Rambo Prequel Director Teases A Different Rambo, Charting The Untold Road To First Blood
Exclusive: Sisu director Jalmari Helander locks and loads John Rambo, an explosive action prequel starring Noah Centineo.
File this under: not the Rambo you think you know. 'Sisu' director Jalmari Helander is making a prequel called 'John Rambo', and he says the guy we meet at the start is not yet the haunted, one-man wrecking crew from 'First Blood'. Different vibe, by design.
'We are starting in a place where everything is basically pretty okay for Rambo. He is happy and younger. We are telling the origin story: what happens that turns him into the man you see in First Blood,' Helander told GamesRadar+.
What we actually know
- Title: 'John Rambo' (a prequel/origin story)
- Director: Jalmari Helander ('Sisu')
- Star: Noah Centineo (Netflix's 'The Recruit') as a young John Rambo
- Writers: Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani (the duo behind the DCEU's 'Black Adam')
- Setting: reportedly during the Vietnam War
- Sylvester Stallone: not involved
- Timeline so far: Helander's attachment surfaced in May; Centineo's casting landed in August
So how is this Rambo different?
Helander is framing it as a true origin tale: Rambo before the scars, before the permanent thousand-yard stare. Starting him as 'happy and younger' is a swing for a character defined by trauma, but it also opens up a clean narrative question: what exact chain of events forges the 'First Blood' version of the man? If you are expecting wall-to-wall carnage from minute one, maybe temper that. This sounds like the road to that guy, not the guy already fully formed.
Quick franchise refresher
The series started with 1982's 'First Blood', adapted from David Morrell's novel. Stallone plays a United States Army Special Forces veteran who returns from Vietnam, becomes a traumatized drifter, and uses elite skills to do battle with corrupt cops, drug cartels, and whatever other bad guys make the mistake of underestimating him. Four sequels followed, most recently 'Rambo: Last Blood' in 2019.
Why Helander is an intriguing pick
Helander made his name with 'Sisu', a lean Finnish action thriller about a Nazi-hunting gold prospector during the Lapland War of 1944. It is brutal, stylized, and very sure of itself. His follow-up, 'Sisu: Road to Revenge', jumps ahead two years and pits the same relentless protagonist against the Red Army. That sequel hits theaters on November 21. If you have seen 'Sisu', you can probably picture how Helander might stage violence and survival under extreme pressure. That sensibility, paired with Haines and Noshirvani's big-studio scripting muscles, suggests a younger, more human Rambo who still bleeds and breaks before he becomes the myth.
Bottom line: expect a character-first starting point, Vietnam in the background, and a Rambo who has not snapped yet. The curious part? Centineo taking on an icon without Stallone in the mix. Different can be good. Now we wait to see how far they push it.