Rambo Franchise Ranked
The Rambo franchise was one of the defintive 80s action movie franchises that spanned 5 years starting from 1981 and ending in 2019. The fives movies have made a combined $819.3 million at the world wide box office. And with the latest Sylvester Stallone movies, Samaritan dropped on Amazon Prime Video. So I thought I would rank all 5 Rambo movies. Let's get started!
NOTE: As a point of reference I hadn’t seen any of these movies prior to watching them for this ranking. So this was my first time watching all of these movies.
5. Rambo III: This is a movie that didn’t really work for me. It is my least favorite of the Rambo movies. When this movie came out in 1988, it was the movie with the biggest budget, with $65 million. And you can see that in this movie with helicopters flying over large fields, and large shots of Rambo and other people on horseback. They definitely used the budget that they had for this movie. It’s also fun to see Trautman being more involved with the story, in the first two movies he’s just the mentor that is back at base talking to Rambo. Here he’s shooting guns and doing action with Rambo. The score by Jerry Goldsmith is once again great and memorable. And this movie has a number of funny one liners that are pretty good. On the negatives, honestly I don’t really have any. It’s a movie that didn’t really work for me, and I can’t exactly say why. It wasn’t as entertaining or as emotional as the other movies in the franchise. So maybe that’s why it’s in last place. But I think this movie is fun, and watchable enough. But not super memorable, and the most generic movie of the franchise for me.
4. Rambo: First Blood: Part II: For me, this is the movie of the franchise that I’m split down the middle on. The film does a number of things that I like, but a number of things that I don’t like. First up, the Rambo character continues to be great inside of this movie. And this movie is a nice continuation to where First Blood left off. Trautman once again is a fun character and I think he was used better in this movie than he was in the first movie. Murdock is a great antagonist toward Trautman, not a villain but they have a nice rivalry. I think the basic set-up for this movie is Trautman recruiting Rambo to rescue Vietnam war soldiers, and having Rambo go back to the place where the war happened. Also, the movie just feels bigger with the budget and the action. It feels far more epic than the original movie. But I did have a few things that hold this movie back. First, I don't think the villains of the movie are particularly good, Teasle was a great villain. The Russian General and the other kidnappers aren’t used enough in this movie. Second, I think the movie drags a bit for 20 minutes. From the scene where Rambo gets captured to when Rambo starts taking out the Russian soldiers it slows down a good bit.
3. Rambo: Last Blood: After taking 11 years off from the character Sylvester Stallone returns to the franchise with a very bloody, brutal, and quite disturbing movie. Where with this movie, sets up villains that you want to see Rambo take out and as you move into the finale it does deliver a slam bang finale. Where with this movie it’s basically a Rated-R version of Home Alone and it’s awesome. Where guys get their feet cut off, stabbed in the chest, shot in the head, and heart ripped straight out of their bodies if you like bloody action movies this movie delivers all of that. And the movie itself is basically Sylvester Stallone doing a brutal version of Taken which they execute on that idea really well. And this is probably the most time that we’ve spent with Rambo as a person, and the most character driven film in this franchise. What holds this movie back is that it has all of the same positives that Rambo (2008) had so it’s not as fresh and unique as it could have been. But still, a solid, bloody, brutal, and violent addition to the franchise.
2. Rambo (2008): After a 20 year absence from the franchise, Sylvester Stallone returns to the role with EASILY the most brutal movie in this franchise. There are over 400 deaths in this movie, and when somebody gets killed you see blood go everywhere. Some characters are stabbed, have axes thrown at them, get shot in the face. No matter what it is, it’s brutal but also weirdly fun to see. The movie also does a great job of setting up villains that you want to see Rambo take out, and when he gets to take them out it is vicious and so satisfying. That’s something that I wasn’t really expecting going into this movie. I just wanted to see Rambo rate these guys to pieces. And it’s also a movie that is rated R and goes for it with the R rating, so much so that there are several scenes that most audiences aren’t going to enjoy just how bloody or disturbing they are. Also I liked the team that Rambo was with for a large portion of the movie, each of them had just enough of a strong personality that popped and stood out to me to make them interesting. So for me, this is easily the best of the sequels and easily the most violent one of them all.
1. First Blood: This is a great little thriller with action inside of it. It’s not a full action movie, but it’s a character based thriller about a Vietnam war hero trying to reconnect with the world. And obviously, the sequels went full 80s cheesy action movies, but this is a character driven movie. I think the characters all around were great in this movie. The John Rambo character is one of Sylvester Stallone’s most iconic movie characters to date and he’s very good in this movie. He plays this soldier that has PTSD very well, and he can also play the brave action hero. But I think Teasle and Trautman are also some great characters. And Teasle is a character that you want to see Rambo take down by the end of the movie. Trautman is a great character as the mentor figure to Rambo. The action in this movie is also handled very nicely, and there are different types of action. There’s a stealth sequence, a shoot out, a chase and it’s all very exciting and you can see everything that is happening. The thing that surprised me the most was the score by Jerry Goldsmith, and this score is fantastic. As the movie was going and the score would start playing, it caught my attention and it’s a great score for this movie. So this was a great character based thriller, that has great character, great action, and a great score. Put the pieces together and you get a movie that I dug.
There you have it, my ranking of the 5 movies in the Rambo franchise. What is your favorite movie in the franchise? Thanks for reading!
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