An Accidental Franchise: The Rambo movies

 FIRST BLOOD, RAMBO:FIRST BLOOD PT. II, RAMBO III, RAMBO, RAMBO:LAST BLOOD

Sylvester Stallone, Brian Denehey, Richard Crenna, David Caruso. Dir. Ted Kotcheff, Tri-Star, 1982

Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Julia Nickson, Martin Kove. Dir. George P. Cosmatos, Tri-Star, 1985

Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna. Dir. Peter MacDonald, Tri-Star, 1988

Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Ken Howard. Dir. Sylvester Stallone, Weinstein Company, 2008

Sylvester Stallone, Paz Vega. Dir. Adrian Grunberg, Lionsgate, 2019

My friend Alice sent me a few movies she got into over the last months. These include Mad Max:Fury Road and The Triplets of Bellevelle, as well as all five of Stallone's Rambo movies. My thoughts on them run below.

The problem inherent to the Rambo movies is they each revive a character from a surprise-hit movie, but not his ongoing story, because the first film's genius conceit denied him any backstory. The movies all feature John Rambo, human killing machine, but they don't belong to any larger narrative or chronolgy. They're just episodes of one killing machine's life, an excuse to let Sylvester Stallone revive his career by shooting people and blowing shit up.

Each movie stands as its own construct, then, without connection to the past, save for Col. Troutman, the friend who always gets him in trouble. Until '08's Rambo, that is, which introduces us to Rambo, that dude who used to be that guy who did stuff, if you still need someone to do stuff. Like save a group of missionaries from a Burmese warlord's private army. Or save his own family, the family no previous Rambo film has mentioned, the family he's never referenced or seen, as far as we know. And maybe that's because all his family died and his family, now, are his childhood friend he never hinted at, who appears to be his maid, and her virginal, winsome teen daughter, to whom he is of the avuncular pursuasion. When his would-be niece strikes into deepest, cartel-controlled Mexico to find her father, only to fall afoul of human traffickers, it's up to that guy who did stuff to do stuff again. The movie's called Last Blood, but Rambo's alive at its end and the girl's dead. What does it all mean?

Not a lot, and less that's good. After First Blood, these other four movies have no real reason to exist, except that a studio and/or Stallone continued to roll the dice on Stallone's next-most-popular character, continued to wring revenue from that character even though he, by design, had no character. The first three sort of feel almost of a piece, inasmuch as all three feature Richard Crenna as Col. Troutman, Rambo's agent-of-misfortune. The final two, '08's Rambo, and '19's Rambo:Last Blood feel like exercises in career exhaustion, like CSNY's latest excuse to tour this summer. They don't even bother to explain Troutman's disappearance, now it's just John Rambo, human killing machine for hire. The John Rambo in these last pictures simply bears that name and description, and the movies, standard evil warlord/drug cartel killfests of no great style or wit, luck into association with a famous franchise, but they're just tired, obvious action movies to show late at night on premium cable, their association with Rambo not a lot different than wearing a t-shirt.

Thing is, they're not even sad betrayals of a venerable Hollywood institution. They're inexplicable instalments in a franchise without any reason to exist, based on a character without any distinguishing characteristics, without backstory or family or defining values, a force simply of inchoate, personified rage. John Rambo never made sense to come back as an avenging angel of our failure in Vietnam, let alone a quasi-military operator in Iraq, or whatever else. He made most sense as what he was in First Blood, an embodiment of the audience's angst, an explosion of rage at everyone and everything in its way, everything keeping it down. Reinvented as some kind of halfassed Cold War Cartoon, some generic angel of kicking-people's-butts-who-deserve-it, he's just this guy with muscles and guns. Superman and Batman were on vacation. Iron Man's in rehab. Aragorn's frollicking with halflings. Dirty Harry retired. Every other hero, even the blunt instruments, have previous investigations. Oh - send RAMBO. So they do, and these are his adventures, the guy you call when everyone's busy.

First Blood remains a classic of minimalist storytelling and maximalist body counts. First Blood II, despite making no sense, perfectly encapsulates and defines Big '80s Action movies and is sort of wonderful in its awfulness. The remaining three - exist. They don't need to. They should not. They're big-budget made-for-cable potboilers for insomniacs and tweekers.

With plenty of weed and/or imagination, First Blood & First Blood Part II add up to a good approximation of a slow weekend's TV in 1987. A fun afternoon. After that, three other movies bear Rambo's name. The curious stand advised. Explore at your own peril.