Of the five films of the “Rambo” franchise, four are exactly what you expect. Sylvester Stallone with shiny muscles kills bad guys behind nameless bad guys in different cool ways. They have a reputation as one of the brightest fighters of the 80s.
However, the first film of the “First Blood” franchise is a completely different film. “First Blood” is a much darker and less exciting film. This is a story about a veteran who returns home from Vietnam to a country that completely rejects him.
Killing Rambo is not a cool skill, but a terrible curse. a serious film about how America treats its veterans as disposable instruments, and Stallone really found the reputation that the series received quite embarrassing.
Stallone wrote the screenplay for the film together with the director Ted Kotcheff, who deliberately cast Stallone in the lead role. According to an interview with Filmmaker Magazine, Kocheff met some resistance from executives when he offered to play Stallone.
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“There was a moment of hesitation, because the perceived wisdom in Hollywood at that time was that Stallone was only successful in ‘Rocky’ movies. The other films he had made – ‘F.I.S.T.,’ ‘Nighthawks,’ I can’t remember what else – they had all died. I said, ‘I don’t give a damn what the perceived wisdom is, he’s perfect for the part. He’s tough, but he’s also empathetic and capable of great sensitivity. I can’t see anybody else playing that part.'”
It’s hard imagining this for such a bona fide star as Stallone, but studios didn’t want him playing “Rocky” either. He had been underestimated before and proved everyone wrong, and his work on “First Blood” was no different.
According to Kocheff in the interview, as soon as Kocheff and Stallone started to work together on the film, everything got better quickly.
“When I chose Sylvester, we worked together on the script. And Sylvester’s specialty is that he has a very good populist flair. While we were shooting the film, we had a pretty good idea of what we were talking about.”
According to Kotcheff, Stallone was not only invaluable as an on-screen star, but as a writing partner as well, making some major changes to the script that improved the movie.
“Originally Rambo got a hold of a gun and started knocking off National Guardsmen, these weekend warriors who worked at drug stores. Sylvester correctly pointed out that audiences would hate this guy if he did that – he was a Congressional Medal of Honor Winner, a Green Beret, he shouldn’t be killing these guys just putting on uniforms for the weekend. As soon as Sylvester said it I knew he was absolutely right; I felt that this should be a guy who’s sick and tired of violence. Of his own people being killed. Of the Vietnamese people being killed. The last thing he wants is to come back to America and start killing people.”
The heads of the studio were again wrong about Sly Stallone. He was the ideal man for the role of Rambo, and it seemed that he understood what “First Blood” is like as a film better than anyone else. It was a huge commercial and critical success, and also spawned many sequels that ultimately lost the plot. But “First Blood” remains impeccable, it is a surprisingly thoughtful film about how we treat our veterans.