![]() ![]() One of the most fascinating things about the novel is the way in which notions of hero and bad guy hinge entirely on the reader’s age and politics. ![]() Teasle is an Eisenhower Republican and decorated Korean War hero. Teasle isn’t the bully he seems in the movie, and Rambo isn’t the victim. The chapters alternate between the points of view of Rambo and Teasle, who represent the divide between older establishment and youth counterculture of the last '60s and early '70s. In the novel of First Blood, Rambo isn’t even necessarily a hero. The bones of the plots remain the same, but while relations between author and actor remain cordial, Morrell’s print Rambo is something of a rebuke to Stallone’s. ![]() Morrell’s novelizations of that film and the subsequent Rambo III see the author deliberately recalibrating the screen Rambo as far back towards his original vision as is possible. "I was fascinated to see how… in Rambo: First Blood Part II, Rambo was interpreted as a jingoistic superhero," Morrell says in his memoir Rambo and Me. But in taking on the print versions of those follow-ups, plotted by other people, Morrell had a specific agenda. First Blood, written a decade before the Stallone adaptation made Rambo a household name, remains largely a separate entity, even to Morrell’s own sequels. This is all the attention David Morrell gives to the continuity problem of continuing a series of novels where the protagonist didn’t survive the first installment. Alamo Drafthouse's Rambo marathon leading up to Rambo: Last Blood is almost here. ![]()
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