How John Rambo cheated death
When David Morrell's 1972 novel First Blood was optioned by Hollywood, it would be a decade until it reached the screen. By the time Sylvester Stallone made his career-saving performance as Rambo, the story had an ending radically different from the book.
How does the novel end? Well (warning, spoilers!) in the book, Rambo goes completely wild. He kills so many people and destroys so many things he winds up badly wounded and contemplating suicide. But his former commanding officer, Colonel Samuel Trautman, puts him out of his misery with a shotgun blast to the head.
Morrell intended the novel to be a one-off project that witnessed the Vietnam War come to America. His Rambo (he has no first name in the novel) was hardly B.A. Bracus from "The A-Team." Irony of ironies, Morrell's Rambo was still a Medal of Honor winner. An award that starkly contrasted with the dark depths the character sank to before his death.
The initial movie scripts kept Rambo's violent tendencies from the novel intact; one draft even had him kill 15 people. But the project dragged as directors and actors passed on the project one after another. When Sly Stallone was finally brought on board, he applied his own writing talents to the script. To Stallone, Rambo called out for a more sympathetic treatment, more of a man "sitting on the fence" as Stallone puts it in his First Blood DVD commentary; a man who simply did not want to be pushed around and be left alone by society.
In Stallone's draft, only one person -a sadistic sheriff's deputy named Gault- dies thanks indirectly to Rambo and is prevented from killing another cop thanks to the intervention of Sam Trautman. Thanks to Stallone, Rambo became a character not to despise, but rather root for. Nevertheless, an ending was shot where Rambo seizes a Colt .45 Trautman is armed with and kills himself. But test audiences found the ending too depressing.
Alternatively, the ending in which Rambo collapses emotionally and is taken into custody was used. With that, perhaps the greatest action hero ever not only was born but also cheated death. Thank you, Sly! And despite the changes, Morrell notes in this interview he still liked the movie version of First Blood, even though his survival made Morrell's sequel novelizations a challenge.
Main image courtesy Wikimedia.