During a 2015 interview, Sylvester Stallone revealed his choices for recasting his most iconic roles, including Ryan Gosling as John Rambo.
Sylvester Stallone has played many iconic characters throughout his career, and here's which actors he would pick for recasting those parts. Stallone was a struggling actor before the success of 1976's Rocky, which he also wrote. He was famously offered handsome sums of money to sell the screenplay so a more established star could play the titular role, but Stallone insisted only he could do it. Rocky remains arguably his most famous character, but he's played several others too.
John Rambo debuted in the 1972 novel First Blood, and while everyone from Al Pacino to Steven McQueen was considered for the movie adaptation, Stallone was eventually hired. Rambo would soon become the poster boy for '80s action cinema with his headband, combat knife and bazooka. While they didn't spawn Stallone movie franchises, the likes of Demolition Man, Cobra and Cliffhanger rank high with fans of the actor too.
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Outside of Karl Urban inheriting the role of Judge Dredd, none of Stallone's most famous parts have been played by other performers. During a 2015 chat with Yahoo, Stallone himself gave his recasting suggestions for his most famous parts.
While promoting The Gray Man, Ryan Gosling revealed himself to be a major fan of Stallone's action movies. The actor would no doubt be flattered to hear Stallone suggest him for the role of Rambo then, which even he admits is "Kind of an odd choice, right?" Stallone famously suggested most of Rambo's dialogue be deleted from First Blood to make the character more mysterious, so the actor might have been thinking of Gosling's near-mute turn in Drive while making his choice.
Cobra - which might get a TV spin-off - was basically Stallone's attempt to make his version of "Dirty" Harry, from the character's morals right down to the casting of Dirty Harry co-stars Andrew Robinson and Reni Santoni in supporting roles. Stallone suggested Jake Gyllenhaal as his pick as he "Had a dark side" as a performer and could pull off the intensity of the obsessive detective, as seen in the likes of 2014's Nightcrawler.
Demolition Man was Stallone's 1993 futuristic action blockbuster, where his disgraced cop is thawed out to battle Wesley Snipes villain. For that role, Stallone chooses Channing Tatum for the recasting, both for his physique and - no doubt - his ability to play both action and comedy.
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Another 1993 blockbuster from Stallone saw his character Gabe Walker face off with a group of thieves in the Rocky Mountains. While mulling over this recasting, Stallone - who will play a superhero in Samaritan - mused "You need a psycho for that! Whose not afraid of heights!" With that in mind, he probably thought of Tom Cruise's infamous climbing sequence from Mission: Impossible II, which later kicked off his obsession with performing his own stunts. Of all the recastings mentioned above, a Cliffhanger reboot with Cruise sounds the most exciting.
While stretching the "iconic character" label slightly, arm-wrestling epic Over The Top still has its devotees. For Linc, Stallone suggested the role needed a real "beast," with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson quickly springing to mind. It could be argued Johnson would be a better fit for that role than even Sylvester Stallone himself.
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It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site. A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU - where Hawkeye is clearly the best character - to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle. He's super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.