The Rambo Saga
October 1, 2019
By NZB3
The Rambo Saga is told at last after 37 years and I’ve seen all 5 films now. For most of the time we didn’t even know it was a saga but this scene (left) showed otherwise. The film makers are not just out to make a sort of ‘America: Fuck Yeah!’ foreign intervention extravaganza but tell the story of John Rambo. Rambo (2008) did a fine job of going deeply into the discarded Vietnam veteran hero psyche and we had no right to expect to be so lucky that the thread would be picked up ever again.
Rambo: Last Blood (2019)
With an hour’s drive home after the film I had time to think out loud and happened to record my entire yarn with myself about Rambo. If Bitchute ever finish processing the file, you’re welcome to hear the whole hour of review here. Why was I so let down by this film? What had it squandered that had been built up all these years?
I’ve already been comprehensive in the audio version so I’ll keep it shorter here.
John is the boy placed in an impossible situation. He is abused by the Rambo Family of Origin and becomes talented at holding back the rage that would not free him but only get him more hurt. But that rage must have an outlet.
John, like so many, escapes family hell only to walk blindly into another version of it: the US Army. Very often when someone gets that Red Pill moment and is jail-broken out of their old tribal cult they quickly fall into yet another. The Army thrives on abused kids like John, turning his Attachment Needs into loyalty and his humiliated rage into well-trained homicide against the nation’s enemies. I was impressed when Skyfall made this explicit for James Bond, hoped Rambo would be equal to it.
John’s personality is groomed to have few or no Emotional Intelligence. Rather than put up personal boundaries he just festers, “keeps a lid on it”, until exploding homicidally. Great for a soldier, useless as a free man. After service, John becomes a drifter and runs afowl Brian Dennehy’s father-figure sheriff. Rambo lacks the EQ to speak up for himself: that is the kryptonite to this superman. Instead, Dennehy’s character pushes Rambo until he pops then pursues him into the bush- unleashing the homicidal rage.
“When you’re pushed, killing’s as easy as breathing.”
Rambo lacks the EQ to do anything but absorb inhuman amounts of radioactive abuse then alchemically re-emit it through the prism of his expert military training. This is also why John could not convince the Christian Missionaries not to go to Burma where they would be slaughtered. Rambo has all the wisdom and supreme capability in the world, he ought to be respected and listened to like Superman and Jesus for what he has done and who he is and what he can do. Brian Dennehy should have said “Thank you for blessing our town you hero! Let me buy you dinner and would you mind posing for a selfie with me and my family?” Likewise, the Missionaries should have said “Let’s not do this, this guy’s judgement is not to be dismissed lightly!”
John Rambo, the SuperJesus, is always prescient and always capable but never listened to. After all these years he has still never figured out how to empathetically communicate with others. In Rambo: Last Blood he is unable to read or remonstrate with his daughter (adopted) in a tragic parenting opportunity missed. Because he had no voice a tragic series of events unfolds once again and all a Rambo knows how to do is to passively let that happen and hurt him then leverage it into revenge.
“I’m just trying to keep a lid on it every day,”
Sadly, that’s all this is. John never got his peace, never learned any better. The film plays out like dominoes, moth flays into the flame of violence mindlessly. We never met Rambo Senior and Rambo’s ‘full circle’ revelation he came so close to in the previous film never gets considered again. John’s relationship with the local constabulary is still unspoken and could slip back to The Brian Dennehy Zone the moment one policeman retires and another is promoted. Rambo literally ends his saga speechifying about revenge from his bleeding rocking chair surrounded by the smoking crater that should have been a home.
What’s Clint Eastwood doing these days? This film could have been one of the finest films ever made if the creators had known who Rambo really was. Eastwood as Rambo Senior would have been perfect in his Gran Torino (2008) incarnation. I wanted Rambo to get his closure and character resolution, to be heroic and defeat his life’s greatest enemy rather than die as its spent up tool.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/9FcQAB2sc4t0/
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