And now, let me comment on the proposed Rambo reboot.

If you don’t have time to read said it, Bob Newhart will sum it up for you.

A Rambo reboot? How the Hell, man. How. The. Hell.

Note, not ‘what:’ ‘how.’ The ‘what’s’ easy: the state of the art in squeezing-blood-out-of-a-stone technology advances every year, and it’s been almost a decade since the last time Hollywood tapped that particular vein.  And it’s not that the series has any intellectual consistency to betray: First Blood is a completely different type of film than Rambo II – and I’d discuss how both of those contrast to Rambo III, except that I’m too filled with horrified laughter at just how horribly that movie has aged. So I grok why the movie’s getting made.

But… how?  Are we going back to a Vietnam-era story? The men who fought that war are starting to die of old age. Thirty year old people these days were born in a world where North Vietnam didn’t even exist and grew up in one where the Soviet Union didn’t, either.  And I suspect that they’re not going to be able to recreate First Blood, which was and is a subtly complicated film that needed bravura performances by three separate actors in order to work effectively.  So what’s left? An Iraqi War veteran goes and shoots up a VA administrative facility?  I agree that you could theoretically* get a good movie out of that, but an action franchise?  And don’t say ‘Rambo will go shoot up North Korea.’  There’s no way in Hell that will fill seats in the PRC.  Which is something that Hollywood allows themselves to worry about, these days.

So… Hollywood! Stop it!

Moe Lane

*Theoretically. I don’t really have a high opinion of Hollywood’s ability to recreate current affairs and issues in anything like a rational or believable fashion.