Could Ryan Gosling Play This Iconic Sylvester Stallone Character?

Remember in Barbie, how the Kens saw Sylvester Stallone as their beacon of masculinity? The fur coats and the Italian Stallion of it all? Well, Sly himself thinks that Gosling can take on one of his most iconic roles—and personally? I would love to see Gosling’s take on it.

When Stallone was on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, he was talking with host Jimmy Fallon about meeting Gosling at a dinner. Gosling famously used Stallone as inspiration for Ken, but Stallone revealed that Gosling’s love of his filmography goes way back—back to when Gosling was a kid, and he refused to let people make fun of him for dressing up like John Rambo.

“I met [Ryan Gosling] at a dinner,” Stallone told Fallon. “Obviously, we are opposites. He’s good-looking. I’m not. Seriously! Could you imagine me as Ken? It doesn’t work at all … [Ryan] goes, ‘I was fascinated by Rambo, and I used to go to school dressed as Rambo, and people would chase me away and I still didn’t stop. I’d vacation as Rambo.’ He just kept saying that he had a lot of affiliation with Rambo. And I thought, you know, this is interesting. If I ever pass the baton, I’ll pass it on to him because he loves the character.”

I would like to push back at Stallone’s assertion that he’s not good-looking. I very much think that he is one of our hottest Italians. We must defend Stallone’s appeal!

But back to Gosling. We don’t know whether or not Rambo will be passed on to Gosling anytime soon, but we do know that Stallone would happily support the casting. What’s great about this is how genuine Stallone is about Gosling’s love of the character.

Bringing fans in to take over characters kind of rules, actually

First Blood came out in 1982, the same year that Rocky III did, and it was a big year for Stallone’s fans. While Gosling was only two years old when the first Rambo movie came out, two other Rambo movies were released in the ’80s that many kids flocked to. It was, for Stallone, the next big franchise he took on after Rocky and another film that Stallone helped to write.

Gosling being obsessed with John Rambo as a kid makes sense since the last of those first three Rambo movies came out when he was seven years old. All of this is just to help point out why Gosling (who we know can play an action lead) would be a great choice for a Rambo recasting because we know he’d care about the character he was bringing to life.

Rambo: Last Blood came out in 2019, so I don’t think we’ll be making a new Rambo movie any time soon. But it is nice to know that if the baton was going to be passed on, Stallone wants it to go to someone who cares about the character and who he knows can do John Rambo justice.

(featured image: Warner Bros.)