How to Kick Ass like Rambo

How do you create a kick ass hero as enduring as Rambo? Well, first you have to create a character that resonates uniquely with the American public. The reason Rambo has spoken to movie audiences since the '80s, and even influenced U.S. foreign policy, is that co-writer and star Sylvester Stallone managed to tap into deep-rooted feelings about war, loyalty, veterans and national pride, and managed to do it in both a smart and heartfelt way. So, don't dismiss the Rambo series as just a bunch of brainless action movies. The fact is, if you want to know how a kick ass hero for the ages is created, you need to pay attention to how Stallone created Rambo. We'll give you the Cliff's Notes...

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Movie Ticket
• Bag of Popcorn
• Your Preferred Beverage
• Headband (optional)

1. Timing. Stallone’s timing with the first Rambo movie, “First Blood,” in 1982 was perfect. America’s national pride was at a low following its humiliation in the Vietnam War and the Iranian hostage crisis. Deep in the nation's post Vietnam guilt were strong feelings for the ones who had fought our battles and been discarded.
   
   “First Blood” was one of only a handful of movies at the time that took on the tough subject of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the fate of our veterans who had fought an unpopular war and come home to taunts and jeers.
   
   In “First Blood,” Stallone dressed up the story's more serious aspects with a great action-driven plot that highlighted his hero’s determination, sense of honor and personal pride, but he never strayed far from the bedrock sense of disillusionment that haunted John Rambo.
   
   "I want, what they want, and every other guy who came over here and spilled his guts and gave everything he had, wants! For our country to love us as much as we love it! That's what I want!" is the heart of John Rambo’s despair.
   
   Without dialog like this, Rambo would likely have faded from memory pretty quickly, instead of the name becoming a byword for all that’s good about American national pride and its ability to deal with adversity.
   
   And for those who dismiss “First Blood” as a mindless, endlessly violent movie, they should note that the body count is relatively low--four deaths--compared to similar films of the genre. Even when dealing with the challenges posed by the sheriff and citizens of Hope, Washington, Stallone portrays his Rambo character as having the restraint not to make kills when he doesn’t have to--the mark of a good soldier and more importantly, a good American.
   
   Audiences took note and First Blood, shot for $14 million, became a smash hit, earning $47 million in the U.S. and $78 million worldwide.
2. Forethought. Besides having smarts, Stallone put muscle behind his determination to play the character himself. Look how that turned out. Thirty years later, who can imagine anyone else but Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo?
   
   It wasn’t the initial plan as outlined by Warner Bros and TriStar Pictures. They had wanted popular, established movie stars like Clint Eastwood, John Travolta, Steve McQueen, Al Pacino and even Dustin Hoffman for the lead role.
   
   Although the studios had seen a number of pitches based on the 1972 David Morrell book of the same name, it was when Stallone got involved, and used his Rocky clout to make the character of John Rambo more sympathetic, that the movie finally got the green light. It’s interesting to note one of Stallone’s important changes to the script: While the book has Rambo kill his pursuers, in Stallone’s version Rambo does not directly cause the death of any police officer or national guardsmen.
   
   Stallone pulled down a paycheck of $3.5 million (big money at the time) but ended up earning every penny by risking life and limb to lend credibility to the story. In fact, while filming the scene when Rambo escapes local police by falling from a cliff into a tree, Stallone insisted on doing his own stunts. His reward? Three broken ribs and some bone crushing realism. The scene stayed in the movie's final cut.
3. Time to get tortured... Character Detail. Stallone also paid great attention to his character’s back story, forming the basis for an American icon. And as we have come to know, Rambo's life is full of details that resonate with our sense of national identity and push our emotional buttons as clearly as J.K. Rowling ever did when she made Harry Potter an orphan.
   
   According to the character’s back story, Jonathan James Rambo was born in Bowie, Arizona, on July 6, 1947. (Of course, they could have chosen July 4, but that coupled with Bowie and references to the famous hunting knife might have been a bit too much.) Rambo also unites American ancestries: native and immigrant, having a Native American Navajo mother and a father of German ancestry.
   
   The back story makes it clear that Rambo embarked on a life of service to the U.S. as soon as he graduated from Rangeford High School at the age of 17. While his fellow students were planning on drinking, smoking and partying, he enlisted in the U.S. Army to be all he could be for the country he loves.
4. Staying on Track. Stallone had the insight to stay true to the sympathetic Rambo character traits he established in “First Blood” when he continued with the franchise in 1985.
   
   In the movie, “Rambo: First Blood Part II,” Rambo is released from prison by Federal order to document the possible existence of POWs in Vietnam. His bosses are confident he will find nothing and they will be able to bury the issue of post Vietnam War POWs.
   
   James Cameron, of "Aliens," "Terminator" and "Titanic" fame, wrote the first draft of the screenplay but then, he says, Stallone, added the politics--the issue that was burning up America at the time, it’s feelings of guilt about Vietnam War vets.
   
   During the movie, Rambo is taken prisoner in a North Vietnamese POW camp located near the Chinese border. But not only does he escape, he stays true to a promise not to leave a man behind by rescuing prisoners. his actions confront the prevailing air of apathy in the U.S. about their fate in enemy hands.
   
   In the movie, Rambo speaks from the heart about the corruption of the war getting in the way of treating him and his Army comrades with dignity.
   
   The film, striking a chord with a populace that wished its government would--like Rambo--leave no man behind, went on to gross $300.4 million worldwide. It also caught the attention of then-president Ronald Reagan, who praised Rambo as an appropriate symbol for the U.S. Army.
   
   The film would also ingrain Rambo, and the concept of the proud, dignified, resourceful American military hero, into the national consciousness.
5. Sheriff gives him some very bad advice. Learning from Mistakes. While Stallone showed how to create a hero in the first two movies, he lost the plot slightly in the third. Rambo III was released in 1988 and is generally regarded as the bad egg of the set. Even Stallone has said he doesn't like this installment of the Rambo story because he allowed the character to become a cartoon. He blames his Hollywood success for letting the character get away from him.
   
   "When you're a kind of nondescript, unknown, inconsequential actor and all of a sudden you're famous, it's very easy to lose touch there," Stallone says of his participation in the movie. "You keep pushing the envelope, but there is a limit, and the audience retreats."
   
   In the movie, Rambo, living in Thailand, comes out of retirement to fight with Afghan freedom fighters, the Mujahedeen, against the occupying army of the Soviet Union.
   
   Again, Stallone showed smarts in building his action plot around the war of the day but, perhaps because this was a war that had little impact on the American public, audiences were less engaged by Rambo’s sense of right and wrong and all-American heroism, and saw the movie merely as an empty action pic.
   
   This is borne out by the film’s box office gross in the United States which was $10 million lower than the film's overall budget.
6. Relevance. The fourth movie in the Rambo series, Rambo (2008), attempts to reconnect the character with U.S. audiences again for one last hurrah. In it, the ever-political Stallone seems to want to have his say about America’s low standing in world affairs after its misadventures in Iraq by having Rambo, the symbol of the good and ethical American soldier, get involved in the world's longest running civil war, the Burmese-Karen conflict.
   
   Sylvester Stallone has described the film as "sort of like Beyond Rangoon, but with rocket launchers."
   
   In the movie, Rambo comes to the aid of human rights missionaries as they venture up the Salween River to deliver medical supplies and food to the Karen tribe in defiance of the Burmese army. When the missionaries go missing in Burma, the lone warrior knows what he must do.
   
   "He (Rambo) realizes his entire existence has been for naught," Stallone says. "Peace is an accident, war is natural. Old men start it, young men fight it, everybody in the middle dies, and nobody tells the truth. [Rambo] says, 'You think God's going to make it all go away? What has he done and changed in the world? He has done nothing. We are an aggressive animal and will never be at peace.' That's how he feels."
   
   After hearing that, you think President George Bush will think Rambo an appropriate symbol for the military as Regan did?
7. John and his fellow POWs must escape! Unique Genre. Fans of "Rambo: First Blood," and how the hero character plays off current national and political issues, will want to check out other action movie that have a serious side. "The Deer Hunter", "Born on the Fourth of July", "Apocalypse Now", "Coming Home", "Lethal Weapon", "Heaven and Earth" and "Full Metal Jacket" are a great place to start.
   
   Fans of the more straight-forward 'bring a lot of body bags,' non-stop action Rambo III will want to compare the hero's character development--or lack of it--to similar movies from the period such as "Commando," "Predator," and "Delta Force." Another idea is to go with any 80s action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, Charles Bronson or Steve McQueen. Or, just pick an episode of the A-Team or Airwolf.