That’s why 2008’s Rambo had the best version of Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables. The image of Rambo, which is best known, is taken from “Rambo: First Blood, Part II” and “Rambo III”. They turned the soldier into a muscular action hero with a base capable of taking over an army on his own. Stallone came to the conclusion that Rambo film sequels embellished the war, so he wanted to make a darker war film that would also bring the character back to his portrayal in the original First Blood novel. Rambo saw the main character leading a rescue operation in Burma, and the sequel became infamous for its carnage and high death toll. Rambo’s relentless pace and Stallone’s hard-hitting direction made it one of the best sequels ever made.
With the success of Rambo proving the R-rated action movies that dominated the 1980s, Stallone set about building a new franchise. This led to The Expendables, where Barney Ross Stallone manages a team of mercenaries with different skills. The original idea for the film was to make it a more down-to-earth action movie. The Expendables films are enjoyable, but they all fall short of their potential, and none of them compare to the films they are dedicated to. Rambo himself is the prototype of the Expendables in mercenaries making a rescue, and in some respects they are still the best depiction of the concept.
In The Expendables, most of the characters are cartoonish exaggerations based on the actors playing them, as can be clearly seen in The Expendables 2’s Booker Chuck Norris (which also features Jet Li, ), who is essentially a living meme of Chuck Norris. . In contrast, Rambo’s weathered team of leader Lewis (Graham McTavish), sniper Schoolboy (Matthew Marsden), Diaz (Reinaldo Gallegos), Reese (Jake La Botz) and N-Joo (Tim Kang) all seem like real soldiers. . They are incredibly focused on the job, yet pragmatic when it comes to the danger they face. They are also not particularly heroic and are ultimately forced to fight back out of desperate survival rather than moral duty.
Rambo even forms a sort of bond with Marsden’s sniper, who ends up using his rifle to kill. Regardless of their brutish nature, they are brave in the face of death during the final showdown, where—unlike the actual Expendables series, which rarely sees characters killed—some of them die during the fight. Stallone acknowledges this in his comment about Rambo, stating about their actions that they prove their worth because “no one” gets enough to go through this level of carnage. Rambo’s mercenaries seem like a darker version of The Expendables that Stallone originally had in mind, and while the resulting series was lighthearted and funny, Rambo’s mercenaries, especially the constantly angry Lewis, have a rougher edge that makes them more interesting.