I think this would be seen as the Deliverance of the 80's. Its a shame Stallone rockyfied it
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Yeah it’s a much different film that the sequels and in all honesty First Blood has a lot more in common with Platoon than it does with Rambo: First Blood Part II
sharelol. Deliverance is a taut suspense thriller, all character driven and atmosphere. First Blood is the opposite.
From the moment John Rambo escapes from jail, it's balls to the wall action for over an hour straight.
First Blood was a game changer for the action genre. It literally changed how action movies were shot and edited from then on. Everyone looked at it for inspiration, from James Cameron to John McTiernan. Action films as we know them started with First Blood.
I don't know where people are getting this idea that this film is like a Platoon or Deliverance? This film has Rambo blowing up towns, doing wheelies up a gorge, jumping off cliff faces, taking down an entire police squad single handedly, jumping blockades with an army truck and hunting the sheriff across town. This is action 101.
"First Blood was a game changer for the action genre. It literally changed how action movies were shot and edited from then on. Everyone looked at it for inspiration from James Cameron to John McTiernan. Action films as well know them started with First Blood".
Sorry but this is nonsense. None of the action scenes in this film match any of the action scenes in either The Road Warrior or Raiders Of The Lost Ark which both came out a year earlier. And Cameron cited The Road Warrior as his biggest inspiration for The Terminator.
None of the action scenes in this film match any of the action scenes in either The Road Warrior or Raiders Of The Lost Ark
And Cameron cited The Road Warrior as his biggest inspiration for The Terminator.
"I meant that First Blood kicked off the R rated action genre".
Fair enough but in your previous post you just said action movie. I still stand by the fact that the action in this film is bland compared to RW and Raiders though so it's no surprise that they frequently appear on Greatest Action Movies lists while this doesn't.
"To say that Cameron was not inspired by First Blood, a series he literally got involved in, is absurd".
I didn't say that. I said the action scenes in RW was his biggest inspiration for The Terminator.
so it's no surprise that they frequently appear on Greatest Action Movies lists while this doesn't.
the action scenes in RW was his biggest inspiration for The Terminator.
I'm glad the sequels were made. Otherwise those POWs would still have been in those Vietnamese prison camps, and Col Trautman would have never been rescued after being captured by the Russians in Afghanistan
shareStallone seriously lost his way, creatively, in the mid-eighties, and stayed lost the rest of the decade. I never cared for the sequels (until Rambo in 2008), because the action was way, way over the top. First Blood was more grounded; Rambo is a super soldier, but he's not superhuman; he spends most of the movie hiding and evading, and at one point he's even almost taken out by an idiot weekend warrior lieutenant with an M72 LAW. By the 2nd movie, he's become a man who can parachute into Vietnam with a bow and arrow and singlehandely wipe an entire regiment of soldiers off the face of the earth. Schwarzenegger's Commando was just as over the top, but the one-liners and quips and comedic takes essentially winked at the audience and said "hey, this is just good fun; don't overthink it, just enjoy the ride." And that worked. The Rambo sequels, OTOH, used the same absurdly over the top action, but kept the dark, serious tone of the first movie, which was about a heavily traumatized soldier's inability to fit back into society.
The Rocky sequels got worse; 4 was over the top, and full of comic book politics; Rocky 5 sucked. Stallone's version of Beverly Hills Cop -- 1986's Cobra -- was just awful, with more of the over the top action, and all the macho, 80's action hero tropes and cliches dialed up to eleven. Stallone's attempt to compete with Arnold in the action-comedy genre with Oscar and Stop or My Mom Will Shoot fell flat. It wasn't until Demolition Man in 1993 that Stallone started to get good again.
What does rockyfied mean? Google doesn't recognize the word
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