This entry was posted on 7/31/2006 11:41 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
8/1/06: Rambo: The Force of Freedom (1986)
Entertainment Weekly reports that
Rambo IV will feature Sylvester Stallone paired with “a team of young guns, a plot point required by the financiers, who wanted to hedge against Rambo's possible mono-generational appeal.” Then the magazine makes a lame joke instead of noting that Rambo has already had younger partners.
Rambo: The Force of Freedom thrilled the kiddies back in 1986, as the good American teamed up with tech guy Turbo and mistress-of-disguise Kat. These animated adventures had Rambo and his pals regularly foiling the evil plots of renegade General Warhawk.
And, yes, Warhawk is a fellow American.
Rambo still wasn’t a neutered disaster on the level of
Super Friends.
Race Bannon was quicker with a gun, but cartoon Rambo came equipped with exploding arrows, missile launchers, and a big hunting knife. The show also occasionally identified real evil.
It’s irritating to see Warhawk being the sole “Trouble In Tibet,” as he kidnaps “the next Dalai Lama.” (The kid turns to Rambo at the end and declares, “You have saved my people from oppression.”) “Guns Over Suez,” however, features Mideastern villain Nomad blowing up a relief supply ship. (The vessel seemingly belongs to a charity called Yellow Cross.)
It’s hard to top “Raid on Las Vegas,” though. For one thing, the episode features an all-too-literal catfight between Kat and a panther-taming dominatrix named Pandora. Kat’s captured and held hostage by more of Nomad’s henchmen.
Rambo’s violence usually stays within the level of
The A-Team. In this episode, nobody cares about showing us if Nomad’s men survive an exploding Jeep.
Otherwise, Warhawk relies on a reliable mix of
Road Warrior rejects who mainly seem to be from San Francisco. (“So you want to play, huh, Rambo? Well, I’ve got a rocket in my pocket!”) He also hires ninjas. The series would balance that by having Rambo working with good ninja White Dragon. We don’t recall the show featuring a good Islamic gunman.
Veteran voiceover man Neil Ross provides more right-wing content by giving Rambo a drawl worthy of John Wayne. Despite the delicate politics, our cartoon Rambo is a better conservative than in the first two films. He’s given plenty of platitudes—as when a kid learns to obey his teacher in “Raid on Las Vegas”—but Rambo utters the occasional words of wisdom. “Evil never rests,” he once explains, “so we got to be prepared.” There’s nothing cartoonish about that.
Make it your own: The
entire Rambo: The Force of Freedom series was released last year, with episodes out of order and scattered across five volumes. The shows cited here are all from
Volume 1—which, you know, includes that catfight.
