Rambo: Last Blood

[Kforcer]

Yes, Rambo 2 is often presented by present day critics as ra-ra American propaganda, but James Cameron was writing it at the same time as Aliens, and the USA government is basically Weyland-Yutani in the film. Murdock is Burke, etc.

What's funny to me is how so many people then uncritically accept that interpretation as the Gospel truth. I think they are perhaps just annoyed that so many conservative Americans, including Reagan, enjoyed the movie. I sort of think that more people are familiar with the iconography of the Rambo films that with the films themselves; if they grew up in the 80's, as I did, they were probably inundated with the posters of a ripped Stallone firing his weapon, with an American flag emblazoned in the background, not to mention the cartoon, the toys and all the knock-offs. If you just looked at that and never saw the films, it does look like propaganda. And of course, all that really was propaganda, but of a different sort (the marketing sort).

 

[The Elemental O]

What's funny to me is how so many people then uncritically accept that interpretation as the Gospel truth. I think they are perhaps just annoyed that so many conservative Americans, including Reagan, enjoyed the movie.

It doesn't help that some people on the far right treat Rambo as the poster boy for their "Let's go to a foreign country we don't like and blow stuff up and feel justified about it because AMERICA!" attitude, even though the character himself might not have cared for that type of attitude.

Basically, both groups from the right and the left completely missed the point of the character.