47 replies to this topic

[Peter T Chattaway]

Variety wrote:
: . . . "Rambo" slotted second with $6.7 million - the best opening day for Sylvester Stallone.

I'm questioning this statement now. Rambo has reportedly had an opening weekend in the $17 million to $18 million range, and if you look at Stallone's filmography, you can see a few films that had even bigger weekends ...

• 33.4 mil -- Spy Kids 3D: Game Over (2003) -- final cume 111.8 mil
• 20.2 mil -- Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) -- final cume 150.4 mil
• 19.9 mil -- Rocky IV (1985) -- final cume 127.9 mil
• 17.2 mil -- Antz (1998) -- final cume 90.8 mil

... so would it not stand to reason that at least one of them had a bigger opening day, too?

FWIW, while Rambo might be coming in second to Meet the Spartans this week, Rocky Balboa came in third when IT opened -- behind the debut of Night at the Museum and the second week of The Pursuit of Happyness. Then again, hmmm. Coming in third behind those films might not sting as much as coming in second behind that other film.

Edited by Peter T Chattaway, 27 January 2008 - 01:27 PM.

[Peter T Chattaway]

Myanmar junta takes aim at latest Rambo movie
Police in Myanmar have given DVD hawkers strict orders not to stock the new Rambo movie, which features the Vietnam War veteran taking on the former Burma's ruling military junta, a Yangon resident told Reuters on Friday. Despite the prohibition, pirated copies of the movie are widely available on the streets of the former capital, where it is fast becoming a talking point among a population eager to shake off 45 years of military rule.
Reuters, February 1

[Peter T Chattaway]

RDBlog: Rambo & Christian Fellow Travelers
The missionary group Christian Freedom International issued a call this week for renewed humanitarian aid to Burma. The impetus for the announcement was the success of Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo, which depicts the brutal oppression of Burma’s Karen people. There’s a certain irony in this fusion of missionary and mercenary; namely, that the entire point of Rambo is to argue against humanitarian aid.
Gabriel Mckee, ReligionDispatches.org, February 9

[Christian]

The impetus for the announcement was the success of Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo

"Success"?

[Buckeye Jones]

In reading the pinned thread about 2008 top ten lists, I realized that this sorry film was one of only five 2008 releases I saw. How about that: 20% of my 2008 films were comprised of Rambo's 85 minutes.

My thirteen year old cousin got this as a Christmas gift. That's kinda funny/sad/funny. It was a box set that included the other Rambo movies, so maybe that makes up for it a little bit.

Scaramone's screed is much more fun than the film itself. I'll have to disagree with Peter slightly--I don't think Stallone intended the over the top violence to be "non-serious"--I think his intention was to make this new Rambo gritty and uncompromising. There was a certain lack of humor in this one. The Die Hard films, which Peter mentions above, seemed to take themselves not so seriously in their violent ends to the characters, but Stallone's direction avoids beats of humor throughout--and spends a lot of time dwelling on the killing of the innocent. It seemed as if he was regurgitating all the violent onscreen deaths he could think of from serious war films of the last fifteen years, and then some:

1) .50 caliber machine guns: Saving Private Ryan
2) Arrows--any medieval movie, such as Lord of the Rings
3) Pigs: Wasn't that in one of the Hannibal Lechter sequels?
4) Knives: Saving Private Ryan again (he should send Speilberg a royalty check)
5) Hamburgerization: Black Hawk Down

Somehow I found the violence in Apocalypto both more grotesque and more humorous. I suppose that film is the closest recent analogue to this one. It has the same basic plot structure. Good guys get captured by bad goverment, escape, get chased, kill every one in the end with the help of outside intervention.

Two basic plot elements that I really balked at: the first, in which the Colorado pastor hires mercenaries to rescue his people seems incredulous at every level; and the second, the denouement. Our hero spends the entire climatic scene on the aforementioned .50 caliber machine gun obliterating the opposing army regiment. Its quite boring actually, and takes Rambo out of the direct action--he doesn't do anything except pull the trigger and the only moment of tension is when he has to reload (during which time the mercenary whose leg has previously been blown off by a landmine is now hurdling logs and shooting people a la Chow Yun Fat with an AK-47 so that no additional missionaries are killed--except that one in the blue shirt who had no lines). I think this choice to have Rambo on the hill, Moses-like, away from direct physical contact of the battle, almost emasculates him. He's a supporting role in his own epynomous film. Tsk, tsk, Sly.

[John Drew]

Stallone 99% sure Rambo V won't be happening.

Link to discussion of Rambo V, under the topic Stories that became sequels to other franchises.

[BethR]

There is a God.

Edited by BethR, 03 May 2010 - 03:19 PM.

[Peter T Chattaway]

Baal_T, on 03 May 2010 - 10:13 AM, said:

Stallone 99% sure Rambo V won't be happening.

That was then, this is now...

- - -

Exclusive: Screenwriter Sean Hood Talks About his 'Conan the Barbarian'
Any other genre projects in the works?
I recently finished a first draft of Rambo: Last Stand (Rambo 5) for Millennium films, based on a story idea by Sylvester Stallone. Hopefully, Mr. Stallone will eventually have the time and the inclination to do another Rambo. . . .
FearNet, August 18

New Screenplay For Rambo 5
Firstly, this isn't just preemptive wishful thinking on the part of Millennium: Stallone was involved in getting the ball rolling. "I met with Mr Stallone twice last year," Sean tells us. "He gave me a book, an older screenplay, and about twenty pages he'd written himself to use as inspiration for the last chapter of the Rambo saga."
What's the book? Sean won't say, but does reveal that this Rambo 5 isn't based on any of the ideas that have been bubbling under in the recent past. It isn't the south-of-the-border action-fest that would have seen Rambo rescuing a young girl from a deadly drugs cartel. Nor is it the the sci-fi tinged Savage Hunt (which always seemed like a bizarre idea anyway). And it isn't the prequel that Stallone was pondering last summer. "It's more in line with the small-town thriller of First Blood," says Sean.
Rambo: Last Stand is a long way from a done deal or a green light though. One screenplay doth not a movie make, and Sean is careful to stress that "As of now, I don't know whether Mr Stallone will actually do it. Right now, as I understand it, he has his hands full with Bullet to the Head and Expendables 2. But Millennium films did hire me to complete the screenplay and realise his story, and my hope is that he'll eventually be inspired to do one more Rambo film, with the tone of Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven." . . .
Empire, August 19