The Weekly Planet - Rambo 3: Worst Blood - Caravan Of Garbage
Episode Date: September 20, 2019Sylvester Stallone is back for Rambo: Probably Last Blood so why not revisit that absolute classic, Rambo 3. Often considered the biggest of the series (because it is) and also the worst in the series... (because it is). This is our review.Video Version â–ºJames' Twitter â–º http://twitter.com/mrsundaymoviesMaso's Twitter â–º http://twitter.com/wikipediabrownTWP Itunes â–º https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weekly-planet/id718158767?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4TWP Direct Download â–º https://play.acast.com/s/theweeklyplanetTWP YouTube Channel â–º https://goo.gl/1ZQFGHPatreon â–º https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesAmazon Affiliate Link â–º https://amzn.to/2nnlv3uT-Shirts/Merch â–º https://www.teepublic.com/stores/mr-sunday-movies Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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We're getting another Rambo movie in Rambo Last Blood.
Do you think it'll actually be his last blood?
Well, there were two first bloods.
Or do you think the last drop of his blood will land on the ground
and then grow another Rambo?
A separate Rambo, maybe.
Yeah, a separate Rambo, yeah.
Well, look, it's entirely possible. I thought Rambo 4 was going to be the last one, which then grow another Rambo. A separate Rambo, maybe. Yeah, a separate Rambo, yeah. Well, look, it's entirely possible.
I thought Rambo 4 was going to be the last one, which was just called Rambo.
I mean, he killed the entire population of Myanmar with a machine gun off the back of
a flatbed truck.
There's other populations to decimate, mate.
I guess that's true, yeah.
Yeah.
But considering there's Rambo First Blood and then Rambo First Blood Part 2, I wouldn't
be surprised if there's Rambo Last Blood Final Drop Grown a New Rambo Part 2.
And look, it always helps if people could leave a like on this video.
We'd love it.
Anyways, this week we're going to be looking at the worst Rambo film.
I don't know if it's the worst Rambo property because there is that animated series.
But we haven't gotten to that yet.
We haven't gotten to that yet.
Tell you what, if we do Rambo Last Blood Part 2, he's grown himself again in a test tube.
We'll come back to that one.
Absolutely, yeah.
But yeah, Rambo 3 is widely considered to be the least popular one,
though the most expensive.
Yeah, wasn't it the most expensive film of all time at the time?
Absolutely it was, yeah.
And I looked that up and it was like $60 million.
And I'm like, that's so quaint.
Yeah.
Imagine being the highest costing film in the world at $60 million.
They spend more than that on catering on most of these blockbusters these days.
Well, it seems like a lot of this movie just went into explosions and Stallone
because there's not a particularly good looking or special effects heavy movie
aside from the practical element of it.
That's true.
So I think it's the star power which really is driving a lot of this.
There's a few things that Stallone requested in his payday,
which I'll get to at the end.
Oh, I'm excited for that.
Which kind of added to this.
I love a movie star writer.
I think they're always excellent.
Some of my favourites, yeah.
But Stallone, let me tell you.
Stallone, first of all, this is definitely his oiliest performance, I think.
100%.
Oh, my God, he's so oily in this movie.
I guess he's supposed to be sweaty, but it's just every part of him's oily.
His body, his hair.
He's got oily hair.
Look at that shaggy oil.
That shaggy oily hair.
You know what I mean?
You know what it is?
For this movie, everything is kind of bigger.
Like he gets bigger.
He's more muscular.
I can talk about his training regime.
I've got it all here.
Even his face is muscular.
I'm fascinated by Stallone's face in this hero.
You know how they talk about movie stars,
they might have high cheekbones.
This guy's got cheekbones coming out of his forehead.
He's got cheekbones coming out of his chin, this guy.
I think he's known to have some work done,
and I think maybe that has something to do with it.
But like I said, the hair's bigger, the knife's bigger.
The bone arrow's bigger, I feel.
The bone arrow's bigger, yeah.
He's like the best he's ever been.
He's even good at throwing sheep football.
He's the best in the world for some reason.
He's good at stick fighting all of a sudden.
Do you think, because in the opening sequence,
his old colonel comes back to, he needs Rambo.
And so he comes, he finds him in Thailand
where he's been hiding out since he walked away in Rambo 2.
And Rambo's just in a stick fight with another guy also with sticks do you think he was bad
initially and then he trained up or do you think he just walked in there one day was the champion
at stick fight straight up yeah well they've kind of juiced him up in all ways leading up to this
movie because i watched the first and second leading up to this i'd never seen them and the
first one's this quiet contemplative kind of movie for a lot of it.
It's a mediation on the pressure of war and what it does to people returning from war.
Yeah, like he's considered this drifter.
Well, he is a drifter and people hate him because he's come back from Vietnam and he
has this speech at the end how people spout on him and called him a baby killer.
And it ends not in like a massive gunfight.
There is that kind of prior
in the movie where he explodes a lot of a small town scene for no reason because no one dies no
one oh i think he kills a cop with a rock in the helicopter but it's not intentional yeah he's
purposefully not killing people but there is this sense of like this is a damaged man who's got a
lot of problems and it was criticized at the time for kind of an anticlimactic ending.
But it seems just from 2 onwards, not so much 4,
which kind of dials it back a bit, it's just like,
he's fine now and he just loves war and killing people
that are bows and arrows.
I mean, 2 was basically, hey, let's fight the Vietnam War again.
Yeah, that's right, exactly.
This time we'll win because Rambo's here.
I mean, he was there the first time.
He's better now.
He knows where all the traps are.
This is actually considered the Lawrence of Arabia of Rambo films
I read somewhere as a piece of trivia.
By who?
By Sylvester Stallone?
Somebody probably said that at the time,
but I think it's just because it's in the desert.
Yeah, for sure.
There's less greenery than the previous two.
It's funny, though, because it's not very well regarded now,
I would say, and it wasn't really at the time either.
Well, two and three weren't as much as one.
But Stallone's even talked about more recently
that this one is missing heart.
And it is because he is this indestructible,
unstoppable fighting machine.
There's a moment where he gets shot through the leg towards the end
and then you see him get up and put weight on that same leg
later to fight a tank.
Yeah, with his
bare hands yeah but i i never liked the element in these movies and it's even in the first one of
the colonel's like you push this man too far you've started a war with a man that you can't
win this war with i'm not here to i'm not here to save rambo i'm here to save you rambo kick your
ass out of your head don't even worry about it and i think that unstoppable action man is always
the least interesting element of these movies absolutely yeah what you need in in these
kind of movies if you've got that is maybe a compelling villain or like like a funny sidekick
or something like that yeah and i feel like rambo 3 doesn't really have either of those to be honest
it doesn't what it does have though is the scene that I went, oh, shit, this is Hot Shots 2.
Yes.
The stick fighting moment, which Charlie Sheen did in Hot Shots 2.
And Richard Krenner, who plays the colonel, he reprises his role in Hot Shots 2 to recruit Charlie Sheen to come back to do more Hot Shots.
That's right.
Yeah.
And the kill count's also parodied in that because, you know, he's just mowing down.
Because this had the highest kill count of any movie at the time.
I've got the number here.
He's got to have killed at least 100 guys how many guys he killed i believe 221 acts of violence oh with 108 deaths but that does include mean words as well no well
he doesn't he's a man of few words yeah but they're all mean what is this does have the iconic
line where he calls up the bad the main bad guy on the radio and the bad guy's like, who is this?
And he goes, I mean, well, it's not me.
I mean, well, that's, and upon watching this, I'm like,
oh, that's where that's from.
It's from the ad of Rambo that you saw as a kid for the movie Rambo, yeah.
What I thought was really strange about this as well,
the colonel in the other movies is kind of a person for good
in Rambo's life.
One and two,
he's kind of doing him a favour.
He goes to help him out in one,
he recruits him to do Vietnam again
in two because he knows that there's unfinished
business there and he's the best man for the job.
But three, it's like, you want to
do some war? Come and do some war.
You know how you're in this peaceful monastery
fixing carts and being a good bloke?
And occasionally stick fighting.
Yeah, fuck that.
Do you want to kill 108 people in a country you've never been to?
Here's some dead kids.
Does that motivate you to do some war?
Maybe.
And, of course, the only thing that gets him back is the Ruskies.
They're in Afghanistan.
This was a true event at the time that actually ceased two weeks prior to this movie coming out.
Because everybody signed a peace treaty and they went to the movie theatre
and they bought tickets in advance for Rambo 3.
That's exactly it.
So this is evil regime in Afghanistan,
which he's going to come in and sort out,
which actually has some repercussions
if you look at it historically in the modern day,
which we'll get to,
because the group that he is with are linked to the Taliban.
I can come back to that at the end.
Well, that's funny.
I mean, how do you know?
You're not going to know.
You're not going to know.
The Russians were the bad guys in the 80s.
Well, that's interesting as well.
I think this movie was criticised at the time,
because in the 80s the Russians were moving away from being the bad guys.
Yes.
But I guess, in retrospect, Rambo 3 was ahead of its time
because they're back, baby.
They're back, baby.
They really are.
So I think what tipped these movies over the edge was competition with Arnold
because both of them were notoriously super competitive
and hyper aware of the other person's film career and what they were up to.
Their relative level of oiliness.
Exactly.
They were tricking each other into movie roles.
Arnold tricked him into taking Stop or My Mom Will Shoot
because he heard that Arnold wanted to do it.
Oh, I see.
So that's why he did that.
But Arnold didn't want to do it.
He absolutely did not want to do it.
Because it sounds like a bad movie.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think it even carries on over into the musculature of this.
All right.
Because Commando came out post-Rambo 2,
and he was always kind of lean.
He got super ripped for that.
He was apparently, for the earlier Rocky movies, well, 2 and 3, he was always kind of lean he got super ripped for that he was apparently for the
earlier rocky movies or two and three he was only eating like burnt toast and working out like five
hours a day and boxing and running and skipping and and doing push-ups and all these crazy things
and he was incredibly unhealthy but he's like i gotta get this physique i gotta look a certain
way yeah right and i gotta get those burnt toast abs exactly i mean i think he may have had some
help he claims he's never done any steroids or in this era.
I don't know whether that's true or not.
It is possible to get this physique naturally,
but it's not if he was just playing fast and loose with it.
Like he did some damage to himself by training this way.
Now it's all very scientific and you can give anyone abs
with the right training regime.
It's not what it used to be.
Have some human growth toast.
That's right, exactly, yeah.
But look, this movie is no Commando.
No.
Let me tell you that.
It's not.
There is some solid action sequences in this,
but there's also some very average action sequences.
It seems like the Commando also is aware of what it is,
like the ludicrous nature,
where this tries to tell a more, I don't know,
human kind of narrative.
Yeah, a more grown-up kind of realistic narrative.
Yeah, like this could be, like this is ripped from the headlines kind of.
It's like this was ripped from the headlines,
but also what if you got this muscle-bound freak in to end the war?
Well, he gained, well, he went from 173 pounds up to 200 pounds,
and that's just pure muscle for this movie.
Because the size of this guy in this movie is insane.
We talked about it.
The hair, the oiliness, all of it. It's just bigger. movie because he's in the size of the sky in this movie is insane and we talked about it the hair
the oiliness all of it it's just bigger like he's riding a horse and throwing a molotov cocktail
and all those kinds of things and also he's throwing a horse well he's definitely throwing
a sheep you mentioned the action side of this mason yeah i did it's just not very interesting
because it's running and shooting and someone will run out and shoot at him and he'll stand there
he'll see them he'll turn and then he'll shoot them and then he'll keep running yeah it's it's running and shooting and someone will run out and shoot at him and he'll stand there, he'll see them, he'll turn,
and then he'll shoot them and then he'll keep running.
Yeah, this is the old school action.
I like to delineate action movies pre and post The Matrix.
Yes.
And this was way pre The Matrix.
This is just, there's no continuous shots,
there's no long sequences of moves that the stars had to learn.
It's just one shots of a bad guy firing, a good guy ducking,
a good guy standing up and shooting back,
a bad guy being shot and falling off a cliff or whatever.
Exactly.
Friends of Rambo falling down all around him.
Like kids get shot and whatever, but he's fine.
There's an action sequence in a cave where the Russians send in
like the Spetsnaz special forces.
Yes.
And only one of them has like night vision goggles for some reason.
I guess maybe this was the 80s, so they were really expensive then.
It's not like now when you can go to an Aldi and get a pair of night vision goggles.
Yeah, exactly.
Your phone does it.
Yeah, but like this sequence, it's dark and I guess it's meant to be confusing,
but also the whole time you have no idea where anybody's supposed to be.
Like it's not even like this is confusing because it's chaotic and it's war.
It's just like is there a main cavern and then there's some gantries?
How far underground is this?
How far we don't know?
Is it really that dark?
Is it pitch black?
Like what's, you know?
What's the lighting source in any of this?
Exactly, yeah.
No idea.
It's funny though because there's a couple of parallels to this
and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Like the desert showdown I think with the tank and that and the horse. That and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Like the desert showdown, I think, with the tank and that and the horse.
That's all done in the Last Crusade, but it's done so much better
because you know where everybody is.
You know who everybody is.
And the main character is more kind of sympathetic and he gets hurt.
Vic Armstrong, who's the stunt double for Harrison Ford,
he also was on board for this movie.
But there's just something missing here,
which Indiana Jones managed to pull off.
Well, you know what number one I think is probably a sense of humour?
Yes.
And apparently, I can't remember his name,
but somebody will be screaming at us almost instantaneously,
the original director on this was going to be the director of Highlander.
Oh, and he was fired from this.
And he was fired.
He was like, I'm going to try to make this funnier,
evolve Rambo's character and make him more.
Like Commando.
Like more, maybe more like Commando,
but maybe like just make him,
evolve him into more of a human.
Yeah.
Or like a character that's maybe softened over the years
or something like that.
But Stallone was not having that.
So Mulcahy was replaced by Peter McDonald
as a second unit director.
It was his first film as director.
He directed the second unit action sequences
in Rambo First Blood Part 2.
Right.
But he later said,
I tried very hard
to change the Rambo character
a bit and make him
a vulnerable and humorous person.
I failed totally.
That's not incorrect.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think though
he gets less appealing
as a character
over these first three movies
because you do lose
that element of,
who is this guy?
He's just an unstoppable man
who can run anywhere
with a machine gun
and do anything.
It's just like,
eh, whatever.
But Mason, you said this movie doesn't have a sense of humour, and I disagree.
Because Sylvester Stallone had a close call with a spinning helicopter rotor blade.
Oh, that is funny.
In fact, if he had have been struck, it would have almost certainly decapitated him.
But Stallone laughed it off at the time with this quip,
well, at least I would have saved a fortune on haircuts.
He's done it again. Why didn't they put that in the movie, Mason? Well, I mean a fortune on haircuts. He's done it again.
Why didn't they put that in the movie, Mason?
Well, I mean, that is pretty funny.
He hasn't had a haircut.
I was going to say he hasn't had a haircut.
He's got that long, oily, shaggy haircut hair already.
So, yeah.
There is one great action sequence that I did enjoy.
I mean, it's pretty solid.
I feel it maybe still holds up as one of the all-time great bad guy deaths.
Stick fight!
No, no.
No, it's the one where he fights the Russian general's henchmen
for the final time,
and it's kind of a fist fight kind of grapple on top of a hill,
which leads to the bad guy getting Rambo in the death grip
and kind of crushing him in his mighty grip,
and then Rambo pulls the pin out of one of the bad guy's hand grenades.
He's down the hole.
He falls down a hole.
His neck snaps and then he explodes.
That is good, yeah.
It's a good solid finale for that guy, I think.
But what if that hadn't worked?
What if you pull the pin on the grenade and the bad guy's like,
I'm not going to let you go, actually.
We're both going up.
There's another thing I think it does better than two.
A lot of the time when he fires like a rocket launcher,
you just see him kind of fire it and then you just see the thing explode.
But this you actually see it leave the rocket launcher.
Yeah, yeah.
So I'm like, oh, that's where the money went, didn't it?
That's right.
That's what they're doing right there, yeah.
Real black market army weapons.
You know what it is, mate.
Anyways, speaking of money, it didn't do super well.
It was a $63 million budget and it made $189 million, which is okay, but it was considered like this kind of just broke even because, again, you've got to double marketing and all those kinds of things.
But the second one made $300 million off $44 million.
So that's for comparison's sake.
Aside from Stallone getting like a massive payday for this, he also asked for a Gulfstream jet, which cost $12 million, which he was given.
So he must still own
it surely he's probably he's probably updated probably updated yeah yeah and you think he's
getting that hgh into different countries mate he's got a he's got a super he's got a network
i get it yeah for those people who don't know he i think it was human growth hormone or something
that he brought into australia at the time of the time of rambo 4 which i know is just called rambo
but it's less confusing if I call it Rambo 4.
You can't stay off it for a couple of weeks, mate.
Yeah.
I mean, you finish the movie.
It's fine.
No, well, I think it's one of those things where- Maybe, I'm not alleging anything, though.
Maybe he just likes to look at it.
Maybe he just does.
Just in a box and he looks at it.
Maybe he was holding it for a friend.
He's holding it for a friend.
But the thing is, a lot of actors do take this supplement or whatever you want to call
it, this steroid.
It's not that dangerous or uncommon.
I reckon in a few years, it's going to be one of those things that everybody's on. If you watch a
Joe Rogan podcast, he brings it up at least four to seven times an episode. Because his memory's
failing. Is that why? It's sharper than ever, mate. With all these sustenance and things like
that. I think it's very much like a vanity project, this one. I like a lot of Stallone's work,
but there was a period when it was just like this and Cobra and stuff
where it's like, I see what you're doing
but these aren't super compelling characters
For sure, yeah, give us a little vulnerability
give us a sense of humour, give us Tango and Cash
Well I think even, if you look at Demolition Man
it's a ridiculous movie but there's a sense of fun to it
For sure, yeah
I think that kind of world holds up more than this, for example
We should do Demolition Man
Absolutely, we should do Demolition Man
Anyways, in relation to the freedom fighters that Stallone is running around with
and it says at the end, you know, dedicated to the people of Afghanistan and that.
So, look, they're not strictly Taliban.
So what happened as a result of this, right?
That's what they changed.
They changed the title sequence at the end on the Blu-ray version
where it says, look, they're not strictly Taliban, all right?
How are we supposed to know?
Their name translates to Warriors of God,
and they're made up of a whole lot of different factions,
which then split off.
And the Taliban actually formed properly in the mid-'90s.
Was it 94, something like that?
Yeah, look, I mean, exactly.
It's chaos over there.
Exactly.
And this was also, again, during the Soviet occupation.
And the people of Afghanistan, as probably people know,
had the backing of the CIA for the common enemy that was the Russians at the time.
They weren't doing out-and-out conflict.
It was people backing different people to fight this war
without getting into the weeds of it.
Because we don't know anything about the weeds of it.
We don't know that much about it.
But, yeah, it's more complicated than he's just fighting with the Taliban.
Exactly. They didn't all with the Taliban. Exactly.
They didn't all become the Taliban is what I'm saying.
Only the ones Rambo left behind.
They became the Taliban specifically.
Thanks, Rambo.
Thanks, Rambo.
Anyways, this has been Caravan of Garbage.
We do this every week, believe it or not, every Tuesday.
If you want to subscribe, please do so.
Every week we review a movie and we support a different terrorist group.
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You've just de-buttetized this video.
Oh, no.
But look, if you do have thoughts on what's your favorite Rambo movie
or what you want to see next on Caravan of Garbage.
Yeah, should they do a Rambo 6?
Last Blood Part 2?
Yes.
Goes out of a drop of blood or whatever?
That's right.
But we'll do anything.
We'll do a comic, a movie, a TV show, a video game.
Let us know. A LaserDisc? LaserD anything. We'll do a comic, a movie, a TV show, a video game. Let us know.
A laser disc?
A laser disc.
And just this Monday past, we also have a podcast called The Weekly Planet
where we talk movies and comics and TV shows.
We talked about the filmography of Stallone.
The hits, the misses.
There's a lot of good stuff in there.
We've kind of rubbished this movie and some of his other works,
but he's done a lot of great stuff.
Yeah.
And it's a really interesting discussion.
He's a real cinematic dynamo. And he keeps going. And it's a really interesting discussion which people can come along for. He's a real cinematic dynamo.
And he keeps going.
And he's writing
and he's acting
and he's doing
various supplements.
He's got weird
big veiny forearms
and hands.
Oh my god,
it's insane.
How does he pick up a pen?
He has a giant keyboard
like the one from Big.
Oh nice.
But you know,
but like,
no,
it's like from the TV show
Amazing.
There's a very specific
reference that people
can,
Australian reference. Don't even worry about anybody. Anyways, I'm at MrSundayMovies's a very specific reference that people can, Australian reference.
Don't even worry about anybody.
Anyways, I'm at MrSundayMovies on Twitter.
I'm at WikipediaBrown on Twitter.
Thanks for sticking around.
Grab that gem, you guys.
We'll see you next week.
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I mean, if you want.
It's up to you.
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FX's The Veil explores the surprising and fraught relationship between two women who play a deadly
game of truth and lies on the road from Istanbul to Paris and London. One woman has a secret,
the other a mission to reveal it before thousands of lives are lost.
Fx's The Veil, starring Elizabeth Moss, is now streaming on Disney+.