MovieChat Forums > Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) Discussion > Villain behaviour makes no sense

Villain behaviour makes no sense


Villain tropes. They exist all over the place, and I hate every single one of them.

Sometimes villains give the character all kinds of means to escape, then are shocked that they did. Look at 'The Truman Show' - THAT movie could not have happened, had the 'controllers' had any kind of realistic intelligence. They name the lamps realistically, so they represent the stars accurately..?

... in a situation, where the victim doesn't even have to know there even ARE stars, or that there are supposed to be! There's zero (0) need to name a lamp 'Sirius' or whatever it was, there's no need to mention Fiji, there's no need to even let the victim know about a possibility of 'travel', airplanes, buses, or that there's ANYTHING beyond the river/sea/lake/whatever but empty wilderness.

I mean, they can FREELY MOLD his worldview to ANYTHING they like - heck, the village doesn't even have to look like a village, it could look like some weird, otherplanetary sci-fi futurescape - he doesn't know! So if the villain hadn't been stupid, Truman would never have been able to know about other locations, he could never have escaped. Also, why force a girlfriend upon him, when he's organically interested in a completely different woman? None of it makes any sense.

In any case, villains are almost always stupid like this, and their behaviour conforms so neatly into what people call 'plot armor', it boggles the mind to watch.

In this particular movie, there must be about a hundred men that are ACTIVELY trying to murder Rambo, and..

..then he's suddenly just lowered to a cesspool/pit. What? WHY?

Rambo killed plenty of people before that, their friends die in the hands of this sudden attacker, everyone is freely shooting at him, using mortars to try to explode him to bits, but then SUDDENLY they just don't shoot at him anymore, and they don't kill him. WHY?

So the movie can happen.

That's the ONLY real explanation to almost all and any movie villain stupidity like this, and this kind of thing happens SO much, I bet we've all watched about 50 movies that utilize this trope.

First the enemy tries their best to kill the protagonist, but when they have the chance, they just capture him/her instead (usually him).

What is this, why would they do that? It would make sense if they DIDN'T want to and weren't authorized to kill him earlier, but why the sudden CHANGE? THAT is what makes it really stupid, frustrating, unrealistic and idiotic.

Villains must be idiots (groan), it seems, but this is just bad writing. There ARE realistic villains in the real world, why can't writing follow their story and make an intelligent villain?

There must be intelligent villains somewhere, that do NOT do this kind of 'so that the movie can happen' plot armor-worshipping tactical blunders, but I can't right now think of any.

In any case, this kind of behaviour, where a whole damn army is trying to kill the protagonist, and then suddenly NO ONE even tries anymore, just doesn't make any sense.

I mean, surely someone hell-bent on avenging this guy killing his brother/best friend/etc. would sneak in a shot or do some kind of kamikaze 'F you' to Rambo when Rambo is helpless, but no. Everyone just lets the Soviets take over and do whatever they want, as if nothing happened.

What kind of writing is this, when it reminds more of GTA V's braindead drivers that forgive you just stealing their taxi and beating them up and just casually ask where you want to go than a realistic situation, where people would be ACTUALLY ANGRY that someone killed their comrades?

What kind of writing is this?!

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Talk about “lazy writing”
You take the cake
Your wife probably falls asleep during sex with you

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It's the kind of writing that considers the following: Rambo is a foreign spy. Very obviously American. It's the Cold War. It's clear that he might have some very valuable information in that brain of his that could be of use to both the Vietnamese and the Soviets. And the Soviets obviously wanted a chance to extract that information. Hence the whole scene with the rusty bed frame that has a bunch of electrical wires and a generator attached to it. It's the only reason Rambo lived after the hilltop standoff. Because Podovsky wanted Rambo to tell tales no dead man can tell.

But that is not to say the Viet Cong didn't hate him. You don't really dunk somebody into a pool full of animal feces, unless you really, REALLY, despise him. The whole manure pit torture happened, because the Vietnamese wanted to give Rambo a piece of their mind how they felt about Rambo killing their comrades.

Sometimes politics just takes priority over personal feelings.

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Were your mother and father related?

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I'm sorry but you just wrote one of the most annoying and illogical topics ever made.

You complain the villain actions make no sense yet your entire posts makes absolutely no sense.

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They captured him instead of killing him when that option became available to use for info + hostage.
whats hard to understand about that?

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The Truman show is a terrible example. It makes perfect sense to have his world align as closely as possible to the real world. The actors would have trouble not accidentally spilling something contrary, and all set dec would need to be scrutinized to catch any minor inconsistencies. Just not practical to change the rules.

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