I adore and pedestal the heck out of First Blood. It is a brilliant ^[1] movie with a great human quality in it. Unfortunately for First Blood, however, it was followed up by a batch of crappy, blood soaked, bullet-riddled sequels, that forever equated Rambo to guns, blood, gore, and killing. That’s not fair.

Assuming the old, dog-toting dude made it out of the woods ok, there was only one death in First Blood … and it was accidental. Rambo: First Blood Part II had 69 deaths and it happened to suck in comparison. Rambo III had 132 deaths and it was full-on ludicrous. ^[2]

So now, in the fine new tradition of resurrecting in-and-around 80s movies and giving them simple, non-sequelish names, Hollywood brings us Rambo. With a whopping 236 deaths, it has more death than all other Rambo movies combined. Considering the ratio of death count to suckage above, this does not bode well.

I have not yet seen it and I wonder: Is there any chance at all that it is a good movie? In my wildest fantasies, this new film recaptures some of the humanity of the original. Perhaps Rambo is forced to face his own mortality, which is not possible via bullets but is possible, mostly likely, via age. Perhaps he goes back to the small town from First Blood and finally gets to eat that meal he was after.

I plan to watch it soon. After which I plan to read First Blood the book, in which I have heard Rambo actually gets killed.

Notes:

1. Except for Col. Trautman. He’s a joke.
2. Deaths stats from geekstir.com