Do the Rambo sequels bear any similitude to the original?

[Mondain]

Saw it on Blu. Great film with good use of tension, some nice set pieces, good all around save for the over-the-top colonel. Come on, he looks like a cartoon character in the flesh. The comedian tries so damn hard.

Lemme guess, in the sequels there's no social commentary anymore and it's all mindless action, amirite?

"iiiiiiiit's a looooooooooong roooooooooooooooadd..."

[TVC15]

Lemme guess, in the sequels there's no social commentary anymore and it's all mindless action, amirite?

Yep.  You got it.  Most young folks today think the series was a joke from the start, but the first one is actually a pretty decent flick.  Rambo 2 and 3 are both entertaining as dumb, ridiculous action pictures, though, so if you are ever in the mood for 80s cheese, you could do a lot worse.

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

not even a little bit, but they're good for their own reasons.
Rambo II is good because we finally won the Vietnam war
Rambo III is good because it shorted out my Irony-Meter
Rambo IV is good because it will win the Oscar for Best Gibs this year

[Shuri]

pretending to having never seen the rambo movies lol

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

I think most Rambo fans never realized that the first one was an anti-war movie.  The 2nd-4th are just mindless action movies, which isn't necessarily a bad thing sometimes.

[Eric P]

i had no interest in seeing the fourth rambo film until i read this

http://www.davidmorrell.net/faq.cfm#915

What's your opinion of the fourth Rambo movie?
I'm happy to report that overall I’m pleased. The level of violence might not be for everyone, but it has a serious intent.

This is the first time that the tone of my novel FIRST BLOOD has been used in any of the movies. It's spot-on in terms of how I imagined the character—angry, burned-out, and filled with self-disgust because Rambo hates what he is and yet knows it's the only thing he does well. The character spends a lot of time in the rain as if trying to cleanse his soul. There's a nightmare scene involving vivid images from the three previous films (they indicate the emotional burden he carries). There's a scene in which Rambo forges a knife and talks to himself, basically admitting that he hates himself because all he knows is how to kill. At the start, Rambo is gathering cobras in the jungle, and he's so comfortable with them, it's as if, because of his past, the most developed part of him is his limbic brain. He has nothing to fear from another creature of death. In the cathartic violence of the climax, he uses a machine gun that evokes the way wounded William Holden uses a machine gun at the end of THE WILD BUNCH (one of my favorite films). Indeed much of RAMBO has Peckinpah overtones while it also uses tropes from the novel (again, for example, there's an exciting sequence in which Rambo is hunted by dogs).

Another excellent element involves the film's archetypal, mythic overtones. Rambo is hardly ever called by his last name. Instead, he keeps being referred to as "the Boatman" because he earns his living with a boat on a river in Thailand. But after he's called "the Boatman" enough, I start thinking of the River Styx and the journey of death as depicted in Greek myth. Similarly, the knife-forging sequence reminds me of Hephaestus, the armorer of the Greek gods (in the sequence, Rambo even talks about whether God can forgive him for what he's done). Sly is definitely sophisticated enough to embed these sorts of allusions. The earlier Rambo movies were a combination of a Tarzan movie and a western. That is also the case here. The knife (again designed by master blade-maker Gil Hibben), the bow and arrow, Rambo racing through the jungle—these scenes are primal and breath-taking.

Some of you sent me emails, suggesting that maybe a younger actor would have been better for the fourth movie. But it’s important to remember that Rambo (unlike James Bond) is specific to a historical period--the Vietnam War. My novel FIRST BLOOD was published in 1972. If Rambo were a real person, he would have been perhaps 22 at the time. In 2008, he would be 58. Sylvester Stallone is a few years older than that, but basically he is the correct age, and in the new movie, he interprets the character in an older way. That's one reason he put on the weight—so he would look different from the trim muscular image he had in the 1980s Rambo movies.

I think some elements could have been done better. The villains are superficial, to say the least. A lot could have been done with the connection between drug lords and the military in what the film calls Burma, dramatizing that money earned from the heroin trade motivates their ruthlessness. Instead, they’re merely depicted as psychopaths. In a baffling moment, heroin somehow gets equated with meth, which is something entirely different and has nothing to do with the poppies grown in that area of the world.

Otherwise, I think this film deserves a solid three stars. Even the NEW YORK TIMES treated it well, emphasizing the way the character is given depth. Rambo is no longer the jingoistic character of the second and third films. The most telling line of dialogue is, “I didn’t kill for my country. I killed for myself. And for that, I don’t believe God can forgive me.” While that statement is in keeping with my novel FIRST BLOOD, it’s jaw-dropping when compared with the dialogue in the second and third Rambo films.

Some posters list me as an associate producer. This is an error. I was not involved with the production, and this time around, I didn’t write a novelization for the movie. But I do receive two credits. One is a single card "created by" credit before the names of the screenwriters. At the end, after the final surprising, poetic, redeeming sequence, another credit says "From the novel FIRST BLOOD by David Morrell." Two credits aren’t the way Hollywood usually treats a novelist. The second reference seems to acknowledge that the series has returned to the tone of the original novel.

To say again, the violence is a solid R, but the intent is serious. I was blown away.

[Hollywood]

The last Rambo that came out has the combination of mindless violence and the feel of a stoic Rambo, and an overlying message in the atrocities in Burma. I liked it a lot ,but like Rambo: First Blood, there's a story there, but kinda not really.

Rambo 2 and 3 are almost identical, with superman Rambo taking out the bad guys. I like them, they're different, and they have some awesome moments. Rambo 3 is almost exactly like 2, but Rambo is wise cracking and sarcastic, which was pretty funny. Rambo 3 also had more badass moments in them, but less gauntlet superman Rambo of 2.

[Mondain]

pretending to having never seen the rambo movies lol

no, I was always waiting for the best possible edition

and now I've gotten just that with Blu-Ray, it makes the films look so damn glorious, the format compels me to watch many classic films I'd never watched too

conveniently Rambo 2, 3 and 4 are released on Blu at the end of the month