The Rambo franchise turned Rambo: First Blood’s complex lead character into a gung-ho action hero, but the gradual downfall of the series was set up by the first movie's changes to the source novel. In the closing moments of Rambo: First Blood, John Rambo tearfully recounted the ordeals he endured during his part in America’s invasion of Vietnam. After breaking down about his mistreatment, he surrendered and was comforted by his former commanding officer. The last scene of Rambo: Last Blood, however, saw the same character cut open a human trafficker’s chest, ripped out the man’s still-beating heart with his bare hands, and showed it to him.

Evidently, the Rambo franchise went through a major tonal shift at some point across its sequels. Although Rambo’s children’s cartoon spin-off might be the property that diverges furthest from the original novel’s message and tone, the rest of the franchise’s sequels still manage to give the cartoon a run for its money. After Rambo: First Blood, a relatively faithful adaptation of David Morrell’s novel, became an unexpected sleeper hit success upon release, the movie inevitably earned a sequel. This sequel, Rambo: First Blood Part II, transformed the tragic veteran into the gung-ho mass murderer viewers now know and love. However, the seeds for this were planted in the original movie.

First Blood Already Made Rambo Too Heroic

In the novel First Blood, Rambo ended up killing his tormentors in the small-town sheriff’s department. He died in the novel’s closing scenes after he gave up any hopes of finding peace. In his book Cinema Speculation, Quentin Tarantino noted that First Blood’s movie adaptation changed this ending, with Rambo instead breaking down and bemoaning his treatment during and after the Vietnam War. While this addition made Rambo more transparently sympathetic, it did come at the cost of blunting his complexity. The novel made it clear that Rambo couldn’t be reintegrated into society, as the military had turned him into a stone-cold killer whose humanity had been stripped away.

However, in First Blood’s movie adaptation, Rambo had not been irrevocably altered by his experiences in Vietnam. He might be traumatized, but he was still able to kill slews of faceless villains in the ensuing sequels since, as the movie Rambo: First Blood’s ending proved, he was not completely out of touch with reality. While the novel depicted a man who couldn’t be part of the country that he ostensibly fought for, its movie adaptation made Rambo more palatable for audiences. In the process, First Blood’s movie adaptation inadvertently set the stage for the Rambo franchise’s questionable evolution.

Rambo's Sequels Changed The Character's Purpose

Through First Blood’s movie ending, it was implied that Rambo’s PTSD (and, by extension, his experience in the war) wasn’t as deleterious as it seemed in the novel since he can drop his weapons and surrender. First Blood Part II then featured Rambo going from re-litigating the Vietnam War in his head to literally re-fighting it (and, inevitably, winning) the same conflict. In subsequent sequels, Rambo then began working with the same government that he supposedly despised. This lasted throughout the third and fourth Rambo movies before he eventually just became another vigilante action hero in Rambo: Last Blood.

There were many reasons why Rambo: Last Blood didn’t work, but among the most important of these was the increasing distance between Rambo’s original purpose and his depiction in this sequel. Rambo’s murderous prowess was not glamorized in the novel First Blood, where he was terrorizing small-minded cops who didn’t realize how dangerous the traumatized veteran they were bullying was. However, with each subsequent Rambo sequel, the character took on bigger and bigger enemies, from Soviet troops to a Burmese infantry unit to an entire Mexican drug cartel. These increasingly over-the-top villains rendered the franchise’s tone less realistic and missed the point of Rambo’s tragic character entirely.

Rambo's Sequels Needed More Moral Complexity

The Rambo movies made Rambo himself more and more morally unimpeachable by pitting him against increasingly cartoony, morally unambiguous villains. In Rambo: First Blood, the behavior of the corrupt sheriff’s department was abhorrent, but their cruelty didn't lead to them being turned to mincemeat by an anti-aircraft gun. However, the villains of 2008's third sequel Rambo and 2019's Rambo: Last Blood were so monstrous that Rambo’s skills as a killer seem justified and necessary. In the source novel, Rambo’s murderous urges were proof that war ruined his life, whereas, in the movies, they made First Blood's complex character an uncomplicated hero.