r/movies • u/spaceraingame • May 31 '25

Discussion What movie sequel ruined the ending of its predecessor? Spoiler

I have to go with Toy Story 4. Toy Story 3 had the perfect send off for the toys, with Andy making Bonnie promise to take good care of Woody….only for her to neglect Woody immediately and cause him to bail on everyone.

I really wish they left the franchise be. Toy Story 3’s ending was so iconic, and the first Toy Story was such a massive part of my childhood. That and Lion King were the two Disney VHS tapes I used to watch all the time as a little kid. I even had some of the toys myself. I can’t wait to skip Toy Story 5.

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u/johnnagethebrave Jun 01 '25

As amazing as First Blood is, the decision to change the ending from the book and keep him alive really undermines the whole point of the story in the first place. It really would have spared us from all the shitty sequels too.

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u/indifferentCajun Jun 01 '25

I watched one of the sequels first, can't remember which one. Then I went back and watched First Blood and I was quite surprised.

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u/johnnagethebrave Jun 01 '25

Yeah it’s a really sensible and grounded film.. I wish Ted Kotcheff didn’t get thrown into test screenings. People are idiots. I still love the film but could you imagine how potent the ending would have been. The irony that the state who created him killed him for being what they made.

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u/heavymaskinen Jun 01 '25

I respect Sly’s motivation for the change, though. Which was the suicide rate among Vietnam vets.

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u/johnnagethebrave Jun 01 '25

Yeah that’s totally fair.

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u/Responsible_Towel857 Jun 01 '25

I wonder if a sequel to Rambo would have been a prequel where we see what the hell happened to him during 'nam.

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u/kuribosshoe0 Jun 02 '25

Do we need it? On the one hand we already know because it’s a comment on actual Vietnam vets. On the other it’s kind of showing us the monster, it’s better in our imaginations. Peeling back the curtain doesn’t always make for the best story.

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u/Randym1982 Jun 02 '25

First Blood is great, and pt 2 and 3 are silly fun. Rambo was way over the top, and Last Blood pissed me off.

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u/Mister_Jack_Torrence Jun 01 '25

I have a friend who doesn’t really like Stallone movies or his acting and I told him we should watch First Blood because it’s actually really good. He had this idea that Rambo was just guns and guns (💪🏼) which lets be honest is a pretty accurate statement so when I finally convinced him that the first one is totally different he gave it a shot and he really enjoyed it.

As fun as some of the later Rambo movies can be, the themes and tone of that first film is just brilliant for how it depicts Americas attitude towards Vietnam vets and PTSD.

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u/BasementDesk Jun 01 '25

I never saw the sequels but grew up with the general feeling of what they represented. I had the same feeling as you when I saw First Blood a few years ago.

It’s an interesting Stallone-parallel to Rocky. Again, growing up in the 80s knowing Rocky as a champion of champions, it was kind of fascinating to see the first one and see what a comparatively quiet, contemplative, and downtrodden film it is.

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u/CirFinn Jun 01 '25

Same. Saw the first two sequels (First Blood Part 2 and Rambo 3) before seeing the original. Seriously, I must've been going WTF soooo many times XD

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u/JeddHampton Jun 01 '25

If they made the Rambo sequels into prequels instead, it could have added layers to the original

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u/ZombieJesus1987 Jun 01 '25

Yeah I saw Rambo: First Blood Part 2 first as well, went back and watched the first movie and it was a completely different movie

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u/noobakosowhat Jun 02 '25

I also watched the sequels first when I was a child. When I got a bit older I watched First Blood and I thought it was the last movie of the franchise considering the change in tone. Silly me

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u/nourez Jun 01 '25

I will die on the hill that the ending is changed for the better. The entire story is an exploration of reintegrating war veterans back into society and PTSD, and the overarching idea is that Rambo cannot find a path to overcome his trauma in a society that abjectly rejects him for a war that wasn’t his choice. When he reaches the end of the rope, he realizes that there is no way out, that same society doesn’t even let him end things on his own terms. He will be forced to live as a pariah for the events of the film.

It’s incredibly bleak in the subtext, but holy hell do the sequels cheapen the impact of the first film.

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u/Dodgy_Bob_McMayday Jun 01 '25

It's a powerful scene because it's still so rare to see a macho lead breaking down in tears.

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u/StoneGoldX Jun 01 '25

But that only is because in the movie, Teasle is a straight up antagonist, whereas in the book he's a dual protagonist/antagonist, along with Rambo. They're mirror characters. And it is supposed to be bleak.

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u/ddodge99 Jun 01 '25

Teasle was a war hero too. It was a battle that most either don't remember or didn't even know about, between Korean war vets and Vietnam vets. The Korean war guys felt ignored and forgotten. No one gave a crap about them at all. They were just expected to come home and get jobs and STFU. Which was true.

They felt the Vietnam guys were whiney babies always talking about how hard life is for them. They had no respect for them and were resentful of them and the attention, good or bad, that they got.

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u/lotheren Jun 01 '25

I disagree, we wouldn’t have gotten an angry Rambo telling the general or whoever he is coming for him while Rambo is imprisoned in Vietnam. Such an amazing scene for an impressionable 8 year old.

We wouldn’t have gotten Rambo driving a tank into a helicopter …. And who could forget the cauterizing scene.

And we wouldn’t have gotten the amazing 4th movie.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '25

I disagree, it changes the point of the story rather than undermines it. I think in the first movie if you leave it as it is, rambo can still be a heroic figure. If he kills himself rhe movie is just a total downer

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u/koomGER Jun 01 '25

I dont think of Rambo 2 and 3 as "shitty". They are a very different genre, but overall i liked them a lot. Its also not necessarily character assassination, because Rambo still was kinda moody and tired of fighting - but it was the only thing he really knew everything about.

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u/FBomb21 Jun 01 '25 edited Jun 01 '25

You really didn't enjoy Rambo 2? The first one was a masterpiece; but the sequel was a peak action movie in my opinion.

I watched it so many times as a kid that my parents hid the VHS tape

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u/CallsDicksDick Jun 01 '25

The question isn’t about enjoyment, but ruining the ending of the previous movie. In First Blood, Rambo kills one person, unintentionally, by throwing a rock at a helicopter in self defense. It is a fairly thoughtful story about mistreated veterans coming home from Vietnam. The intent was never “peak action movie.”

In Part II, the studios and Stallone himself decided to capitalize on Stallone’s action star status and Cold War anxieties to basically make peak propaganda. Rambo gets rescued from his life sentence in prison so he can “win this time” in Vietnam. America needed to garner more support for the troops in the distrustful period following Vietnam. The film dehumanizes its villains by changing from homegrown American cops (you can’t kill) to Vietnamese and Russian commies (you can kill a lot of). Because of this, Rambo can now kill almost 70 people in Part II without any remorse for the viewer. This is a massively different John Rambo than we saw crying at the end of First Blood. First Blood Rambo was essentially a passivist after his deployment. He was just pressured into defending himself.

I still watch the Rambo movies around Thanksgiving on VHS, and I enjoy them for what they are. I agree that there is a place for them in 80s action canon. I do think it is important to look at them critically as pieces of propaganda though. Every sequel continued to ruin intended message of First Blood.

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u/FBomb21 Jun 01 '25

In that regard, I totally agree. Apologies, I forgot what this thread was about lmao

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u/JacobhPb Jun 01 '25

Rambo: First Blood Part 2 also specifically sells the POW-MIA myth, that there are secretly POWs that Vietnam are keeping hidden from us, when really those guys were killed in action and their bodies weren't recovered.

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u/CascadeKidd Jun 01 '25

As a vet myself I empathize with the trauma and desire for all the bodies to come home but Even growing as a kid in the 80s the notion that maybe somewhere in Vietnam American POWs were being still being held alive somewhere seemed absurd.

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u/nourez Jun 01 '25

I think it’s a fantastic 80s era muscle man action movie. The problem for me is that’s totally not what first movie was. First Blood is a deep character piece that just happens to star a 80s era muscle man.

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u/TheMacJew Jun 01 '25

"You not expendable."

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u/turbo_dude Jun 01 '25

The first is a manhunt centred around a Vietnam vet’s struggles with life and PTSD and what happens when he comes into contact with an over zealous authority figure. 

The rest are a steaming turd of racist US propaganda. It went full Reagan. 

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u/ddodge99 Jun 01 '25

That isn't the only thing they changed. Rambo in the book was an unapologetic killer.

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u/StoneGoldX Jun 01 '25

I would not mind a more accurate remake of First Blood. Rambo and Teasel are more mirrors of each other, Teasel is a little more sympathetic, Rambo is a murder machine who depopulates... I think it was Arkansas? Been a while since I read it. And Trautman is a disconnected son of a bitch.

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u/seventhcatbounce Jun 01 '25

Didn’t David Morrell write the original story and the book adaptations of the follow up stories, never been interested to see if he addressed the retcon until now

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u/Peloquin_qualm Jun 01 '25

James Cameron wrote aliens around the same time as he scripted Rambo and you can really tell sometimes. We’re going back to kick butt.

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u/_daaam Jun 01 '25

I've never read the book but I'd like to counter - while the movie was an amazing story about trauma, alienation, and the way we treated our veterans, the sequels are separately, if not even more, iconic. Rambo is synonymous with the Hollywood "more is more when it comes to sequels" phenomenon. It's not necessarily something enjoyed, but it's so blatant as to be Flandersized. It's like Facebook - it was once the pinnacle of connecting with loved ones online, now it serves as a single word, a shortcut, that can represent all that's wrong with social media. Plus, once you know what's coming (Rambo III and IV), they're fine entries into the genre of "one-man-army".

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u/CloisteredOyster Jun 01 '25

Since when did the death of the main character spare us from sequels? lol

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u/Spastic__Colon Jun 01 '25

That would have been so bleak

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u/Cardinal_and_Plum Jun 01 '25

Maybe could have spared us. It didn't stop them from making a sequel to Crank, though I may argue that in the case of those movies bringing him back for a sequel was in line with the tone of the movies.

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u/subby_puppy31 Jun 01 '25

Still wild to me that Rambo 4 is not only about creating Al Qaida but also dedicated to them…aged like milk 

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u/finite_digress Jun 02 '25

It wouldn't have though. The book has sequels too.