On Nov. 14 of last year — a week and change after what could very well go down as one of the darkest days in American history — Sylvester Stallone took the stage at the America First Policy Institute Gala at Mar-a-Lago, where he praised Donald Trump as a “mythical character” and the “second George Washington.” He would later be named as one of Trump’s Special Ambassadors to Hollywood, together with Jon Voight and Mel Gibson.
Suffice to say it wasn’t a pretty sight, and, much like the films that would follow First Blood, you have to wonder when or if something happened during the course of Stallone’s life that caused him to move in this regretful direction. John Rambo, after all, would be none too pleased about this turn of political events, and Pluto TV has been happy to remind people of that.
Per FlixPatrol, First Blood — the only good film in the Rambo franchise, which shouldn’t have become a franchise to begin with — is currently seventh on the United States’ Pluto TV film charts at the time of writing. Unfortunately, there are more folks chowing down on the more abysmal side of Stallone over on Netflix, where a seventh-and eighth-place Rambo: Last Blood and 2008’s Rambo tango in the Top 10, as loud and detached from their ancestor as they’ve always been.
Speaking of abysmal sides of Stallone, one just need sit down with the 93-minute-long First Blood to conclude that the man showering praise upon Trump is not the same man who starred in one of the most prominent anti-war films of all time.
The character of Rambo, as he originated, painted both a literal and symbolic portrait of the struggles faced by military veterans, who are just one of the many vulnerable demographics that a Trump regime either will endanger or is actively endangering. Veteran support, a bipartisan issue in claim alone, is only championed by the political right in attempts to challenge support initiatives and recognition for queer and non-white citizens. Since Trump actively targets trans people and immigrants, however, there’s no need to leverage the idea of veteran support to erase queer and BIPOC citizens.
More to the point, Rambo’s predicament is entirely the result of remorseless government evils, further contextualized by First Blood‘s post-Vietnam American setting. American men and boys were drafted into the Vietnam War (a draft that Trump famously dodged) and made to carry out their country’s heinously paranoid campaign that achieved nothing but bloodshed and tragedy. These men and boys would return home, shunned by a public that had begun calling for peace, and failed by the very government that sent them on that warpath in the first place. With no social or federal support and rampant PTSD, veterans suffered (and continue to suffer) heavily.
How, then can Stallone — the guy who was drawn to the character of Rambo, a stand-in for all the men and boys manipulated by the government and then tossed to the side like broken puppets — support a man like Trump? Trump, who so blatantly manipulates his supporters without any intent of improving their lives, and in fact contributes to their hardship by destabilizing America’s economic ties and wider geopolitical standing? Indeed, where did Rambo go?
