The Best Rambo Sequel Is About An 11-Year-Old Boy
Absolutely no one in the world is clamoring for Sylvester Stallone to reprise the role of Judge Dredd or the “Demolition Man” or … whoever the hell the guy from Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot was. But Sly has revisited a couple of his other famous characters in the 21st century -- Rocky Balboa in the Creed movies and John Rambo in 2008’s Rambo and 2018’s Rambo: Last Blood.
While people love those Rocky spin-offs, the Stallone-piloted Rambo franchise has arguably gone off the rails and landed in a dumpster behind the combination hypodermic needle and used diaper factory. Apparently, Stallone apparently considers the maniacal, gore-soaked Rambo to be the “best action film” he’s ever done, but the recent Last Blood feels like a Fox News segment became sentient and tried to write a screenplay with only Friday the 13th movies for reference.
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Sure, the Rambo franchise was already far from perfect, not just the movies, but the mere existence of the Saturday morning cartoon series – because, presumably thanks to cocaine and Reaganism, ‘80s Hollywood executives thought that the grizzled Vietnam vet from multiple ultra-violent movies was the perfect candidate to, say, save Christmas.
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But the original Rambo film, First Blood, is a legitimately great, earnest film about trauma and prejudice – and a sensitive one, too. The climax of the story is basically Rambo getting a hug from his wartime father figure.
While the subsequent sequels have arguably strayed from the quality and emotional weight of the original over the years, back in 2007 (just a year before we got Stallone’s zombie movie without zombies), another Rambo-themed movie hit theaters, all about … a bunch of British schoolchildren?
Garth Jennings’ Son of Rambow tells the story of a couple of kids (one of which is played by lil' Will Poulter) who are inspired to make their own wildly-dangerous, amateur Rambo movie with a camcorder after stumbling across a bootleg VHS tape of First Blood. Yes, this may be the only family comedy in which the inciting incident involves a small child watching an R-rated movie.
Even Stallone loved Son of Rambow, claiming that, while at first he “assumed it was going to be a very broad and stylized joke-a-minute comedy at Rambo’s expense,” he ultimately found it both “brilliant” and “heart-warming.” And it’s not like anyone’s making a movie about the power of creativity through the lens of some goddamn Chuck Norris movie.
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Top Image: Paramount
