Despite their box office success, all three of Sylvester Stallone’s blockbuster franchises — Rocky, Rambo, and The Expendables — ran into the same problem after multiple sequels. After years of struggling to find work as an actor, Stallone struck it big by writing the first Rocky film as his own leading man. Rocky not only launched Stallone’s film career, it also made him an A-list star.
After Rocky became popular enough to spawn sequels that spanned decades, Stallone launched the Rambo and Expendables franchises as backups. All of these franchises were reliable hit factories for Stallone over the years, but they all eventually ran into the same problem after a couple of films.
Rocky, Rambo, & The Expendables All Got Way Too Silly As The Movies Went On
The Rocky, Rambo, and Expendables franchises all went through much the same process. They all started with a grounded, heartfelt original film that subverted the genre’s tropes, followed by a much larger sequel. From the third film onwards, they all degenerated into a string of cartoonish sequels where Stallone and everyone around him were unstoppable superheroes. Rocky began as the story of an underdog boxer who takes on a championship match he has no chance of winning, and just wants to have a good fight and prove he’s worthy of being in that ring.
First Blood began the Rambo story with a grounded critique of the unfair treatment of returning Vietnam veterans. In it, Rambo takes on a corrupt small-town police force (and later the National Guard) and goes on a hunt through the woods. The first Expendables movie was, by its very nature, a little broader and more self-conscious about its inversion of action movie tropes—that was the premise. But its action was gritty and somewhat realistic, and it wore its heart on its sleeve as it told the story of a ragtag group of aging mercenaries bound together by a ride-or-die alliance.
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That all changed with the sequels. The Rocky sequels pitted Rocky against increasingly outlandish villains and included outlandish concepts like a robot birthday party and Rocky winning over a Soviet crowd with a rousing, jingoistic, pro-American speech. The Rambo sequels sent the character back to Vietnam and turned him into a ruthless killing machine. The Expendables sequels were essentially The Avengers movies without the colorful costumes. All of these franchises became more cartoonish as they went on, abandoning the grounded tone that made them so popular in the first place.
Rocky & Rambo Becoming More Cartoonish Doomed Stallone’s 2 Best Characters
In his first films, Rocky Balboa and John Rambo were understandable, three-dimensional human characters that paved the way for Stallone’s two best dramatic performances. Rocky was an outsider, desperately trying to prove himself, and Rambo was a former soldier. But the Rocky sequels turned him into Captain America in boxing gloves, and the Rambo sequels turned him into a living weapon. In “First Blood” Rambo killed only one person – and even then it was an accident – but in the subsequent sequels Rambo scored 254 kills on the screen. In his book Cinema Speculation, Quentin Tarantino criticizes the later sequels of Rocky for the
fact that they resemble “comics of one issue” more than real films. He specifically pointed to Rocky III and Rocky IV, which, in his opinion, abandoned the down-to-earth tone of the first two films in order to pit Rocky against “supervillains”. The famous criminal Clubber Lang and the rising Soviet superman Ivan Drago are more like one-day villains than a multi-dimensional, three-dimensional opponent, like Apollo Creed. Lang and Drago were motivated only by the destruction of Rocky. Apollo had a much more subtle motivation. he wanted to fight with an outsider as an advertising stunt.
After five more and more silly films about Rocky Stallone, he finally returned to the series the down-to-earth tone of the original film with the help of “Rocky Balboa” in 2006, the story of an aging Rocky trying to prove himself once again. The revival of the “Rocky” franchise continued with the series of Michael B. Jordana “Creed”, which throughout three films remains realistic and emotionally grounded and avoids the stylistic traps of its predecessor. If Sylvester Stallone can return the “Rocky” franchise to its roots, perhaps he will be able to do the same with the “Rambo” and “The Unstoppable” franchises, although their future is uncertain.