Rambo
He probably had no idea that his haunted Vietnam veteran John Rambo would go on to become a Hollywood action hero.
Rambo.
Yep.
Rambo!
I recently came across a photo of these Rambo coloring books and I was instantly taken back to my childhood.
I had these exact ones.
I was obsessed with Rambo as a kid.
I remember going outside with my headband, toy knife and bow.
Even had the Buddha necklace!
I think it all came in one "kit" toy from Kmart probably.
After you were done running around pretending to be Rambo I guess you could come inside and color scenes from the movie.
So let's do a nostalgia deep dive on Rambo.
Before we do that though, we have to set the mood by hitting play on the First Blood theme by Jerry Goldsmith.
Canadian-American author David Morrell published "First Blood" back in 1972.
He probably had no idea that his haunted Vietnam veteran John Rambo would go on to become a Hollywood action hero.
The book was darker and more complex than the first Rambo movie.
It tells the story of a traumatized Green Beret whose violent clash with a small-town police force ends in tragedy – with both Rambo and his main antagonist, Sheriff Teasle, dying in the final confrontation.
The book caught Hollywood's attention, but it took nearly a decade of development hell before it reached screens.
Interestingly, stars like Clint Eastwood, Robert De Niro, and even Al Pacino were all considered for the role before Sylvester Stallone was cast.
Stallone was fresh off the success of Rocky, and proved instrumental in reshaping the character.
He advocated for Rambo's survival at the end of the movie adaptation, believing audiences needed some hope after witnessing the character's trauma.
The success of the first movie spawned a franchise that departed quite a bit from Morrell's source material.
"Rambo: First Blood Part II" (1985) and "Rambo III" (1988) transformed the character from a tragic figure into a musclebound action hero, reflecting the bombastic style of 1980s action cinema.
Part 2 went on to make over 300 million at the worldwide box office.
James Cameron, early in his career, contributed to the screenplay of the second film, though his version was heavily rewritten.
The movie franchise was pretty much done after Rambo 3, but two decades later "Rambo" (2008) emerged with even more grit, followed by "Rambo: Last Blood" (2019).
The character has become so embedded in popular culture that the term "going Rambo" entered common usage to describe an aggressive, militaristic approach to a situation.
The Retroist Podcast has a great episode on Rambo here.
Politics and opinions.
Nowadays, with social media, we expect there to be a lot of that no matter how trivial or complex the topic is.
Pre-internet Rambo movies certainly riled up a lot of folks from both sides of the spectrum.
On one hand you had Reagan and conservatives.
According to the author of the book, The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, And Feuds Of Hollywood's Kings Of Carnage, Reagan was a fan.
In 1985, ahead of a visit by invitation to the White House, Stallone was asked to bring a signed poster of Rambo: First Blood Part II. It now resides in the Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.
"John Rambo Refights Vietnam and Wins This Time".
There was a lot of commentary like that around at the time.
Reagan announced that next time terrorists take US citizens hostage, the administration would “know what to do”.
This even resulted in 'RONBO' posters being made.
In 1985, the Soldier of Fortune Magazine said this ahead of the second movie release:
Jane Fonda — as well as other Hollywood liberals who still stand against the war effort and continue to call Vietnam Veterans baby killers or brainless dupes — may lobby to have Stallone tossed out of their guild. But that’s not the 38-year-old actor- producer-director's problem. When this film releases across the country on 22 May, Stallone’s major migraine may be finding tax shelters for all the money American veterans plunk down at the ticket counter to sit for a couple of hours and see themselves portrayed in a shining light.
In 1987, Pat Broesker, writing for The LA Times said that international audiences didn't even need to relate to the Vietnam War to enjoy it:
...or to American patriotism. At least that’s what cheering audiences in places such as Israel, South Africa and the Arab world would seem to indicate. (Wire reports from Lebanon told of gun-toting moviegoers who jumped up and down in their seats, applauding Rambo’s gung-ho actions.)
Interestingly, to combat the writer for Soldier of Fortune above, some Vietnam Vets reportedly protested outside of a theater that planned to show First Blood Part 2.
Half-a-dozen members of the Veterans Speakers Alliance appeared Wednesday carrying signs with messages such as 'Rambo Opens Wounds That Were Healing' and 'The Greatest Warriors Are The Ones Who Stand For Peace.'
And then you had the completely other side of the political aisle at the time.
Rambo was a perfect target.
My fully developed adult brain can now see why!
There were numerous comments (and even a feature on the cover) about Rambo in just one 1986 issue of Maximum Rocknroll alone:
...that something really evil lurks behind Reagan's smile, Bush's smugness, and the ever-so-stable and hypocritical corporate TV news. So, with Christmas coming, and nationalism, patriotism, New Right Moral Majorityism, and Rambo toys upon us, MRR is doing its little bit in this issue to counter the cover-up..
...The first half of the film is a thinly-veiled allegory for a Right wing version of the U.S. war in Vietnam, with non-stop action thrown in. Sent in on the noble cause of rescuing democracy, the U.S. Army/Rambo was about to win the war to protect Southeast Asia against Communist onslaught. But then the liberal public and I politicians/bureaucrats betrayed the U.S.—stabbed the fatherland in the back—and forced the war effort to be abandoned. The concern is over how the U.S. was defeated...
In later years even Stallone himself pushed back on Rambo being a symbol for conservative policies.
Essentially saying that Rambo was, is and always will be against the military - people misread the character in the sequels when he came to personify Reagan’s right-wing foreign policy.
With movie success comes toys, games and collectibles.
Especially in the 1980s.
So let's take a look at some of those now.
You know there were video games.
No question!
Play the MS-DOS version of Rambo 3 from 1989 right here at Archive.org.
Cartoons?
Yep.
There was a 65 episode series in 1986.
Comic books and collectables?
Check.
One of these issues sold on eBay recently for $27.
Rambo made the cover of the December 1985 issue too:
And toys galore.
If I knew about this Power Cycle as a kid, I absolutely would have wanted this:
There's even modern toymakers targeting nostalgia with stuff like this.
