John Rambo is a character that has permeated pop culture in many ways. He became a replacement for the stereotypical 80s action hero. He’s a slick, muscular killer who’ll happily take down a village full of vague foreign stereotypes with a bazooka. For people who have never seen First Blood, Rambo is just another dumb action hero.
But First Blood is not that movie. It’s a slower, darker film about a Vietnam veteran who returns home to a country that doesn’t want him and refuses to help him. First of all, this is an anti-war film, and this was done on purpose.
Of course, like everything in Hollywood, success spoiled the franchise creatively.
The second film, Rambo: First Blood Part 2, was much more action-packed, with Rambo going on a mission to rescue a group of prisoners of war in Vietnam. Along the way, he shoots and blows up almost everything and everyone he comes across.
It was this second film that first positioned Rambo as a badass action hero. Although Sylvester Stallone says he was embarrassed to see Rambo action figures popping up all over the place and people glorifying Rambo’s fighting experience, it apparently didn’t bother him too much, as he starred in three more Rambo films full of shooting and violence, none of them them. of which seem to understand the original character.
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In the interview with Diabolique magazine, Kotcheff explains why not making “First Blood” an action movie was more than just a creative choice.
“What I’m really trying to say is that all my family were surrounded by violence: rebellion against the Turks, or they were being tortured by the Turks, or the Communists were torturing them. And so I grew up hating violence — all kinds of violence — and that’s why the character of Rambo in ‘First Blood’ doesn’t want to kill anyone when he comes back from Vietnam. He hates violence. He’s not going to come back to America to perpetrate violence. He’s just so tired of seeing his friends killed and Vietnamese women killed accidentally, so that detestation of violence permeates the whole of ‘First Blood,’ because of me.”
This philosophy is clearly reflected in First Blood, a principled and moralistic film. It makes sense that Kotcheff turned down offers to work on a second, very different Rambo film, which he discussed in an interview with Filmmaker Magazine.
“I didn’t want to do the sequels. They offered me the first sequel and after I read the script I said, ‘In the first film he doesn’t kill anybody. In this film he kills seventy-four people.’ It seemed to be celebrating the Vietnam War, which I thought was one of the stupidest wars in history. 55,000 young Americans died and so many veterans committed suicide. I couldn’t turn myself inside out like that and make that kind of picture. Of course, I could have been a rich man today – that sequel made $300 million.”
Kotcheff stood by his principles and, while he lost a lot of money doing it, he can take comfort that he made the only truly worthwhile Rambo film.