Rambo

[Riverwolf]

Last Blood.
Finally watched this last night.
Always been a fan since Rocky 1.
If nothing else, the booby trap sequence in the tunnels is worth the watch.

[IMG][/IMG]

[Sage97]

Not as brutal as the last one but I still enjoyed it. Rambo has been one of my heroes since First Blood.

[RP]

I'm a Rambo fan but respectfully request that this be the last one...

[Dru Edwards]

I've never seen Last Blood but First Blood was a great movie. I'll check it out if it comes out on Netflix.

[619TF]

Originally Posted by RP

I'm a Rambo fan but respectfully request that this be the last one...

As someone who has seen every movie in the series I second your request.

[RP]

Originally Posted by 619TF

As someone who has seen every movie in the series I second your request.

As my dear departed mother - olav ha-sholom - would have put it, "Enough with the Rambo already."

[KenL]

I know and like the first one, but that's it. How many of them are there?

[619TF]

Originally Posted by KenL

I know and like the first one, but that's it. How many of them are there?

Depending on how you count there's at least 5.

First Blood (1982)
First Blood 2 (1985)
Rambo 3 (1988)
Rambo (2008)
Last Blood (2019)

[RP]

I recall reading an interesting article about the author of First Blood, David Morrell https://davidmorrell.net. He wrote the book during his early writing period before completing his doctorate in English Literature. Years later, he was approached about a publishing deal and thought the publisher meant his doctoral thesis. No, they meant First Blood. Money was tight then, but he had to get legal representation which cost him $500 or so dollars that he didn't have. The lawyer insisted that Morrell receive not only royalties for the book but the non-existent movie version as well. Being the thorough type, the lawyer also insisted that the contract specify that Morrell receive royalties from any representation of John Rambo which the author thought to be the height of ridiculousness. I imagine few people ever read First Blood, but I'm sure that Mr. Morrell made a pretty penny off of the movie, videos, action figures, lunch boxes, etc. Needless to say, he no longer teaches...

[dhodgeh]

If they would have followed the book (First Blood) a bit closer, there would not have been any sequels.

Just sayin'.........

D

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by RP

As my dear departed mother - olav ha-sholom - would have put it, "Enough with the Rambo already."

I agree. I had seen the first one, set in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, and thought it was a pretty good action flick. The second one, which caused FAR more uproar and media reaction, I intended to miss entirely. But after it came out in the US, my wife and I traveled to Asia, first to Taiwan, then to Hong Kong, then Macau, back to Hong Kong, then Japan. Everywhere we went there were enormous billboards advertising "Rambo."

In the US it was released as "Rambo: First Blood Part II," but over there it was just "Rambo." And Asian audiences were flocking to see it.

Which I had difficulty understanding. "Rambo is killing Asian people in this movie, lots of them, from what I understand. Why are Asians going to see this movie?" I asked my wife.

So when we got back to Hong Kong I went by myself to see it. (My wife had NO interest in going.) Watching a movie with a Chinese audience was an interesting cultural experience: the theater seats had ashtrays in their backs, and I seemed to be the only nonsmoker in the room. The air was blue-grey with cigarette smoke.

Before the movie started there weren't any movie trailers, but instead there were cigarette commercials, identical to the commercials that had been banned on US television so many years before. I realized with a start that Marlboro and Salem had never stopped making commercials, they just stopped showing them in America.

Same music, same theme songs: "You can take Salem out of the country, BUT..."

Not that you could hear them very clearly: the folks in the audience were talking loudly all the way through them, and continued talking all the way through the movie. That's a cultural tendency I'd already witnessed in Taiwan and Macau: Chinese people on their home ground tend to talk so loudly and constantly that they make us loud, boisterous Americans seem as silent as Swedes in comparison...

That's very, VERY different than Japan.

Finally the movie started, and about the second or third person that Rambo surreptitiously scragged was a Caucasian actor pretending to be a Soviet Spetsnaz special forces soldier. All the actors playing Russians had vividly blue eyes, so there was no mistaking them for Vietnamese, particularly since the camera got closeups of their faces at the instant they realized Rambo's inescapable wrath.

So I thought, okay, he's killing white folks, too, and that makes it more acceptable to Asian movie audiences: he's killing BOTH kinds of bad guys!

Anyway, it was a very effective action flick, though I found the torture scene where he got shackled to a metal bed frame and zapped with electricity to be fairly nauseating...when that began I stepped out to use the john.

When it came out three years later I did see "Rambo III" in the theater, and that was a terrible movie, in my opinion. Even though its 1988 release is hardly fresh in mind all these years later, it had its effect: I haven't bestirred myself to see any of the Rambo movies made in this century.

As RP's late mother would put it: "Enough with the Rambo already."


Wade Hampton Miller

[Brucebubs]

I thought Stallone was in this one ...

[619TF]

Originally Posted by Brucebubs

I thought Stallone was in this one ...

Only in his pre-acting High School days.

[Neil K Walk]

I preferred his Rocky movies. I wouldn't say that he is "dumb" either. He wrote the first Rocky and I have to say that the last two installments with him as a supporting actor have been very good.

[jseth]

I really enjoyed reading "First Blood", the book by David Morell... that book led me into reading a bunch of his stuff, which was all different yet all very good.

I was a bit shocked to see the difference between that first movie and the book. As someone already mentioned, there wouldn't have been any sequels after that, if they had followed the book more closely.

Certainly has been a money-maker for Stallone... hard to believe he needs the dough so much that he keeps making these movies in his present state... sigh... but, in all fairness, the guy HAS made a few pictures that were solid, which is more than I can say for a lot of "actors"...

"Adrienne!!!!"