‘John Rambo’ EP Says Audiences Crave ‘Masculine Alpha Males’

Dallas Sonnier has something in common with one of his favorite filmmakers, Sylvester Stallone: they’re both executive producers on the upcoming “John Rambo.”

“I’ve seen every single movie he’s ever been in, including ‘D-Tox,’” Sonnier told HollywoodinToto.

He’s referring to a 2002 Stallone thriller, also released as “Eye See You,” which came when the “Rocky” star’s career looked very different from today. Stallone was flirting with direct-to-video (remember physical videos?) before the filmmaker revived his career, along with his most famous characters, with “Rocky Balboa” and “Rambo.”

“My favorite Stallone movie is ‘Cop Land.’ It’s his best movie. It’s perfection. He should have won the Oscar for it. It’s so good on so many levels… I love movies that just immerse in a culture,” Sonnier said.

Sonnier briefly spoke about “John Rambo” while promoting other recent releases he’s been involved in, like the Armie Hammer-starring western “Frontier Crucible” and the DailyWire+ series “The Pendragon Cycle.”

The producer behind S. Craig Zahler’s “Bone Tomahawk” and most everything Daily Wire+ has released stressed that he is a “passive” producer on “John Rambo,” spending just a day on set and earning his EP credit through some good, old-fashioned leg work.

“I helped out in a big moment where someone needed my help on something. And it was the key to the project being able to move forward or not, in that moment. And so I did what I do, which is Dallas the battering ram got something done and got to be a part of that movie as a result of that,” he explained.

Sonnier has plenty of history needing to be a “battering ram” to get projects over the finish line, including mortgaging his own home to finance Zahler’s 2015 oater, “Bone Tomahawk.”

The new Rambo focuses on a younger John Rambo, while he’s still serving during the Vietnam War. Noah Centineo will be taking on the title role, and “Sisu” director Jalmari Helander is behind the camera.

Sonnier called the “John Rambo” script “great” and said Helander is the “perfect fit” while singing the praises of his two “Sisu” movies. The Rambo movies are the exact kinds of works that make up the foundation of Sonnier’s commitment to movies.

This is the guy who gave Gina Carano her comeback in “Terror on the Prairie” after Disney unfairly threw her under the bus. He brought Vincent Gallo back to the screen with “Shut In” after the actor had spent nine years away from cinema.

And he’s been the producer making things happen for Zahler on his trilogy of gut-punch, ’70s-esque pieces: “Bone Tomahawk,” “Brawl in Cell Block 99,” and “Dragged Across Concrete.”

The appeal of characters like Rambo, Sonnier argued, as well as audiences pining for the work of past decades, comes down to Hollywood forgetting how to celebrate heroes.

“I think that if you look at what the country used to have, I think we celebrated masculine alpha males. And I think you could say, well, Rocky wasn’t a perfect alpha, blah, blah. Yeah, but he became one,” the producer said. “You know, it’s the hero’s journey. It’s pure Joseph Campbell. And I just think that if you look at those characters… struggling, suffering man… overcomes all the odds and fights the system.”

The “American spirit of struggle and suffering and fighting and winning as a man,” he added, has been largely lost in recent studio Hollywood projects, and that’s why it’s a perfect time for a Rambo to return.

The big screen needs heroes and complex stories driven most by character and emotion, rather than social media-friendly social messaging, and the former is what Sonnier has dedicated his producing career to making.

“I think we’ve just lost too much of that over time,” he said, “And so obviously if you look at my movies, I’ve been trying to maintain some of that struggle and some of that heroism.”

Zachary Leeman is the author of the novel “Nigh” from publisher Gilded Masque and has covered politics and culture for LifeZette, Mediaite and others.