Los Angeles

IT’S official. John Rambo has hung up his bandolier.

Sylvester Stallone has admitted that he’s now a bit too old to revive his muscle-bound, post-traumatic stress disorder-riddled Vietnam veteran from the ‘Rambo’ movie series.

Speaking to Variety, the 69-year-old action legend said: “The heart’s willing, but the body says, ‘Stay home!’

“It’s like fighters that go back for one last round and get clobbered. Leave it to someone else.”

This means that the planned fifth movie, which was tentatively being called Rambo: Last Blood, is now off the slate.

He added that he is happy with where he left the series, with the staggeringly violent Rambo from 2008.

“You know when you realise there’s nothing more to pull out?” he added.

“As an action film, I was very satisfied that it dealt with the Burmese situation. It had one foot in a current event, the longest civil war in history, 65 years at that time.

“It was so brutal, which civil war is, I was shocked they even gave me an R-rating. I didn’t want to compromise. I said, ‘This is probably going to be the last decent film of this genre that I’m going to do as a solo act’.

“When that was accomplished, I never felt the same willingness to do it again.

“There’s nothing left. When they asked me to do another Rambo, I said, ‘If I can’t do better than I did last time, and I can’t, then why’?”

The series started way back in 1982 with First Blood, which was a hit, hauling in over $125 million, over $300 million today (about M4.8 billion).

The sequel, Rambo: First Blood Part II, released in 1985, did even better, making $660 million.

Sly added that he’s also not involved in the planned Rambo TV series, currently being developed by Fox, and which will centre on Rambo’s son.

“I don’t want to cast aspersions,” he said, “but it’s delicate to try to replace a character with his son. I’ve seen the son of Flicka, the son of Tarzan, the son of King Kong, the son of Godzilla. It’s a very difficult premise.” – Yahoo