The following article discusses story details of Rambo: Last Blood.
In the lead-up to Creed (2015), the New Yorker published a fascinating analysis of the six Rocky movies, arguing that they can be viewed as a trilogy: In Rocky (1976) and Rocky II (1979), the Italian Stallion goes from nobody to somebody; in III (1982) and IV (1985), he mutates once again, this time from hero to superhero; Sylvester Stallone then sought to extricate the champ from the excesses of Reagan’s America (the robot butler, anyone?), setting up Rocky’s ignoble return to the streets of Philly in Rocky V (1990), then credibly reestablishing him as an underdog in Rocky Balboa (2006). It was this iteration of Rocky—the purest version—that Stallone reprised in Creed and Creed II (2018), in which an aging, widowed, streetwise Rocky acts (reluctantly at first) as mentor and trainer to a young protégé.
Sly’s other signature role, troubled Vietnam vet John Rambo, has had no less of a winding road through the past five decades when it comes to his ever-evolving characterization: The self-hating solider of David Morrell’s 1972 novel First Blood was recast as a sympathetic hero in the 1982 movie of the same name, who in turn became the jingoistic superhero of Rambo: First Blood, Part II (1985) and Rambo III (1988). It was only in his belated fourth cinematic adventure, Rambo (2008), that his prototypal literary temperament atavistically asserted itself:
You know what you are, what you’re made of. War is in your blood. Don’t fight it. You didn’t kill for your country—you killed for yourself. God’s never gonna make that go away. When you’re pushed, killing’s as easy as breathing.
Rambo’s inner monologue in Rambo (2008)
Upon ending the prolonged moratorium on both creatively depleted franchises in the aughts, Stallone didn’t “retcon” some of the lesser entries in the Rocky and Rambo series, but rather embraced them as part of both heroes’ long emotional arcs: Just as Creed II redeems the hokey jingoism of Rocky IV, Rambo IV acknowledges that the previous sequels glorified violence—gleefully, even pornographically—and burdens the protagonist with the guilt of that indefensible carnage, refusing to let him off the hook for it. The inconvenient mistakes of the past aren’t expunged from the hagiographies of either of these American icons for the sake of a cleaner narrative—an increasingly common (and inexcusably lazy) practice in franchise filmmaking, as evidenced by recent “do-over” sequels to Terminator and Halloween—but instead seed the conditions in which we find both Rocky and Rambo at the next stage of their ongoing sagas.
So, in Rambo: Last Blood (2019), which sees the itinerant commando back home at his ranch in Arizona (per the coda of the last movie), the big question I had going into the film was this: Which permutation of Rambo would we find in this story—the one about what happened after Johnny came marching home? What might Rambo, who has always served a cultural Rorschach—first as an expression of the political disillusionment of the seventies, then recruited in the eighties to serve as poster boy for the Reagan Doctrine—tell us about ourselves in the Trump era?
ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO
As mentioned, the Rambo of the 1972 novel was no innocent hero: He consciously invited—and arguably incited—the story’s bloody confrontation with local police chief and Korean War vet Will Teasle (portrayed by Brian Dennehy in the movie). By stubbornly refusing to consider the opposing point of view, each man is equally responsible for destroying the small mountain town that serves as the site of their battle… before they ultimately destroy one another.
Stallone may have taken misguided inspiration from the source material when scripting Last Blood, because this Rambo in no way elicits any sympathy for his cause; he willfully escalates the conflict—more on the movie’s premise in a minute—with the sole aim of killing anyone who challenges him by the most barbaric means possible. In doing so, though, Last Blood evokes not First Blood, but rather some of the worst qualities of Rambo II and III: the American-might-makes-right jingoism for which the previous movie tried—rather artfully, it’s worth noting—to atone.
When his sort-of niece is kidnapped by a Mexican cartel and forced into sex slavery, Rambo travels south of the border—which, as Trump tried to warn us, is indeed a crime-ridden shithole populated exclusively by gangbangers and rapists—literally busting heads till he finds her. He then draws the bad guys back to his ranch (I counted two separate second-unit shots of the border wall, for all the good it did keeping out the cartel), which Rambo has meticulously booby-trapped, Home Alone–style, for the express purpose of systematically dispatching the sex traffickers in punishingly elaborate and gruesomely violent ways.
The villains in all the Rambo movies are cartoons (the only dimensional adversary he’s ever faced was Teasle in the novel, who was more or less reduced to a redneck sheriff in the film adaptation); the heavies here, though, aren’t merely caricatures—which would be bad enough—but offensively xenophobic stereotypes.
But if the series’ antagonists have never been particularly well-developed, at least the geopolitical context of the previous adventures aspired to topicality—the Vietnam War, the POW/MIA issue, the Soviet–Afghan War, the Saffron Revolution in Burma—whereas Last Blood is content to be nothing more than balls-out vengeance porn: Bad hombres from one of those “Mexican countries” are a-comin’, and our last line of defense is a red-blooded, white-skinned American man with a gun.
It’s like somebody wrote a revenge thriller even Liam Neeson couldn’t be paid enough to star in, so they slugged in Rambo’s name post factum. That it’s morally repugnant is abhorrent enough, but this isn’t even, by any metric, a story about John Rambo. Creed, by contrast, honored the conventions of Rocky and the characterization of Rocky while reinventing a familiar narrative for a new era.
DEMOLITION MAN
That John Rambo is deprived of his most identifiable characteristics is even more puzzling given the film’s subtitle, Last Blood, which suggests the creative intention was to somehow bring his story full circle—that if Rambo IV had him confront the sins of II and III, wouldn’t it have made sense to use Last Blood to mirror the events of First Blood?
Here’s how they might’ve done that—and all Stallone would’ve had to do was hew to the same formula that worked so successfully in Creed.
Forget the sex-trafficking story. What if a young veteran of either Iraq or Afghanistan (or both)—a new character to the series, wrestling with PTSD from his battlefield experiences and unable to get sufficient mental-health treatment—wandered into Bowie, Arizona, and brought that war home with him, only this time it’s Rambo who finds himself in the position of authority to do something about it? Rambo effectively becomes Teasle in this scenario—the veteran of a previous war dealing with an emotionally unstable (and deadly) young counterpart.
And because he’s in his golden years, Rambo relies not on his brawn to resolve the crisis—not answering violence with yet more violence—but rather the hard-earned wisdom of his own complicated experiences. You could’ve still had a great cat-and-mouse action thriller (like The Fugitive, which favored intelligent solutions over violent ones), but one with both a sociopolitical point to make as well as a cathartic—and truly conclusive—arc for John Rambo.
Hell, the dénouement could’ve taken place at a retirement home in Hope, the mountain town reduced to rubble in the first movie, in which Rambo goes to visit an elderly Teasle (Dennehy’s still above the grass, after all) for the first time since their tragic face-off—with a new appreciation for the trouble he caused the police chief all those years ago—and the two old men finally make peace.
Imagine that: a Rambo movie in which three generations of American veterans learn to finally put their wars behind them—together. What an aspirational message that could’ve sent: that it’s time for a new, cooperative, nonviolent worldview of empathetic coexistence moving forward—that no more blood need be shed in the name of another stupid conflict. That would’ve been a unexpected, and unexpectedly hopeful, permutation of an action franchise that once reveled in Reagan-era militaristic might; it would’ve been a sequel worthy of its subtitle.
But that’s not what we got. Instead, Last Blood traffics in some of the genre’s most reprehensible narrative tropes—the white male savior motivated by the violent death of a woman he loves—and political fearmongering—namely, brown people from “over there” are coming to rape and pillage… so, Johnny getch yer gun, getch yer gun, getch yer gun!
If First Blood—both the book and movie, softened though the latter may be—was the antiauthoritarian howl of the Angry Young Man, Last Blood is the defiant manifesto of the Angry Old Man: Rambo—this iteration of him, anyway—is now emblematic of every intransigent septuagenarian that refuses to cede the cultural and political stage to a new generation, one with its own ideas about the kind of world it wants to live in. The old white men of these United States are still a force to be reckoned with, and we’re gonna hold our ground—violently if necessary—until we Make America Great Again. Deal with it, snowflakes.
It isn’t just that Last Blood exploits the same sort of rabid xenophobia that helped get Trump elected; it celebrates the same spirit of nihilism that’s been the quintessence of his presidency—that it’s preferable to burn the house down than let anyone else take custodianship of it. (Rambo willingly destroys his entire ranch in exchange for the satisfaction of massacring untold brown-skinned baddies.) To wit, the subtitle Last Blood in no way implies Rambo and his ilk are dying out; on the contrary: They ain’t goin’ nowhere. Make no mistake: They’re the last rightful heirs to this country. Implicit in the very words “last blood” is the promise that, as long as old white men have something to say about it, there won’t be any new blood.
Rambo: Last Blood is a spectacularly thematically and morally bankrupt motion picture (and I say that as someone who’s voluntarily endured the self-punishing exercise of studying the first seven Fast & Furious movies); it has no new ideas to offer, just assurance that contempt-fueled rage is, in the end, the most renewable American resource. It’s the perfect post-Hannity bedtime story. In that respect, I suppose, Last Blood in fact offers the most pointed social commentary on its era—on who we are as a nation in 2019—than any of its series forebears. Now, if only that had been intentional…
So, I guess you didn’t like the movie, right? Lol. Phew, a scathing review, Sean, and it sounds like the film deserved it. I thought YOUR envisioning of a final Rambo film would have made a much more interesting and worthwhile experience, with a deeper message and a meaningful evolution for the character and story. One more in line with the type of healing that the world needs, and the growth that comes with experience and a changing perspective.
Mirroring the Trumpian xenophobia and gross stereotypes isn’t only unappealing, it’s disturbing. The willingness to crash and burn the ranch/world for the sake of some misguided machismo is exactly what’s happening and isn’t something to be celebrated. Ugh, I’m not going to watch this movie.
Oh, and since I’m not a Neeson fan, my favorite line: “It’s like somebody wrote a revenge thriller even Liam Neeson couldn’t be paid enough to star in.” Ha! That totally cracked me up.
Hey, Diana!
You are not the first person to have called this piece a “scathing review,” an analysis I’ll admit surprises me every time I hear it! As a Rambo fan since childhood — of both Stallone’s four movies and Morrell’s three novels (see my Goodreads reviews of the latter here, here, and here) — I went into Last Blood very much wanting to like it, even expecting to, given how Sly has been on an impossible winning streak with Rocky VI, Rambo IV, Creed, and Creed II. So instead of my usual think piece, Last Blood seemed like a chance to do a simple movie review that would act as a sort-of sequel to one of my earliest blog posts: “A Survivalist’s Guide: The Continuing Relevance and Reinterpretation of Rambo.”
I wasn’t looking to bash the movie — I was hoping to heap accolades on it! — but felt I had no choice but to call it out for being both a bad Rambo movie (author David Morrell himself noted “Rambo could have been called John Smith”) and an irresponsible piece of popular entertainment in its own right that invokes every nefarious narrative trope in the book: the (needlessly) violent white male savior, pornographic gunplay, extrajudicial vigilantism, relentless nihilism, inexcusable xenophobia — you name it.
And what makes that all the more frustrating in this particular instance was that Stallone had a golden opportunity to take an eighties action relic emblematic of all those questionable mores and credibly turn him into the poster boy for a new, cooperative, nonviolent worldview of empathetic coexistence (and — bonus! — bring the franchise full circle, to boot). So, rather than doing what I do a lot on this blog — bitch about the fact that Hollywood has become a 1980s nostalgia factory — I thought I’d outline an alternative Last Blood scenario that might’ve aspired to something higher than braindead, backward-gazing jingoism.
To that end, I’d like to share this wonderful quotation from climate activist Naomi Klein’s essay “The Leap Years: Ending the Story of Endlessness”:
And that, ultimately, is the reason it’s (past) time to put Rambo out to pasture, to say nothing of all the Skywalkers and superheroes monopolizing the cultural stage at present. Our new millennium deserves and demands some new narratives — aspirational, not nostalgic. So, yeah, much as it pains me to have to say it, skip Last Blood and don’t give it a second thought.
Thanks, as always, for popping by, Diana. Hope you’ve been well and that you are eagerly anticipating autumn’s coming bounty…
Sean
I’ve never seen any of the Rambo movies and the only Rocky I ever saw was the one where he fights Dolph Lundgren—I was completely turned off by the simplistic and highly cliched “we American, we good; they Russian, they bad” plot line. But I would pay good money to see your version. Of course, I’d pay good money to see anything you wrote😊
It might interest you to know, Suzanne, that author David Morrell, who created Rambo in his 1972 debut novel First Blood, hails from Kitchener, Ontario (he is now an American citizen and registered Democrat). The novel was and remains a very respected piece of antiwar literature (no less than Stephen King used to teach the book to his high-school students) in which Rambo could easily be considered either the protagonist or antagonist of the story, depending on the point of view of the reader. (It’s a seriously wonderful book that’s sadly as relevant as ever: It’s about two men from different generations — a “hippie” Vietnam vet and a conservative Korean War vet — who refuse to entertain one another’s perspectives to the point of mutual destruction. You can read my Goodreads review here.)
Both the Rocky and Rambo movie series started excellently, then gradually devolved into a morass of campy excess and Reagan-era jingoism before fizzling out with Rambo III (1988) and Rocky V (1990). When Stallone lifted the moratorium on both franchises over fifteen years later, I thought for sure he was making a huge mistake — an ill-advised, sure-to-fail grab at bygone glory days — but, sure enough, Rocky Balboa (2006) turned out to be the best Rocky since the original, and Rambo IV (the director’s cut of which carries the title John Rambo) is an effective (if uncomfortable) mea culpa for all the gleeful carnage of II and III.
Creed, of course, is an absolutely dazzling spin-off from the Rocky series, and Creed II is both a direct sequel to the first Creed as well as to Rocky IV! And if you’ve never seen Creed II, let me assure you: It completely redeems all the flag-waving, chest-thumping jingoism of Rocky IV! You will have to trust me on that. Dolph Lundgren’s Ivan Drago, a cartoonish villain even by the standards of 1980s action movies, is a heartbreakingly dimensional antihero in Creed II (Lundgren reprised the role).
And it was precisely because Stallone pulled a rabbit out of the hat four times in a row — with Rocky Balboa, John Rambo, and the Creeds — that I had high hopes for Last Blood. I didn’t go into the movie wanting to be disappointed with it, but alas. Rambo’s got an awkward piece of voiceover in Last Blood in which he explains his experiences in Vietnam made it impossible to truly come home again. Boy, do I know the feeling: Even a staunch anti-nostalgist like myself occasionally yearns for the comforts of what used to be, but Rambo V stands as yet further testament that sometimes you just can’t go home again.
>When his sort-of niece is kidnapped by a Mexican cartel and forced into sex slavery
“Last Action Hero” did a riff off of this trope. Previously unknown family member is attacked, causing main character to seek revenge
A word of advice to all aspiring writers: If someone made fun of a trope over 25 years ago, then it might not be as fresh and inventive as you might think
Not to mention that whole “Woman in the fridge” thing. Another word of advice: If a trope is generally considered offensive, be careful w/ its use
I haven’t seen the movie, so I don’t know if they put a good twist on it
100%, Dell. Nothing about this movie is fresh or inventive, including the plot, which was previously the basis for an obscure exploitation flick from 1976 called Trackdown starring James Mitchum, son of Robert Mitchum. (Whether or not the story similarities are coincidence I have no idea, but, regardless, they’re indicative of Last Blood‘s overall conceptual staleness.)
So, aside from the been-there/done-that plot, nothing about the premise of Last Blood even adheres to the conventions of a Rambo movie: It’s just a (poorly made) revenge thriller with no geopolitical context whatsoever! Which is all the more perplexing given that the featurette included on Rambo IV (titled “It’s a Long Road: Resurrection of an Icon”) reveals Sly previously rejected the plot of Last Blood over a decade ago for not being sufficiently topical:
And Sly isn’t the only filmmaker to have the right idea about a belated fourth entry to a beloved eighties trilogy, only to subsequently talk himself into some wrongheaded ideas. I recall when George Lucas, back in the early ’90s, was first toying with the idea of setting Indiana Jones IV in the Atomic Age: He reasoned that if the original trilogy was set in the 1930s and structured after the old Republic serials, then a fourth film — which would have to take place in the 1950s as a concession to Harrison’s age — could take inspiration from the sci-fi B-movies of the era. So far so good…
But the original draft of the concept, titled Indiana Jones and the Saucermen from Mars (written by Jeb Stuart), doesn’t feel like an Indy movie — and not because it has an extraterrestrial component. It’s because Indy spends the entire story outrunning an armada of UFOs in the New Mexico desert. There’s no MacGuffin — no archaeological object for him to pursue. To his credit, Lucas recognized that, and it was when he landed on the crystal skulls — real-world pseudoarcheological artifacts purported to be alien in origin — that he finally broke the back of the story: Now he had a credible basis for updating Indiana Jones in a fourth adventure that could honor both the conventions of the original trilogy and the B movies of the 1950s. (And Frank Darabont accordingly produced a creatively successful draft called Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods. Why they ultimately went with David Koepp’s inferior Kingdom of the Crystal Skull script I’ll never know — and I have a lot of inside information on that movie as a former colleague of mine was intimately involved in the production — but an analysis of the Darabont and Koepp drafts demonstrates that the problems with Indy IV were executional, not conceptual. Lucas had the right idea — and even at one point had the right script! — they just cocked up the produced movie. But that’s another article…)
I bring that up only to say that when a filmmaker is trying to reinvent a franchise for a new era, there’s a right way to do it (Creed; Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods) and a wrong way to do it (Rambo: Last Blood; Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). And I think it’s a pity that after four home runs — Rocky Balboa, Rambo IV, Creed, and Creed II — that Stallone snapped his winning streak so ignobly. Oh, well.
(If you want to read the Stuart, Darabont, and Koepp drafts of Indy IV — and it’s a fascinating analytical exercise to do so — you can find them all here.)
Hey, Sean. Slowly catching up here!
I recently saw an interview with Stallone in which he outright says, “I didn’t vote for Trump. I didn’t vote for anybody. I just said, ‘I gotta sit this one out,’ because I didn’t believe in anyone.” On one hand… OK, I’ve been there myself; and one less vote for you-know-who is fine by me. But I find it interesting, in light of your post, that he was acting as the autonomous “do-it-my-wayer” in this last film iteration.
Like many others, I didn’t see this film. I’ve never been one for gratuitous gore without purpose, and I could sense this would be “one of those” even without any reviews. But your clear explanation of the problems present was nonetheless a worthwhile and interesting read.
I also found your post here bringing to mind Season 2 of The Punisher, which I did watch and enjoy, and yet which relied on many of the same plot points as you describe in Last Blood (e.g., newly acquired daughter figure in trouble, vigilantism, “those guys” vs the savior, etc.). IMDb scores were a solid 8.5 overall, while Rotten Tomatoes scores were lower, with general consensus being, “Castle was too nice; we wanted more ‘punishing.'” I’m wondering, if you saw this season of The Punisher, what your own thoughts were compared with your thoughts on Last Blood. You’ve got me thinking about why even I myself enjoyed the show, despite the fact that it isn’t in line with what I typically watch.
I hadn’t heard that interview — I honestly had no idea where Stallone stood politically with respect to His Orangeness.
I’ll say this: I don’t suspect Last Blood was written with a conscious pro-MAGA agenda, and, upon reconsideration, I appreciate how the closing paragraphs of my review might lead one to think otherwise. No, whereas all the previous Rambo stories (the novels and films) were overtly political, this one is strangely apolitical: It is the first movie that isn’t set within a very topical and/or controversial geopolitical context. Rambo’s just tendin’ horses on his ranch — this movie could just as easily be set in the nineties, or the seventies, or the fifties — when his surrogate niece is kidnapped and he treks down to Mexico to rescue her. I meant what I said in my review: It’s like someone took a spec thriller written for Liam Neeson and then retroactively turned it into a Rambo script (much the same way Jonathan Hensleigh’s spec Simon Says was repurposed from the Brandon Lee vehicle it was meant to be — before Lee’s death — to serve as the basis for Die Hard with a Vengeance).
That isn’t — to be clear — what happened here. Per the making-of featurette “It’s a Long Road: Resurrection of an Icon” from 2008, this niece-kidnapped-by-the-cartel plotline was originally considered for Rambo IV. It seems they just dusted it off for Rambo V without giving any consideration to whether its central premise, conceived over a decade earlier, might be controversial in light of current sociopolitical circumstances. Ultimately, it’s just an astonishingly tone-deaf movie, culturally speaking — one that celebrates a reprehensibly pernicious set of values that, now more than ever, need to be challenged and subdued. We need to be telling better, more socially responsible stories than this.
And it isn’t because the movie is violent. Violence is part of human nature, and the human experience, and stories should comment on that. Some movies glorify violence (the way Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rambo III did) and some condemn it (like Rambo IV and GoodFellas, the former of which is pornographically violent to purposefully induce revulsion in the viewer). It’s all about the message embedded in the narrative. Very often — and I suspect this was the case with Last Blood — stories are unintentionally laced with a lot of bad mores. For instance, if you haven’t already read it, I recommend an article that appeared this weekend in the New York Times: “‘Clueless’ and ‘Saved by the Bell’ Are How We Got Trump: How ’90s pop culture convinced a generation of would-be earnest activists that caring was uncool.” That Last Blood is a reflection of some of the worst values of the Trump era is, by my appraisal, accidentally telling, as opposed to consciously damning, which is the point I tried to make in the last line of this post.
I have not seen The Punisher, but everything you write in the closing paragraph of your comment serves as a reminder that we must — must — always question the principles embedded in our popular stories, even and especially when we find them entertaining. (For instance: I saw Last Blood in a movie theater on the Upper West Side of Manhattan — hardly a conservative stronghold — and the audience roared with bloodthirsty delight every time a bad guy got slaughtered.) I don’t know if you’re aware, Erik, but recently no less than Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola issued some very harsh criticism of the Marvel movies (the former insisting they’re “not cinema,” the latter decrying them as “despicable”), which — unsurprisingly — set off an entire generation of 40-year-old fanboys. But in the wake of the controversy, a few thoughtful critics — including Owen Gleiberman in Variety (“Are Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola Right About Marvel?”) and Ross Douthat in the New York Times (“Against the Superhero Regime”) — offered nuanced reactions to those remarks, making the case that “We’ll be a healthier culture if we let the debate begin.”
So, if you hate a movie or a genre, it’s worth asking yourself why that is; and if you love a particular movie or genre, that’s all the more reason to question what it’s about, why it speaks to you — and if it’s even good for you. That’s what this Rambo fan did on the subway ride home from Last Blood, and that’s what this blog exists to do. So thanks, as always, for joining the conversation.
As someone who is not and has never been a fan-boy of comics, and who still struggles to remember who is part of which universe, I had no interest in The Punisher as a character prior to the Netflix introduction. The others in this ilk (Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Daredevil, Iron Fist, The Defenders) seem to have had less graphic violence than The Punisher; and yet, whereas I couldn’t connect with the whiny Iron Fist at all, I felt genuine empathy for Frank Castle. For me, whether he was part of a universe or just a stand-alone like Denzel in The Equalizer movies, I would have felt the same (i.e., I have no past attachment to the Punisher character).
Whenever I read a book or see a movie, I’m thinking, “What makes this good / bad / mediocre? Why am I (or am I not) reacting to it? How did the writer(s) expect audiences to react?” etc. It’s rare that a book or movie takes me completely away from that, where I’m “in it” for the duration and only analyze afterward. And for some reason—possibly even as arbitrary as state of mind at the time—I mostly found myself on the ride with Frank.
Funny side note: in that interview with Stallone, he says, “Yeah, I know Joe Boyden. Nice guy.” Joe Boyden? I’m guessing you didn’t know him terribly well!
Interestingly, the Punisher made his first comic-book appearance in 1974, the same year the movie Death Wish was released, and a mere two years after the novels Death Wish and First Blood were published. That isn’t a coincidence: All of those likeminded stories — and their violent antiheroes — were reflecting a country that was at its breaking point after the demoralizing traumas of Vietnam, the political assassinations and inner-city riots of the sixties, Watergate, rampant police corruption (the Knapp Commission/Serpico testimony) — on and on we could go.
All of those characters, it’s worth noting, have enjoyed long-running — and ongoing — franchises; it’s probably not coincidental that we got new iterations of Death Wish (2018), Rambo (2019), and The Punisher (2017) in the short three years since Trump’s been president, and the United States finds itself more divided than ever, with violence and domestic extremism once again on the resurgence. Of all the Netflix Marvel shows, The Punisher was the only one that wasn’t planned it advance; it developed organically, after the character got such an unexpectedly warm reception on Daredevil. Perhaps this is indictive of an unconscious sociopolitical relevance this darker superhero enjoys right now, much the same way the new Joker movie seems to be resonating? (Of all those shows, the only one I ever watched was the first season of Daredevil, but I couldn’t connect with it specifically because it in no way looked like contemporary New York City. It was trying like hell to be edgy, but I didn’t get the sense that any of the writers knew the first damn thing about Hell’s Kitchen other than what they’d read in forty-year-old Frank Miller comics!)
You know, sometimes fictional characters just speak to their times in a very profound way that can’t be engineered or anticipated (a topic I will be exploring in my November blog post, as it happens). And if Rambo and the Punisher are enjoying newfound cultural relevance, perhaps we should have another look at the era that birthed them, and then our current circumstances, and ask ourselves what these folkloric icons are trying to tell us about then as it relates to now. Maybe there’s a lesson to take from their stories…?
It takes a profoundly bad book or movie to pull me out of the narrative experience and prematurely engage the analytical part of my brain. Typically, I will submit to a film or manuscript simply to experience its story (as I did with Last Blood, I should stipulate). Afterward, I gauge my emotional reaction to the material; if it’s insufficient, or not what the artist likely intended (again: Last Blood), only then do I start using my storytelling tools to diagnose where it fell short or went wrong. I would say that if you empathized with Frank Castle, I would imagine that’s owed to the effectiveness of the storytelling — the “Emotioneering” techniques deployed that operate beneath the audience’s conscious awareness. I will admit to being curious about The Punisher now!
Joe Boyden? I dunno — maybe that’s how they pronounce it in Philly!
I often wonder how it is inside of the brains of people who don’t think like we do: analyzing subtext, word choice, psychological and sociological implications, etc. It must be so… quiet in there!
My unquiet is enjoying your unquiet, as ever, Sean.
Likewise, pal! I am exceedingly lucky to have found a regular readership — you, Diana, Suzanne, among others — who have embraced this blog’s particular esoteric brand, which my wife once summed up by suggesting the tagline: “Highly Academic Discussions about Really Dumb Shit”! You not only engage me, and challenge me (as kid koppe did recently in his fascinating scholarly evaluation of Tim Burton’s Batman in response to my recent thirtieth-anniversary reappraisal of the film), but you zigzag with me from superhero screed to personal anecdote to storytelling-craft study to cultural commentary to climate-change coverage — sometimes all in the same post! — without succumbing to whiplash! Bless you all.
I didn’t see this one, although I’ll agree that it was a giant missed opportunity. Unfortunately, though, that’s not a surprise. I did go to the movies to see Zombieland, which I do recommend for its humor, even though it’s technically a sequel. But they were also offering gems like Frozen 2, Jumanji 3, a remake of Aladdin, a remake of Mulan, Maleficent, Terminator (what, like 27?), and the Addams Family.
Seriously?! No wonder the theater was practically deserted. I’m going to see Harriet as soon as I can scoop out an evening to spare, and I’m praying they don’t massacre the story. But at least it’s not a remake or a series that should have been put out of its misery long ago. I don’t know what the problem is, but if Hollywood doesn’t decide to invest in some genuinely new intellectual property, people are going to simply stop going to movies. That’s already happening in my area.
As for me, I’m hastening the process. I’m trying to mostly only see genuinely new stories, and I’m absolutely boycotting remakes. I figure they’ve got to get the message eventually.
Honestly, Cathleen, I don’t know how movie theaters even stay in business! When I was a kid, we waited on lines around the block to see the latest offering, but these days kids would rather just watch stuff on their phones whenever they feel like it! The theatrical-exhibition model just doesn’t make sense anymore…
To wit, I was quite happily surprised to hear the new Terminator bombed! Dark Fate is part of a recent trend of what I’ve termed “do-over sequels”: By retconning the last handful of half-assed installments, these movies promise to be direct follow-ups to the beloved original entries. (The most recent Halloween is an example of this.) To my mind, these are far more cynical than an ordinary sequel, or even a remake, because they are both an admission that a franchise is creative depleted and a calculated ploy to wring more money out of its audience nonetheless. “Yeah, the last half dozen of these we produced and sold to you were crap — our bad! — but good news: They no longer count! This is the sequel you’ve really been waiting for, so ante up!”
No, sorry — homey don’t play that. My rule of thumb is that I will watch a do-over sequel just as soon as I’ve been reimbursed for all the previous movies I paid good money to see that have since been deemed unworthy by the very people who made them. When Arnold personally issues me a refund for the Terminator movies he’s since disowned (and Jamie Lee for the Halloween movies she’s openly admitted to being “a money gig,” a “paycheck”), then I’ll indulge your do-over sequel.
Monday-morning analyses of Dark Fate‘s box-office failure posed the hopeful question Where does the franchise go from here? Here’s a suggestion: It could graciously exit the cultural stage — along with Star Wars and Ghostbusters (getting its own legacy sequel next year) and Rambo — so that, to borrow the phrasing of Watchmen creator Alan Moore, “this surely unprecedented era [might] develop a culture of its own, relevant and sufficient to its times.”
But that’s only going to happen if we do what you’re doing, Cathleen: Eschew rehashes in favor of new stories. Keep hitting them in the wallet the way we did this past weekend with Terminator, and studios will either get the message… or they’ll hasten their own obsolescence. That’s a win, either way.