After the surprising success of 2008’sRambo, the fourth movie inSylvester Stallone’s action-packed saga, a fifth installment languished in development hell for years.Rambo: Last Blood, which promised to be the grand finale that would definitively conclude the series, finally arrived in theaters in 2019. TheRamboseries hasn’t enjoyed particularly positive reviews since the masterfully craftedFirst Bloodback in 1982, but the response toLast Bloodwas particularly negative. So much for going out on a high note.
What makesLast Bloodextra disappointing is that, on top of being a weak conclusion to a decades-long story, that story already had a strong conclusion 11 years earlier. The 2008 movie already gave theRamboseries the perfect ending long beforeLast Bloodcame along with a generic revenge story driven by racial stereotypes. At the end ofRambo, the title character returns to his father’s ranch in Arizona and finally gives up a life of violence after singlehandedly massacring the ruthless militia terrorizing Burma.Last Bloodwas a tagged-on postscript at best anda run-of-the-mill thriller with gratuitous violencein its most egregious lows.
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InFirst Blood, John Rambo is introduced as a soldier who returns from fighting in Vietnam with PTSD and finds himself ostracized from society. After learning that all his friends are dead, Rambo is run out of a small town by the power-hungry local cops and ends up leading the entire force – and later the National Guard – on a manhunt through the woods. The movie was a poignant critique of the treatment faced by Vietnam veterans when they came home.
The subsequent sequels lost track of these cynical themes and got swept up in Reagan-era nationalism. The spectacular bloodshed inFirst Blood Part IIandRambo IIIpeddles the exact opposite message to their predecessor. The message thata musclebound, gun-toting American superman like John Rambowill arrive in a helicopter to save the day glorifies war instead of condemning it, asFirst Blooddid.
2008’sRambomarked a return to form, both in terms of the story’s themes and in terms of Rambo’s characterization. LikeFirst Blood, it takes a bitter standpoint toward the injustices of the world. Not all of its action sequences are exciting or fun; a lot of them are harrowingly realistic depictions of the horrors of war. The series had come a long way from the glorious helicopter assault that caps offFirst Blood Part II. Once again, Rambo was reluctant to fight – and when he finally sprung into action, it was ugly. And thenLast Bloodturned Rambo back intoa one-dimensional killing machine.
David Morrell, author ofFirst Bloodand creator of the John Rambo character, was pleased with the 2008 movie. After being critical of the previous couple of sequels, Morrell praised the fourth installmenton the FAQ section of his website, saying that it was “the first time that the tone of my novelFirst Bloodhas been used in any of the movies,” and that its portrayal of the character he created was “spot-on.” On the other hand,Morrell tweetedthatLast Bloodwas “a mess” and that he felt “embarrassed to have my name associated with it.”
BothRamboandLast Bloodset out to expose a real injustice going on in the world and offera grisly revenge fantasyas Stallone doles out brutal vigilante justice against those responsible. InRambo, the title character takes on the oppressive militia with a stranglehold over the people of Burma. InLast Blood, he takes on sex traffickers in Mexico. While the former is a passionate rallying cry against all the evil in the world, the latter’s cartoonish portrayal of a Mexico rife with crime and violence is way off-base.
The 2008Rambomovie was embraced by real-life Burmese freedom fighters in the Karen National Liberation Army, whose morale was hugely boosted by the movie’s incisive anti-Tatmadaw message. They even adopted Rambo’s line “Live for nothing, or die for something” in their struggle against the Burmese government.Last Blood, on the other hand, was accused of perpetuating negative stereotypes about Mexico, which helped no one.
Ultimately,Last Bloodsuffered from the fact that it didn’t originate as aRambomovie. An original script was retroactively turned into aRambosequel, so the protagonist is just a generic action movie protagonist who happens to be named John Rambo andplayed by Sylvester Stallone. The story wasn’t conceived to revolve around the Rambo character and as a result, the character didn’t really feel like Rambo at all. As Morrell pointed out, “Rambo could be called John Smith and [Last Blood] wouldn’t change.”
The 2008 movie was a pitch-perfect character study of a highly trained mercenary who hates that killing is the thing he does best, but reluctantly chooses to use that power for good –in the bloodiest, gnarliest way possible. Decimating the entire Burmese militia gave Rambo an out. He could finally hang it up and retire to a peaceful life. Arriving at his father’s ranch in Bowie, Arizona was the perfect conclusion to theRambosaga. Ripping a sex trafficker’s heart out of his chest and then ambiguously taking a seat on his porch to leave the door open for a sixth movie was not.
