they are picked out because they are Christians and Rambo is an atheist at this time, and he had lost most of his humanity, so I thought this could be a great setting for the new Rambo movie. Overall, rather than trying to do something about Iraq or Afghanistan, which I thought would have been an insult to the rightful men who are fighting, to think that a fictional character can come and change everything, I thought this would be more real. First I was going to do something about Mexico and that whole situation at the border with rising crime and drug cartels, but I thought it was a different type of problem, this human trading. Also, I wanted to do something more spiritual and visually interesting. I really like the jungle."

Sly on whether it's harder to do his own stunts now that he's older:

"Pretty hard indeed! I did everything but one stunt, the one where I’m supposed to jump off the hill during the explosion when the big bomb goes off. I really thought the stunt guy was going to die! I felt bad. And we had to do it twice, and it was very slippery. You will have to look at the ‘making of’ when the video comes out because there were so many injuries during the shooting, like snake bites, cuts, and so on. But this made the movie such a great adventure because of all of these incidents. Everyone at first waited and was scared. I said, 'I know,' but I said this is like a war and you’re all going to be sad to go home. You’re going to go home and look at your husband or your wife and kids and tell them: 'You have it so easy you don’t know. So don’t even complain to me again!'"

On finding the right look and the challenges of editing:

"It was so difficult indeed. The editing took forever. Compared to Rocky, I thought this would be easy and it wasn’t because I wanted it to be brutal and real. When you see lots of these films, you don’t even know how complicated they are to put together. A battlefield is a terrifying situation to look at, and I wanted to get all of it there. And it was very hard because of the timing of the editing, the choice of the music and trying to figure out the female character, and for her to realize that war is natural and peace is not. This woman has to listen to Rambo telling her, 'You’re not going to change anything and men will be always in turmoil. This is never going to stop, no matter what you do. Don’t think we can hold hands and it’s going to be peaceful forever.' She got to learn it the hard way and, for example, the ending was very difficult to shoot."

Stallone on how Rambo has changed and how the character changed him:

"Well, he has become more cynical. I have, myself, become more cynical as I get older. You look around - what the truth is - and everything you were promised as a young person, it doesn’t really come true. Rambo realizes that God has forsaken him. He feels that people have forsaken him, so he lives in exile. And he wants to be left alone, but there is one ray of hope with these missionaries who believe that humanity can still rise at the top, that people can be good and have a good life. He doesn’t really believe in this but there is something about him that wants to protect this woman and this group. He wants to see them get out alive. But in doing that, he is given a purpose and he is reborn: 'fighters fight.' This is the last-moment battle before he wants to go home. This is why at the beginning of the movie you have: 'Don’t you want to know what’s going on back at home?' And him to reply, 'You need to have a good reason for that.' At the end of this film he has a good reason. There is nothing more that he can do, he confronted most of his demons and now, in an ideal world, he wants to go back and build a life, even though there is no life to build because he is too old. Life has passed him by."

On whether there is some type of correlation to his own life:

"Oh, yeah. The phenomenal thing that happened to me is that I was presented with two characters: one is the ultimate optimist , Rocky, and then you have Rambo, the ultimate pessimist, the dark side, the real killer side, the primitive side. It’s a blessing, and at the same time you’re going to always be remembered for them, no matter what you do. So I thought that I should be true to who I am and not try to prove that I’m some versatile creature, and everything else. Do what you do well, and do it honestly."

Sylvester Stallone on Old School Action, Kill Counts, and Rambo Page 2