In 1982, "First Blood" was released in the United States, 40 years ago.
The film cost $15 million, grossed $125 million worldwide, and was introduced to Chinese mainland years later.
The film is rated R, Douban 8.3 points, IMDb 7.7 points, all better than the next four sequels.
It is worth mentioning that the IMDb score of the "First Blood" series is lower than the Douban score overall, and the recognition of this series by Chinese audiences is much higher than that of American audiences.
At the same time, the protagonist of the film, Qiang Rambo, has also become one of the symbols of the cultural confrontation of individual heroism in China and the United States.
For example, whenever someone questions the action scenes of the protagonists of the "Wolf Warriors" series, which transcend the limitations of human mechanics, someone will move out of Rambo's image to prove that this is also true in the United States - that individual heroism can appropriately ignore human mechanics.
The success of "First Blood" also accumulated Rambo into a popular symbol of violence.
The arcade game "Contra" born in 1987, one of the protagonists is based on Rambo; The hunting knife and M60 machine gun used by Rambo in the film were named (or jokingly called) by later generations as "Rambo Knife" and "Rambo Gun".
Of course, judging from the first "First Blood", the essence of Rambo is not violence.
01
First Blood is based on the 1972 novel of the same name by Canadian-American writer David Morrell.
At the end of the novel, Rambo was killed, and the movie version also filmed a "Rambo suicide" ending, but it was not adopted because it was too depressed, and the ending of the official version of "Rambo Arrested" just left an air for the sequel to the film.
The film's director went through several tosses between Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen ("Twelve Years a Slave"), Mike Nichols ("The Graduate") and others, and finally fell to Ted Kotchev.
Ted was born in Canada in 1931 and is not as successful as Clint and others in directing, but he may be the best fit for "First Blood" because he is good at strengthening the hormonal aura of male characters and making them integrate with the natural environment in the film.
Ted Kotchev
During Ted's career, there was a very mysterious film, which was nominated for Cannes Palme d'Or "Outback Horror" in 1971.
After the film was nominated for the Palme d'Or, the film was lost, and it was not until 40 years later that it was re-seen and screened in a box marked "destroyed" in Pittsburgh.
The reason for the loss may be the tragic "hunting kangaroo" scene in the film, which angered Australians.
"Outback Horror" is full of heat, male hormones hitting the heaty wall of Australia, is a masterpiece of Ted's directorial style.
It is similar to Rambo throwing himself into the hot and humid jungle in "First Blood", showing a state of living in a mentally wandering masculine male seeking refuge in nature.
Outback Horror (1971)
"First Blood" opens, Rambo satchel walks alone in the bleak season, corresponding to the picture of young teachers walking in the Australian wilderness in "Outback Horror"; Rambo is locked up with a baton at the police station, which is consistent with the physical contact between the young teacher and the hunting companion, conveying the meaning of physical violence pushing the spirit to a tipping point...
In two films with completely different tones 11 years apart, Ted unified his expression, namely "masculine body, fragile soul", which happened to be one of the elements of "First Blood" to win over a larger audience.
The role of Rambo, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and other actors have been considered, and Stallone's appearance is also predestined.
When "First Blood" premiered, Stallone was 36 years old, in his prime, and he was also more suitable for the personality of a veteran.
More importantly, Stallone's strong body at that time had a kind of humility, which was very effective in shaping Rambo's fragility.
In the film, Stallone has very few lines (except for the last indictment of fate), so Rambo is a near-silent person.
This silence gives his humility more room for interpretation at the spiritual level, so in the early stage of the film, it should be difficult for most viewers to suppress their desire to explore the character of Rambo.
The desire to explore constitutes a kind of gravity.
02
The woods in "First Blood" are one of the important characters in the film.
Rambo is chased by the police and hides in the woods, which provide cover for Rambo but also hurt Rambo.
Rambo set up spikes, thin lines, hunting knives and other traps in the forest, and severely damaged the police such as Mitch, Balford, and Will in a short time, which shows that his identity as a guerrilla expert is worthy, and the dense forest is his first helper in guerrilla.
On the other hand, Rambo was cut through his arm by a tree branch when he fell from a cliff (off the screen, Stallone also broke several ribs because of this scene), and his dress was changed from a jacket decorated with the Star-Spangled Banner to a hastily wrapped dark rain cloth, proving his return from the civilized world to the barbarism of nature.
This is a two-sided blow to the body and mind.
Therefore, the dense forest also shares the role of the villain to a certain extent.
For Rambo, the dense forest has both positive and negative sides, not because it is as complex as human nature, but because it is simple enough. This simplicity forms the wildness of the dense forest, that is, the wildness of nature.
This kind of wildness has a natural contradiction and tension between people and people.
This is evident in Jack London's novels and Iñárritu's film The Revenant.
The Revenant (2015)
This is also why after watching "First Blood", after years and months, you may not be able to remember any of the villains in the film, but most of them are difficult to forget the wet and gloomy woods in the movie.
The most worthy thing in "First Blood" is the wildness of peace and order.
In the film, the cause of the whole incident is Rambo's "crime of vagrancy".
In the holiday town under the snowy mountains, the sheriff does not allow any element to disrupt the tranquility, the mysterious, silent Rambo appears, the sheriff tries to drive him out of the town, in order to eat something, Rambo returns, and everything gets out of control.
The tranquility of the town is a symbol of peace, and the sheriff's treatment of outsiders in a "presumed guilt" manner, seemingly to maintain peaceful order, is essentially an indulgence of disorder.
For when order is to maintain its authority (especially by any means), the wild nature of order is born. This kind of wildness inevitably leads to crazy disorder.
This phenomenon is reflected at the grassroots level and is particularly serious.
In the film, Sheriff Will repeatedly orders his men not to shoot Rambo, but the police still shoot wantonly on a seemingly natural reason for arrest, because Rambo is forced to resist, so that they do not have to worry about being judged in the protection of peace.
Simply put, the evil side of their human nature is protected by the moral high ground.
So in their pursuit of Rambo, they directly compared Rambo to a deer that can be hunted, and a specimen that can be made after hunting.
Rambo runs away from the police station on a motorcycle, seemingly rampage and destruction, but in fact it is a sad scene of peace and disorder, and the marginalized people are at a loss.
03
The essence of "First Blood" is not an action movie, but a war movie.
The film opens with Rambo looking for his comrades, ends with him complaining about the war, and the entire film is shrouded in the clouds of war.
Visually, in the first half of the dense forest guerrilla, lightning illuminates the depths of the woods from time to time, and the white light is reflecting the white light of phosphorus bombs in the Vietnam War; In the second half, when the state police and the National Guard further searched for Rambo's traces, the film directly imitated the war march and militarized the police force.
Psychologically, the film adapts the veteran in the original work into a small-town sheriff with no battlefield experience, and the police under his command have not participated in the war.
Therefore, when in the dense forest, the policemen walk slowly and leisurely, but Rambo is as fast as an animal, and the psychological difference is directly reflected in the instinctive action difference, which shows the extreme shaping of people by war.
However, as brave as Rambo, he is a passive character.
And passivity is also the real state of many soldiers participating in the war.
For example, in the 2011 Korean war film "Highland War", after the war, the young people of the warring sides met in the stream, and the two sides were no longer hostile, but just looked at each other and said goodbye, after all, the war was over.
Highland Warfare (2011)
However, Shangfeng suddenly ordered a final battle for the heights, so the soldiers on both sides were bloodied again, and in the end there were few survivors.
The title of "First Blood" comes from this cruel passivity.
In the film, Rambo tells his former boss, Colonel Trauman, that they drew first blood, not me, meaning that the first drop of blood was led by the small-town police, not Rambo.
This is both a reference to the small-town incident and a metaphor to the Vietnam War.
Whatever the truth, interests, and historical evaluation of the Vietnam War, for Rambo and individuals like Rambo, the first drop of blood in war is passive.
Here at Rambo, there is no "active, aggressive first drop of blood."
So, is "First Blood" a purely anti-war movie?
Nor is it.
Rambo's final complaint has two main points.
First, war is cruel.
During the war, the child was designed as a human bomb, leaving Rambo's comrades with remnants, and after the war, Rambo returned to the United States and could not even find a job with food and clothing, which shows that war will destroy a person's life in all aspects.
Even more shocking is the second point - Rambo gained a sense of belonging in the war.
On the battlefield, he can control tanks, military vehicles, machine guns and other tools of war, and there are comrades who sympathize with each other to give each other spiritual support.
These gave him a sense of security in danger and brutality, and even made him dependent.
From this point of view, "First Blood" does not have a firm anti-war stance on the role of Rambo.
This also makes the intention of the film have a more bizarre dimension, making people have a deeper understanding of war.
Removing this from the war to ordinary people's lives helps to understand Rambo's thinking: Why do many people stay in a harsh environment for a long time and can no longer live without that environment?
Because the human spirit will have a faithful sense of recognition of a long-term environment.
As a result, people will think that other circumstances will exclude them (such as the old man who committed suicide after being released from prison in The Shawshank Redemption).
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
After 40 years, for fans, "First Blood" is undoubtedly a classic.
This kind of classic is related to the title, director, Rambo, Stallone, etc.
But what really makes it stand the test of time is the fragile details of its simple, direct masculinity, that are worth digging into.
Therefore, "First Blood" created a film history series.
At the same time, it is also fully representative of the series itself.
Author: County Hao