When movie fans think of the name Rambo, what comes to mind is non-stop action. However, the character of John Rambo was born in a much more complex story. 1982's First Blood is a movie about a Vietnam vet dealing with the ramifications of returning home and trying to readjust to society following an unpopular war and the new film is going to revisit that in a big way.
After a series of sequels, where the lead character was largely fueled by rage, we're now gearing up for, what the title tells us is the final adventure for John Rambo. According to Sylvester Stallone, this new movie will see Rambo driven by something quite different. Here, all Rambo is trying to do is avoid being alone.
No man is an island. It's the worst dilemma or worst diseases that strikes mankind is loneliness, isolation, abandonment. And when you have that, it's so precious, there's nothing you would not do to sacrifice yourself for that person you love, including going into a burning building. So that's what I'm trying to convey, that even Rambo can't be alone anymore. He really needs human contact, he needs love.
The last Rambo movie from over 10 years ago saw the character returning to his family's ranch in Arizona at the end. The trailers for Rambo: Last Blood have shown that he is not alone there, but when one of the women that Rambo is close to is kidnapped by a drug cartel, Rambo is willing to do whatever it takes to help her.
This is what Sylvester Stallone is talking about when he says Rambo is willing to sacrifice himself for somebody he loves. Check out his comments below.
The Rambo movies, at their core, are about a man coming to terms with his role in the Vietnam War. While Sylvester Stallone feels no soldier should feel guilty for what happened there, he admits that Rambo does, and so the man has been dealing with a lot of pain throughout his life as a result.
Rambo was a tool for a machine, for a military machine. They took probably a young man, 17, who was already fragile and put him in a situation so horrible that he never recovered. So he's almost like the Frankenstein monster, say Jekyll and Hyde. It's something that he didn't ask for. The country did, and then basically discarded him. So he wanders the world, this object of scorn, a reminder of a war that no one wants to think about, that he didn't do on his own, he was asked to do it. So he has this guilt that I think a lot of Vietnam veterans should not have, but our society was so cruel to them. And that's the difference. So he's pained.
John Rambo's pain is a big part of First Blood, the original Rambo movie. The sequels are much more about the military machine continuing to use Rambo for its own purposes, but in Last Blood, we'll have a fight that John Rambo really chooses to fight.
Sylvester Stallone says that in Last Blood John Rambo has largely found peace, though he still has moments where the war comes back to haunt him. Considering the fact that Stallone himself teases the idea here that Rambo is willing to sacrifice himself, one has to wonder just how John Rambo will ultimately find final peace when Rambo: Last Blood is over.
Rambo: Last Blood is in theaters Friday.
