And, make no mistake, Rambo worked on every conceivable level – as a flat-out action movie, as a piece of issue-based social filmmaking, as a way of utterly obliterating the Burmese tourist industry, as a warning against the use of HGH at an advanced age, as a reminder that nobody looks good with a mullet. We could go on.

But anyway, that’s why we’re thrilled at the news that Sylvester Stallone has just signed on to direct Rambo 5, due to start filming next year. What’s more, Sylvester Stallone is also thought to be writing Rambo 6. Plus Stallone wants Rambo 7 to be an animated cartoon, and Rambo 8 to be a musical, and Rambo 9 to be a stageplay and Rambo 10 to be a remake of Rambo 6 starring children and puppets and Rambo 11 to be an avant-garde Warhol-style close-up of one of his own eyelashes that lasts for 48 hours.

All true. Except for the last 57 words.

Though easy to mock at the time, when Sylvester Stallone revisited one of his most famous cinematic creations for Rocky Balboa, he crafted an elegant, eloquent finale to the series that dropped the overblown posturing of its previous sequels and let the character go with a respect and dignity that nobody really thought possible.

And, right after that, Sylvester Stallone made another Rambo movie, about an old bloke killing everything and running around going “Aaargh!” a lot. So it all balances out.

And, unquestionably, Rambo was a success. It made money. It regained Sylvester Stallone’s position as the daddy of the gormless action movie. It reminded Americans that diplomacy never works and the only to resolve international disputes is to send a mental old pensioner into the woods to tear out peoples’ throats and shred them to pieces with a minigun.

That’s why it’s nothing short of genius that Sylvester Stallone has just signed up to make Rambo 5, while simultaneously writing Rambo 6. Moviehole reports:

The aging action-hero has already written “Rambo 5” – rumoured to be shooting next year in Bulgaria, though set in the United States – and is about to put pen to paper on a sixth installment of the series. Also, the next two films won’t be War films like the original movies… but just straight-up action thrillers.

That’s awesome news – when it comes to near-silent beefcakes mumbling something vaguely philosophical before firing 600 arrows through a guerrilla’s face, nobody does it better than Sylvester Stallone. But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here – we still have our reservations about Rambo 5 and Rambo 6. For instance:

*Action thrillers? That sounds terrible. Scooby Doo is an action thriller. If Rambo 5 is about Sylvester Stallone investigating a haunted funfair we’re going to be deeply pissed off.

*To make Rambo 5 better than Rambo 4, Stallone clearly needs to up the body count. We’re not sure that’s even physically possible, to be honest, unless the whole film is just a fast-forwarded domino line of shifty-looking south east Asian men getting their faces blown off one after another for a full day.

*If Rambo 5 starts filming next year, Sylvester Stallone will be 63, so he could feasibly be in his late sixties by the time Rambo 6 rolls around. Let’s hope that Sylvester Stallone has already factored that into the script and made sure that Rambo’s biggest enemies in that film are incontinence and an inability to eat soup properly.

*Remember that Sylvester Stallone needed vast quantities of Human Growth Hormone to keep him in shape for Rambo 4. We wouldn’t be surprised if, for Rambo 6, Stallone has to resort to drinking babies’ spinal fluid and injecting himself with unicorn semen.

Other than all that, though, great. We can’t wait.

Read more:

Sly Directing Rambo 5 – Moviehole

Folded:

• Rambo on DVD (‘cos the man is a beast)

• Darth Vader does Thriller (quite funny really)

• Low-cost, small town clothing retailers: ‘Bobby Dazzler’, ‘ReVamp’ and the like (probably the best shop names in the world)

• Electric Feel by MGMT (awash with 80’s influences, this corking tune is about to be played to death)

• Clarkson’s Car Years on Dave (laugh at his hair; laugh at his June 2000 prediction that the supercar is dead)

Creased:

• The sad passing of movie effects auteur Stan Winston (from The Terminator to Aliens to Predator to Iron Man, this genius had a hand in everything great)

• The Decent 2 (how, we don’t know. We’re worried)

• GTA IV fatigue (for all its perfecto gameplay, once GTA’s main plot is done and dusted the re-play factor isn’t that high)

• The miserable surgeons of Grey’s Anatomy (a self-involved bunch of smart ass tossers. Except Addison, she’s a sexy lady)

• ‘McDreamy’ (see above – a live-action Ken doll, only with less brain matter)

Folded:

• Rambo 4 (I see dead people)

• James (imagine if you had all this lot in one room, put them all on chairs then invited your mates round for a beer. It’ll certainly get you out of any further Best Man duties)

• Jennifer Rafferty (find this talented lady a more interesting/less commercial sound)

• Mother’s Day (got one? Buy her something nice. She’s dead? Buy her some flowers)

• Vintage ‘Nostalgia Collection’ Action Man (why don’t you grow up? No, we’re fine, thanks)

Creased:

• Russell Brand nude (nobody needs it and, as far as we are aware, nobody has asked for it either)

• Tesco garlic and herb ready-cooked chicken (smells nice in the shop. Get one home and it tastes like stomach lining)

• Delicate universal remotes (ok, unless you breathe on them – then they reset for the tenth time and you explode)

• Juno original soundtrack (worse than a student union poetry reading)

• Oscar 2008 (No Country For Old Men is a great movie, but an Academy Award for adapting the screenplay to be almost exactly the same as the book? No, it should have gone to The Diving Bell And The Butterfly)

That's right – more Rocky and Rambo films! Possibly. Sylvester Stallone has just signed a two-movie deal to direct and star in two brand new action films, and already it's thought that Stallone is working on sequels to Rocky Balboa and the new Rambo movie.

And why not. Sylvester Stallone has only ever had three good ideas in his life, and two of them were Rocky and Rambo. He'd make a film of his third good idea, but it's hard to make figuring out that shoes go on your feet instead of your hands very cinematic.

Until Britney Spears records a new album called I Have A Distressing Mental Illness, there's not better example of art imitating life than Sylvester Stallone. When he made Rocky he was a nobody, just like Rocky. But by the time he made Rocky 5, he'd become like the Rocky of that movie, too – bloated, lazy, overprivileged and milking a single idea until it bleeds. And when Sylvester Stallone decided to make Rocky Balboa, he was at his lowest – just like Rocky. It was a graceful comeback for the both of them.

And there's a similar sort of thing with Rambo, too, only with more guns and fighting and throat-ripping and whatnot.

Anyway, the relative box office successes of Rocky Balboa and Rambo mean that Sylvester Stallone can do whatever he likes again. And, as we all know, that means a bunch of foreigners are going to be killed horribly. Reuters reports:

Boxoffice comeback champ Sylvester Stallone has inked a lucrative deal to direct and star in two action films with "Rambo" producer Danny Dimbort. Several scripts are being considered for follow-ups to his surprise hit sequels to "First Blood" and "Rocky." With Nu Image/Millennium's new Writers Guild of America interim deal speeding up the process, the first script is expected to be ready by the fall, with production set to begin shortly thereafter.

Now, obviously it hasn't been made explicit that Sylvester Stallone will make a new Rocky movie and a new Rambo movie – especially since he's been telling people that he doesn't want to make any more of either of them – but we can't see how he even has a choice, because the other options are so stupid.

The reason people have went to see Rocky and Rambo was because of nostalgia – give Stallone a fresh new character to play and he'll need to do ten times as much work to convince people to watch it, because it'd just be a film about an angry 61-year-old man. And the other alternative is even worse – a sequel to one of Sylvester Stallone's non-Rocky, non-Rambo films. Would you go and see Demolition Man 2: Back And Even More Demolitiony? Us neither.

So let's just assume that Sylvester Stallone is working on more Rambo movies – which begs the question of how the hell he's going to manage it. When he was making the last one Stallone was chugging Human Growth Hormone like a thing possessed, so it defies logic that someone so old and out of shape would want to try and recapture their youth even though they know that they're now nothing more than an embarrassing public figure of mockery.

No, wait, we were thinking of New Kids On The Block. Sylvester Stallone should be fine.

Read more:

Stallone back in action with 2-film deal – Reuters