Watching First Blood

The first time I watched First Blood I was blown away. I thought it was the greatest action movie ever, and Stallone I looked up to, right up there with Jesus, or close. I was pretty young during this time, you see.  You remember the scene where Rambo stitched up his own wound? It was the coolest, most kickass scene I ever saw in a movie.
And of course: "Don't push it or I'll give you a war you won't believe. Let it go." I was mightily impressed by Rambo’s quiet menace.
In short, I immensely enjoyed the movie. 



 For several weeks after I saw the movie I even tried to talk like him. Talking in incomplete sentences, mumbling the words, and the look. You know, the way Rambo stares at people—respectful-like, but you know he could take the heads of those people and use them to wipe the floor.
I tried practicing that look, but I ended up looking like a kid who badly needs a pair of glasses. The movie’s theme song—It’s A Long Road, by Dan Hill— I tried singing it around the house, to impress my cousins. I don’t think anybody noticed, though.
Then I saw First Blood on cable recently. I was excited at first; I remembered how the movie almost made me carry a “Rambo” knife to school. I was surprised, though; the movie was not as good as I remembered it. I find the story hackneyed, and Stallone’s acting—well, I must admit, it was restrained, and not as corny as his acting in subsequent Rambo sequels. (Rambo sequels! Ugh.) Anyway, I guess I still like the movie, but it was nowhere near as genius as I thought it was.  Watching the movie again, after all these years, was a huge letdown.

The movie that was seen by the pimply, skinny, awkward, dorky, younger me was not as earth-shaking as the movie that was seen by the fat, grumpy, geeky, older me.
I guess things are not as great as we remember them to be.  
There is a philosophical explanation in there somewhere, but I’ll let it pass.

I read this quote on HumanityCritic’s blog:
A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.  –Muhammad Ali
I am nowhere near fifty, and I was nowhere near twenty when I first saw First Blood, but this quote got me thinking.  I tried to remember all the things that I thought were great during my youth, and I thought of my infatuation with the original Rambo movie.
Time does change one's perspective.
There’s a lesson in there somewhere, I guess.



Comments

Post a Comment

So, what do you think? Post it here:

Popular posts from this blog

The Square Cube Law and How It Killed Giants

Image
We are so used to the idea of giants that we take it for granted that they exist, or must have existed at one point in our history.  You know, those very large and very tall human-like creatures, carrying a humongous club, and being very nasty. Like this: And if you are a typical, god-fearing Catholic Pinoy, you would swear that not only are they true, you even saw one beside that big-ass, scary-looking tree not far from your home, one night when you were going home after an evening of binge-drinking with your buddies. And the bastard’s smoking a cigar as long and as big as your leg! Or you know someone who saw one of those cigar-smoking monsters. This creature is called a kapre —a cigar-smoking giant wearing a loincloth. Or maybe a tikbalang —a half-man, half-horse creature about as tall as a kapre. Unlike a centaur, however, a tikbalang is a giant with the torso and arms of a man, and the head and legs of a horse.  Scary creatures, these—and, if I may add
Read more

Vincent

Image
Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings are valued today at hundreds of millions of dollars. One of the world’s greatest painters, he is also one of the most influential figures in Post-Impressionism art. Ironic, because nobody wanted his paintings when he was alive.  He was a “weirdo” and nobody really understood him. Except for the few friends he had with other struggling, unsuccessful painters, one of whom he quarreled with, a quarrel that resulted in Van Gogh cutting off his ear with  a razor.  He also suffered from delusions and had psychotic breaks. He seldom ate and drank heavily. He was one of those tortured souls who had so much to give but was largely ignored. His genius and artistry nobody really got while he was alive. He was an idealist, a sensitive soul who had too much empathy. Imagine somebody like that living today.  At age 37, Vincent Van Gogh - struggling with depression, mental illness, and thinking that he was a failure - killed himself.  You know, maybe Don McLean
Read more

Typhoons and Earthquakes in the Philippines

Image
The Philippines has more than its fair share of disasters, and not because the country is particularly cursed or anything, but because the entire archipelago—purportedly composed of 7,100 islands—lies on a region in the Pacific Ocean called the “Ring of Fire” (actually, the area is shaped more like a horseshoe, although to be fair, “The Horseshoe of Fire” doesn’t have the same impact as the “Ring of Fire”). About 40,000 kilometers long, the “ring” runs from the southern tip of South America, up along the coast of North America, across the Bering Strait, down through Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia (the Ring of Fire’s western edge extends into the Indian Ocean), and to New Zealand.  The “Fire” part of the Ring of Fire is because a string of 452 volcanoes dot this line, like a malevolent game of connect-the-dots. The regions along this line experience volcanic eruptions and periodic earthquakes—majority of them small, hardly-felt tremors, and the few devastating ones that kil
Read more

The Queen of Heaven

Image
Inanna, “The Queen of Heaven,” is a goddess of Sumerian origin: goddess of warfare, fertility, and sexual love. The Akkadians called her Ishtar , a name from which Easter was derived. Yes, the Christian holiday. Inanna is the most popular and important female deity in ancient Mesopotamia. She is also known as a healer, life giver, composer of songs, and possessing a wide range of emotions—passionate, ambitious, jealous, grieving, joyful, timid, and generous. In later cultures, she went by different names: Astarte, Isis, Aphrodite—she was the Goddess. She is the original femme fatale , the embodiment of the woman every man dreams about; the female that devours men, the female that attracts/scares men; the virgin harlot. Every man knows at least one. The goddess makes an appearance in Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods.”  Throughout Sumer’s existence, her powers and deeds were glorified and extolled in myth, epic, and hymn. No one dared oppose her, neither god nor man. She was
Read more