While the Rambo movies aren’t based on a true story, the character has participated in fictionalized versions of several real-world conflicts. David Morrell’s original novel First Blood spent the best part of a decade optioned for a feature film that never quite materialized. The tale of a psychologically scarred Vietnam veteran who wages war against a distrusting and dispassionate small town was an ideal project for the more complex storytelling of the New Hollywood of the 1970s.
First Blood finally took off as a greenlit project and was released in theaters in October 1982, co-written by its star, Sylvester Stallone. The film was a huge commercial success at the box office, which predictably led to two sequels – Rambo: First Blood Part II in 1985 and Rambo III in 1988.
The character was later resurrected for two further movies, John Rambo and Rambo: Last Blood in 2008 and 2019 respectively.
John Rambo is, of course, fictional but he has been inspired by some real-world analogs. Novelist David Morrell based Rambo on Audie Murphy, one of America’s most decorated soldiers. Murphy faced down German tanks alone and took over the operation of a .50 caliber machine gun when an American tank destroyer was destroyed, his actions in France earned him a Medal of Honor and stuck in Morrell’s mind. In creating John Rambo, Morrell combined Murphy’s impressive WWII service record with the difficulty some veterans experience in turning off their war mentality.
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The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War leaves deep psychological scars on young John Rambo. In “First Blood”, he recounts the grisly death of his friend Joey to his mentor and recurring Rambo character, Colonel Trautman. Joey’s death was the final straw for John Rambo, who served in Vietnam for three years, a tour of duty that earned him two Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars, four Purple Hearts, the Distinguished Service Cross and the Congressional Medal of Honor. During his time in Vietnam and carrying out secret elite missions as a Green Beret, Rambo experienced many horrors and witnessed the death of many of his friends. It had such an impact that he was honorably discharged after the mental and emotional breakdown caused by Joey’s death.
Returning to America, Rambo found that he was no longer welcomed by the people who vehemently opposed the Vietnam War.
The initial disagreement centered on the belief that Vietnam was not a war that should be fought by America. The Vietnam War was a national conflict over the future of the country that followed the withdrawal of Japanese troops at the end of World War II. However, the ideological clash between communist leader Ho Chi Minh in South Vietnam and the ardently anti-communist Emperor Bao Dai in the North turned the conflict over the future of Vietnam into a Cold War proxy war. After years of military and financial support, President Lyndon B. Johnson sent active duty combat troops into the country in
1964, conscripting young Americans into military service. Anti- war sentiment only intensified when military units were sent there, and the war was marked by various high-profile controversies, such as the horrific My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians, which sparked both national and international outrage.
In the original Rambo film, First Blood, he is perhaps more traumatized by the treatment he faced upon returning to America than by the horrors he witnessed in Vietnam. “I come back into the world and see all these maggots at the airport, protesting against me, spitting. They call me a child killer and all sorts of vile nonsense! Who are they to protest against me, huh?” It is this perceived lack of
gratitude for his military service and the death of another friend—from cancer caused by exposure to the chemical weapon Agent Orange—that ultimately leads Rambo to wage a one-man war against the town of Hope, Washington. At one point near the end of First Blood, Rambo decries the lack of career prospects and the difficulties he faces in returning to civilian life. “There I could fly a warship, I could drive a tank, I was in charge of a million-dollar equipment, but here I can’t even get a job parking cars!” It’s clear that the war gave John Rambo purpose, and there will always be a part of him that wants to return to active duty.
Delta Force & The POW/MIA Issue
Rambo gets this wish in the next movie, Rambo: First Blood Part II, which sees him return to Vietnam to locate American prisoners of war. If successful, Rambo will receive a presidential pardon for his destructive actions in Hope, Washington. Predictably, Rambo’s grudging promise to simply photograph the POWs and not engage enemy troops is abandoned early in the movie, much to the horror of the stuffy American bureaucrat who authorized the mission. Abandoned once more by his government, Rambo kills multiple enemies in the jungle, practically single-handed before eventually commandeering a Soviet helicopter to rescue the POWs.RELATED:
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The movie ends with a tearful plea from Rambo to the bureaucrat, and likely the real American government, to seek out the remaining prisoners of war that are still imprisoned in the Vietnamese jungles.
The plot of 1985’s First Blood Part II bears striking similarities to the Chuck Norris movie Missing in Action from the previous year. This is because the so-called “live prisoners” theory was a hugely topical issue following the end of the Vietnam war in 1973. It was the result of a disparity between the number of American POWs returned and the number of soldiers listed as either killed or missing in action.
Activist groups like the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia continued to campaign for more information on those still listed as MIA. Not satisfied with the pace of government intervention and investigation of the area, independent contractors mounted their own prospective rescue missions, as Stallone does in Rambo 2. One of these contractors, former Special Forces officer Bo Gritz embarked on several highly publicized missions to rescue POWs, and his efforts were heavily criticized for being counter-productive to the POW/MIA issue.
The Soviet-Afghan War
Once deemed the most violent movie ever, Rambo III sees him rescue his former commanding officer Trautman from Afghanistan, against the backdrop of the real-life war between the Soviet Union and the Islamist rebel group, the Afghan Mujahideen. In simplistic terms, Afghanistan was the Soviet Union’s Vietnam. Following the Iranian revolution, the Soviet Union was concerned about the spread of religious extremism to the Soviet Muslim Central Asian republics. They were also concerned about new Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin, who was a suspected CIA agent, something which is still disputed to this day. On December 27th, 1979, Soviet forces marched on Kabul, occupying key strategic locations, executing Amin, and installing a new leader in the form of Babrak Karmal.
It was an event that shocked the international community and began a devastating nine-year guerilla war, causing the deaths of an estimated 6.5%–11.5% of Afghanistan’s population.
Not much of this granular political detail is present in Rambo 3 or its ending, but it dates it. Where previously John Rambo represented those left behind by the American government, Rambo III sees him fully embody American foreign policy. It was in the best interest of the American government to support the Mujahideen, however, they also didn’t want to get drawn into another costly war like Vietnam. Due to the effort of politicians like Charlie Wilson, support of the Mujahideen became a key factor of President Reagan’s foreign policy, supplying the rebels
with weaponry, training, and financial assistance. In the movie, they send Rambo to wage war against the Soviet Union in the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan. After helping the Mujahideen overwhelm the Soviet troops, Rambo declines the offer to continue their fight, instead choosing to live a peaceful life in Thailand. He’s essentially a walking metaphor for how America learned from Vietnam and avoided direct military involvement in Afghanistan. This seemingly happy ending for Stallone’s Rambo takes on a bitter irony when a new ideological war brings American forces to Afghanistan in the early 2000s, following Al-Qaeda’s devastating attacks on American landmarks.
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The Saffron Revolution/Karen Conflict
Wisely, given the complex geopolitical landscape of the world post-9/11, in the fourth movie, 2008’s Rambo, the former green beret doesn’t return to Afghanistan to take on Al-Qaeda. Picking up two decades after the events of Rambo III, John is still living in the relative peace of Thailand, near the Burmese border. Living a quiet life as a snake-hunting ferryman, he’s eventually drawn back into action when former ferry passengers, a group of missionaries, are captured by Burmese soldiers. Rambo responds predictably, meeting the brutality of the military junta with his own brand of brutality.
On release in 2008, the visceral violence was a big talking point, but it was crucial to Sylvester Stallone’s vision for Rambo 4. In interviews, he emphasized that the violence of the movie was reflective of the brutal actions undertaken by the Burmese military, who attempted to intimidate the production by shooting at them across the Salween River that separates Burma and Thailand.
While the movie was being made, the national military government of Myanmar was cracking down on peaceful protests across the country against the astronomic rise in fuel costs.
Dubbed the Saffron Revolution in reference to the involvement of Buddhist monks and the color of their robes, these non-violent protests were met by threats of military force. There then followed a crackdown by the military dictatorship, which arrested hundreds of pro-democracy figures and shot at protesters. The death toll has never been officially confirmed, but the response to the protests was indicative of the brutality of the country’s military dictatorship. Maung Maung Khin, who played Rambo 4’s villain, agreed to star in the movie to raise awareness of the military regime in Myanmar and their genocide of the Karen people.
On release, commentators debated whether or not Sylvester Stallone was doing the right thing or not by using an action movie to highlight this international issue. Whatever the answer, it’s hard to deny that Rambo 4 didn’t draw wider attention to the Karen nationalists’ fight for an independent state. The movie was even used as propaganda by the Karen in their struggle against the Burmese military. The Saffron Revolution, and the Karen latest in a long line of real-world conflicts that, depending on audience perspectives, have been plundered or highlighted by Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo franchise.