Although the Rambo sequels betrayed Stallone’s conflicted antihero, the Saturday morning cartoon Rambo: Force of Freedom was the franchise’s true nadir. The Rambo of 1982’s First Blood is almost unrecognizable when contrasted with the character seen in sequels like 2008’s Rambo or 2019’s Rambo: Last Blood. An adaptation of David Morrell’s even darker novel, First Blood followed Sylvester Stallone’s troubled Vietnam War veteran as he mounts a one-man war against a small town’s corrupt sheriff and police force.
Although this synopsis might make the movie sound like Reacher season 1, it is important to note just how bleak and downbeat First Blood is. Like Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle, First Blood‘s Rambo is depicted as an unhinged, dangerous man who has been badly psychologically scarred by the atrocities he participated in overseas. Tarantino argued First Blood softened Rambo too much compared to the source material, but it was the later Rambo movies that completely betrayed his original characterization. As early as Rambo: First Blood Part 2, Stallone’s character became a jingoistic action hero.
Rambo: The Forces Of Freedom Was A Children’s Cartoon Based On The Movies
Rambo’s Gory War Stories Were Converted To A Cheery Saturday Morning Cartoon
In each subsequent Rambo movie, the тιтle character became a more unambiguously heroic, cartoonish-ly macho superhuman killing machine. However, as remarkable as it may sound, 2008’s Rambo turning First Blood’s brooding antihero into an anti-aircraft gun-wielding mᴀss murderer wasn’t the worst betrayal of the character. That came with 1986’s Rambo: The Force of Freedom, a Saturday morning cartoon series that became the first G-rated television adaptation of an R-rated movie franchise.
The word “Vietnam” isn’t uttered once in all 65 episodes of Rambo: The Force of Freedom, as the disturbed killer of First Blood is turned into a patriotic children’s show hero in this absurdly sanitized adaptation.
As astounding as it may sound, Rambo: The Force of Freedom completely jettisoned the тιтle character’s backstory as well as cutting the family-unfriendly violence that made the movie series famous. The word “Vietnam” isn’t uttered once in all 65 episodes of Rambo: The Force of Freedom, as the disturbed killer of First Blood is turned into a patriotic children’s show hero in this absurdly sanitized adaptation. Rambo still fires a lot of guns and arrows in Rambo: The Force of Freedom, but just about everything else from First Blood is absent in this absurd cartoon.
After First Blood, The Franchise Treated Rambo As Nothing But An Action Hero
First Blood Part 2 Started Rambo’s Rapid Character Devolution
Rambo was supposed to be this tragic character, but as early as the franchise’s second, he was already a by-the-numbers action hero receiving his own spinoff cartoon and line of tie-in children’s toys. While fellow hard-R properties Robocop and The Toxic Avenger also received unlikely spinoff shows aimed at children, those franchises at least had self-aware senses of satirical humor that gave these shows a veneer of irony.
In contrast, First Blood was a genuinely brutal, poignant story of one veteran’s tragic experience and the hardships faced by returning soldiers scarred by the horrors of war. While Rambo and Rambo: Last Blood were also wildly disconnected from what made the original movie work, they at least maintained the dark atmosphere of the Morrell adaptation. In contrast, Rambo: The Force of Freedom turned the Rambo franchise into pro-war propaganda aimed at children and, in the process, made the original movie’s condemnation of war seem like a distant, long-abandoned memory for the franchise.
