Rambo / YMMV - TV Tropes

Works in this franchise with their own YMMV pages:

The Franchise in general:

Awesome Music:
- Jerry Goldsmith, people. This is especially true for Rambo: First Blood Part II (Goldsmith quipped that this score paid for his house), even unto the Animated Adaptation being liberally tracked with the film's score.
- The first three movies' ending themes count: It's A Long Road from First Blood, performed by Dan Hill, Peace In Our Life from Rambo: First Blood Part II, performed by Sly's brother, Frank Stallone, and Bill Medley's cover of The Hollies' He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother from Rambo III.
- To a lesser extent Brian Tyler for Rambo.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In one of the videogames, during the ending, the player can throw the kanji of "anger" (怒) at Murdock, which turns him into a frog.
Complete Monster: Zaysen; Major Pa Tee Tint, the Martinez brothers; and General Warhawk. See those pages for details.
Critical Dissonance: The sequels garnered a mixed reception from critics. Audiences gave them a much warmer reception.
First Installment Wins: First Blood is widely considered the best in the series, and one of Stallone's greatest films.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
- Interestingly, the Rambo movies are very popular in Asia, in particular Japan, Thailand, and the Southeast Asia region. In fact the film is so popular in the last area it actually became a fountain of memes in the region extending to real life politics (see Rambo IV entry for more details).
- The first three films especially are also very popular in China. This is due to the fact that 1) they were some of the first Hollywood action movies to be imported to China, and 2) the Dirty Communists depiction of the USSR and Vietnam was less of a problem for Chinese authorities, since they were on hostile terms throughout the 1980's.
Iconic Character, Forgotten Title: The first movie is called First Blood, despite people simply calling it Rambo. This is probably why the fourth film was simply called Rambo, but it ironically made things worse.
- And, to make things even more confusing, the director's cut of the fourth film changes the title to John Rambo.
Iron Woobie: John Rambo.
Magnificent Bastard: John James Rambo himself is an unstoppable, ever-adapting One-Man Army who has become an iconic, ruthless symbol of action cinema. Traumatized and trained to be a killer by his time in the Vietnam War, Rambo's first outing sees him mistreated and abused by a small-town police force, driving him into a PTSD-sparked war against them. Rambo utterly dismantles the town's infrastructure and outsmarts the National Guard, only beaten when he willingly stands down. Building off of this impressive introduction, Rambo goes on to save multiple POWs from a Vietnamese war camp; lead a rebellion in Afghanistan against horrid Soviet invaders; and rescue a group of missionaries from war criminals in Burma, all with his trademark quick-thinking guerilla tactics. After decades of settling down and taking the young Gabriela Beltran as his surrogate daughter, Rambo tears a warpath to find her when she is kidnapped and killed by Human Traffickers, whom Rambo proceeds to viciously wipe out by luring them to his booby-trapped, war-ready ranch. Rambo is capable of withstanding brutal torture, pragmatically weaponizes anything he can get his hands on, and always comes out on top in his missions to destroy monsters that hurt others.
Memetic Mutation: "Going Rambo" became a term to describe anyone who are or try to be a One-Man Army.
Misaimed Fandom: Rare case where the studio ended up fostering it. Rambo of the first film was a Tragic Hero suffering severe PTSD. He was an Anti-Hero in the classical sense. Fans saw him as the ultimate badass and the studio restructured the franchise into being about him being a One-Man Army Action Hero.
Nightmare Fuel: Has its own page
No Problem with Licensed Games:
- The game based on Rambo: First Blood Part II for the Sega Master System is a pretty good over head shooter, if pretty hard to play. It's similar to Ikari Warriors, without the rotary controls, rescuing POWs, and the grenades being replaced by the bow with explosive arrows. You could even cheat the game over system by joining in as the second player just as the first player loses all their lives and vice versa.
- A Rambo III adaptation was made for the Sega Genesis that was a pretty good run and gun.
- The arcade game, also based on Rambo III, was a sort-of Rail Shooter game where two players take control of Rambo and Col. Trautman, as they go through Afghanistan. It's pretty action packed, and fun to play with a friend.
- Then there is the light gun game, proudly provided by SEGA. This one has movie footage (though following just Rambo: First Blood Part II, and Rambo III), assault rifles for light guns (or Mac 10 modeled SMGS, depending on the cabinet), More Dakka than even Time Crisis, and when you use the Limit Break, you scream along with Rambo and gain the brief ability to take no damage, AND use Bottomless Magazines. Definitely Rated M for Manly. The only legitimate complaint about this game is, unlike Ghost Squad (2004) and House of the Dead 4, there is no console version of this game.
The Problem with Licensed Games:
- ... But unfortunately, most of the Rambo tie-in games aren't very good, most infamously the NES game adaptation. It borrows a lot from Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link. It wouldn't be a bad idea if it was properly executed. It was not. It did have some good things going for it like staying as faithful to the source material as possible (despite some deviations added to the plot), and having a pretty catchy soundtrack, so it isn't a total problem.
- The 2014 game simply titled Rambo: The Video Game was heavily criticized for its dated rail shooter gameplay and graphics (this is NOT to be confused with the Rambo arcade game by SEGA), while making a mess out of the first movie's plot (such as a scene where Rambo drives a truck into a gas station, causing it to explode, and him gunning down cops with a machine gun which never happened in First Blood). It's also incredibly buggy, such as with the autosave indicators never leaving the screen until you restart the game, and filled with Fake Difficulty where if enemies stay alive for too long, they will consistently hit you no matter what.
Retroactive Recognition: Take a look at Colonel Sam Trautman◊. This is the same man who played the nerd Walter Denton◊ on Our Miss Brooks.
Sequelitis: Rambo is First Installment Wins, all follow-ups split opinions; the most positively received is Rambo: First Blood Part II, a critically reviled but very popular Actionized Sequel that generated a bevy of imitators and is the reason why Rambo is mostly associated with slaughters when in First Blood he causes quite the property damage but only kills one person, mostly by accident. The other movies strayed even further from the compelling anti-war story of a disrespected Shell-Shocked Veteran that started the series, with Rambo III being fairly boring in spite of the warfare, Rambo IV going Bloodier and Gorier, and Rambo: Last Blood not only overriding the last film's ending but also having a controversial approach with Mexican Human Traffickers as its villains.
Sequel Displacement: The sequels are definitely more well known than the first film. Take, for instance, the fact that it was titled First Blood and by the third film, it was called Rambo III, or the fact that Rambo is known for high body counts, even though the grand total of dead bodies in the first film is a single Asshole Victim who Rambo didn't even kill directly or on purpose.
Unintentional Period Piece: Parts II & III especially, due to their late Cold War setting. Even the fourth movie is showing signs of this, with Myanmar slowly but surely opening up politically.
The Woobie: especially in the first film, Rambo has been through hell and returns home to be persecuted by a Jerkass sheriff who eventually tries to kill for something Galt's death even though it wasn't entirely his fault.

YMMV / Rambo

Edit Locked

The Franchise in general: