Simply Abu Dhabi XXXV

9 4 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I Q: Most of your movies are about resilience. Would you say you’re resilient? Yes, I would. I think that there's something about the nature of man – meaning men, women, just the human race, really. They're resilient. We've been through so many upheavals for thousands of years. Civilisations have been destroyed but they come back, and so I'm very, very into the theme of fighting back, not accepting defeat easily. If you do get defeated, rebuild yourself and come back. I think it's a very interesting, timeless theme. Q: Howmuch of yourself is in those resilient characters? I really don't separate myself from anyone else. I think that all of us have a thread that goes through us. We all understand what fear is, what loneliness, what isolation is, what victory is, what failure is, and I think if you can tell that story, people can relate to it. If you're above pain, if you're above fear, who cares? You're not human. That's what life is. One day it's beautiful, then you get one phone call and your whole life is changed. I have failed for sure, but when it works like with the Rambo or Rocky films, those characters I love. Rambo deals with the very dark side of nature that unfortunately a lot of people live with because they feel isolated. Rocky is different. He's more optimistic. He realises he's not a special man, but he tries to be special. You have optimism and pessimism in these two characters. Q: And ‘Rambo: The Last Blood’?What kind of life is he having in our modern world? Rambo is sort of a surrogate father now, but he's very paranoid about anything ever happening to her. She's just a young girl and when she finds her birth father, she wants to go to Mexico but he's a horrible guy. Rambo begs not to go but she does, and bad things happen. There's going to be some serious vintage shoots in this movie. Q: Do you consider yourself a pessimistic or an optimistic person? I believe our life is all about math, simple math. Up to about 40 years old, 45 years old, everything is wonderful. Your career is going well, you’re moving up, you're buying a house, you look good in clothes. Your kids are graduated. Then, the second half of your life, the kids are moving out, you're retiring from your job, your friends are dying. So, it becomes about subtraction. How do you deal with subtraction? That's the hard part. I think, "That's a movie, man. That's a movie." But the studio says, "No one wants to see this!" It’s a miracle it came out. I said, "To me, it's the highlight of my life." I was ready to retire at that point, and then Avi Lerner comes along, "Want to do Rambo?" I said, "Yes, all right", and then that worked out. "Want to do The Expendables?" I say, "Okay." Next thing, here I am.