1. Asking the sheriff if there was a law against him eating in Hope, Washington.
2. Dressing in a manner the sheriff found displeasing.
3. Asking the sheriff why he pushed him.
4. Not leaving Hope, Washington when the sheriff told him they didn’t want his kind there and dropped him off at the bridge.
5. Failing to show ID on request when walking and not operating a motor vehicle.
6. Passively resisting his unlawful arrest by refusing to give his name.
7. Having a hunting knife inside a sheath in his belongings.
8. Passively resisting having his fingerprints taken.
9. Actively resisting being beaten up by the cops.
10. Stealing a motorcycle.
11. Eventually killing large numbers of people.
Tags: cinematic double standards, just do as you’re told, movies, police brutality, racism, rambo, white men are heroes
12.
I’m now imagining a Rambo reboot with the lead recast as a black man. Oooooh my looooord can you imagine the shitshow that would ensue?
I can’t find the link to the kickstarter for said reboot; please advise best way to signal boost, send cash, pledge my first born, etc.
I would kick in for Jada Pinkett Smith. (Edit: more for how awesome it would be than for the shitshow, but I’d still enjoy the shitshow).
Me, to my brother: For real though a reboot of the first [Rambo] flick, which keeps its theme of veterans being unable to reintegrate into civilian life due to untreated PTSD, would be hella pertinent. Doubly so if they recast Rambo as black or Latino.
My brother, to me: Very true, but Stallone’s ego wouldn’t allow it so long as he’s alive.
I hate how correct he is. TT_TT
The whole history of adapting Rambo from a book to a movie is tortured, and if I recall correctly, the movie was kind of a mixed bag in terms of addressing the PTSD/veteran themes of the book–better in certain areas, and worse in others. Susan Faludi’s Stiffed has a chapter focused on this.
A+ would watch. Have you ever seen The Spook Who Sat by the Door? It’s a movie that was somehow made and widely released in the 1970s about a black ex-CIA agent who goes to Chicago and just straight-up starts an armed insurrection of black people against the oppressive government. And not in like a Stormfront-Fear-of-Black-People kind of way; these guys are 100% the heroes of the movie! It’s pretty amazing that it exists at all, but if it was released today Bill O”Reilly’s head would explode in a cascade of infinite aneurysms.
That actually sounds really really cool and I will have to track down a copy somehow. I’m not too surprised it exists, considering the 70s were the era of Blaxploitation flicks and this sounds exactly like the kind of plot you’d find in that genre.
daaaang
Please please please make a deleted comment list.
YES!
I apologize for being a pedant, but a weird thing about Rambo is that I think he actually only kills one guy in that whole movie (the guy that he knocks out of the helicopter with a rock). Most of the rest of it is extensive property damage and non-lethally disabling sheriff’s deputies (though, obviously yeah, if he were black even the fact that he was non-lethally disabling an army of armed men who were trying to kill him would 100% be used to justify his death, and DEFINITELY if he were blowing up a bunch of gas stations and such).
I think his reputation for a high body count actually comes from the sequels, where the story of Rambo changed from one about a tragic story about a guy whose military training made it impossible for him to reintegrate back into society (a legacy of the 1970s guilt over Vietnam) into a Real American Action Hero (a legacy of the 1980s rejection of that guilt as part of the jingoism of the Cold War).
Which, again, it’s not to say that any of this isn’t true, but I also think that change from First Blood to the Rest of the Rambo Movies is a pretty interesting change in terms of the place Rambo occupies in American culture.
This should probably go in the deleted comments list. I’m sorry! I just think it’s really interesting that he has this reputation as being an invincible murder-machine and really he hardly kills anyone in First Blood! It’s like the ringwraiths in Lord of the Rings, who are known as the most terrifying monsters in the world and they actually only kill one person in the entire trilogy and that is basically just because they scare Theoden’s horse and then it falls on him.
Um, #actually, her name was Snowmane, and I like to think she was trying to save Theoden with her body (she was not.)
Also, I just checked and I guess Snowmane also got shot by a dart which is why she fell, so I think technically the Nazgul don’t kill anyone, ignominiously or otherwise.
Although I think I recall mention of men dying of relatively minor wounds after coming too close to the Nazgul?
*checks*
Yup, people who were stricken by the Black Shadow fell into nightmares, then comas, then death.
Well, it didn’t kill Farmer Maggot, that’s for sure.
Ah, but those were early-chapter Ringwraiths, who hadn’t yet leveled up to full Terror Nazgul with Fell Beast familiars.
Also the Shire is magic, and hobbits are too stubbornly English to die from nameless lurking evil. That’s something only those Romantic Continentals do.
I legit love that you know her name off the top of your head. Nerds unite!
She was Lightfoot’s foal!
Faithful servant, yet master’s bane!
Yessss
My mom read LotR to me when I was 8, and I cried so hard at this part. Also at a lot of other parts, but man, that whole scene. She got her own memorial!
Reading the passage, I see that Snowmane was actually a stallion, rather than a mare. But I can see why we would get confused, given Snowmane’s fidelity and heroism.
In my headcanon, she will always be a mare.
That creates a pleasing symmetry in the scene, too, where Theoden’s death is both caused and avenged by female characters who love him very much.
if we are including the films, then they definitely also squashed that crotchety gatekeeper in Bree to death.
We are not, though, because the films added a bunch of deaths in order to make the Nazgul seem scarier.
Fair point, carry on.
Also, my sister and I had a too-long-discussion on whether the crotchety gatekeeper would necessarily die. Is it possible that he could have survived if the ground was so wet and muddy that he just sank into it? We went round and round on it.
Honestly, it was so cartoonish that I never even thought about whether or not he’d died. Because he clearly got up afterwards, comically flattened, and shook himself back into shape.
Just put his thumb into his mouth and puffed out his cheeks until he reinflated.
And then said something droll in a West Country accent.
I’m going to go with “blows up town” instead, because I DID specify First Blood in the title, you are correct!
I think also “goes out of his way to NOT kill aggressive sheriff’s deputies who are trying to kill him” would definitely be scored against him if he were black.
It is suuuuch an incredible movie, by the way! I do not want the fact society is horrible to black people to be interpreted as a dislike for First Blood. He was RIGHT to insist on remaining in town!
Yeah I remember watching FIRST BLOOD for the first time in college. I’d seen other Rambo movies as a kid and it was pretty shocking to see how different FIRST BLOOD is from the others.
Yeah, same, only the only thing I knew about Rambo when I saw First Blood was the cartoons where he was basically All of G I Joe. First Blood is a surprisingly trenchant criticism of our cultural attitude towards war and veterans! I 100% was not expecting it.
Mr Lass is on a mission from God to fill in the macho cultural gaps in my movie history; so I saw First Blood for the first time earlier this year – and also was 100% not expecting it.
This weekend we watched They Live. #ripRoddyPiper
It’s surprising how much of especially the early 80s macho movies were really grappling with the place of machismo in a world increasingly corroded by corporate commercialism, until I guess basically commercialism finished corroding it by the 1990s and then they just turned back into a celebration of how badass tough guys are. (See also: Predator, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, The Running Man, The Thing, I think you can even make a case for the Terminator and Alien franchises.)
ETA a couple other movies I thought of that fit into that paradigm, I wonder if THAT is something worth writing about, huh.
“NO! You leave “badass tough guys” outta my “Alien” franchise” she whimpers, clutching the framed photo of her GSD Ripley named after the greatest woman action hero of all time.
OF ALL TIME.
No, no, what I mean is that, especially the first two movies, are part of this new understanding of masculinity — Cameron especially is on the spectrum of it, because the way he investigates masculinity is by showing its numerous insufficiencies and replacing traditional male heroes with superior female ones — like an early attempt at finding a new understanding of “toughness” where the old forms were being broken down.
Regarding those films as an interrogation of toxic masculinity, see also: that scene in Alien where Ash tries to kill Ripley by literally stuffing a porno magazine down her throat.
The imagery in that film was quite subtle, really.
I am very interested now in the idea of the 80s as a sort of failed reckoning with masculinity, like there was a sort of rising interest in really interrogating the idea and seeing how hollow and empty and brittle it is, and then getting scared of that fact and retreating into the comforting illusion of celebrating machismo.
I have never said this with more absolute sincerity: I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Well, as it so happens, I, BRAAK, have got a newsletter.
It is called Threat Quality Press and it is…okay.; It’s fine, I guess, it’s not going to change your life or anything. Lately it’s just me hassling David Brooks.
Hmmmm…that’s an interesting viewpoint…(puts framed photo back on shelf).
Sent from my iPad
Fun fact: in the original ending of First Blood, he commits suicide, but the ending that was eventually used was also filmed, and preview audience reaction was about equal for both versions. Also, the original cut was over three hours–twice the eventual theatrical version–and Stallone and his agent contemplated buying the film and destroying it.
I would pay good money to see that. I will also now consider this to be canonical, with all the other Rambo movies being reinterpreted as dying-moment fantasies flashing through John Rambo’s mind as his spirit leaves his body in a semi-afterlife Jacob’s Ladder transcendence and redemption fantasy kind of thing.
Hm, I always thought he shot Brian Denehy to death (unloading an M60 into his dick) by shooting up into the ceiling as Denehy was on the roof, but maybe not? I dunno. My takeaways as a kid were: cops are dicks (I already knew this) and that I wanted to be a special forces soldier (talk about a failed attempt to show the flaws in traditionally macho archetypes, huh?). I never did the latter, although I did other similar stuff. It was probably Stallone’s fault that I didn’t do Navy or Air Force ROTC instead and learn a useful non-shouting-and-killing-people trade.
No, Brian Dennehy falls through a skylight, but he lives, they take him to the hospital after Rambo spends like five minutes crying about how badly he needs a hug.
Dang. I guess I just wanted Brian Denehy’s character dead (note: I enjoy Brian Denehy as an actor and bear him no ill will). I wonder how much of the rest of the movie I don’t really remember?
Brian Dennehy is a fine actor, and I think the fact that he plays a boneheaded jerk so well in First Blood is evidence of this fact.
I think there should be a movie where he and Stacy Keach are just assholes to each other for 90 minutes.
It’s posts like this that make me very, very glad that comments are well-moderated on this site.
Read post to husband,who then #actually’d me that “First Blood” is a reference to Code Duello.
Informed Husband that this is The Toast. WE KNOW THAT STUFF ALREADY
So I just want to point out that a year before Rambo was made, there was a movie called Ruckus starring Dirk Benedict (Faceman from The A-Team, or Starbuck from the original BSG). It was the exact same plot: Vietnam Special Forces vet rolls into a small town, gets into trouble, steals motorcycles, etc. Falls in love with a local girl (Linda Blair), and is a comedy. It’s…. pretty amazing.
Hm, this is pretty interesting, because First Blood was based on a 1972 novel, and was in production in one form or another for a decade before the 1982 movie came out. The guy who wrote and directed Ruckus was primarily a TV actor and stunt coordinator who only has three writing credits and six directing credits. Even odds that he either read the book and decided to adapt it himself, or saw one of the seventeen different versions of the adaptation produced and rejected during that time — better than even that if Ruckus had performed remotely well at the box office, Columbia would have sued the hell out of him.
Well, it didn't kill Farmer Maggot, that's for sure.
No, Brian Dennehy falls through a skylight, but he lives, they take him to the hospital after Rambo spends like five minutes crying about how badly he needs a hug.
Brian Dennehy is a fine actor, and I think the fact that he plays a boneheaded jerk so well in First Blood is evidence of this fact.I think there should be a movie where he and Stacy Keach are just assholes to each other for 90 minutes.
I’ve never seen any of the Rambo movies but, if he’d been black, my mentally ill white brother would have been killed by the police way before he died of a heart attack in his 40’s.