10 Movie Sequels That Completely Flipped The Original

10. Rambo II Went From Anti-War To Gun Porn

Out of all the films which made it to this list, Rambo may be the most striking case of two divergent treatments for the same themes meeting in one franchise. The first Rambo film was a slow, thoughtful, and deliberately dark meditation on the human cost of war. Following the titular veteran as he waged a campaign of retribution against a small town’s corrupt cops, First Blood was an unsparing depiction of America’s abandonment of its veterans, the country’s horrific legacy in Vietnam, and the shattered lives left behind by the bloody two decade invasion, ending with a tearful Rambo breaking down as he comes to terms with his complicity in his country’s atrocities.

Fast forward a few years and the film found itself a sequel in the form of First Blood: Part 2. A rare triple Razzie winner for Worst Picture, Actor, and Screenplay, the jingoistic macho fantasy saw a now-indestructible Rambo slaughter his way through innumerable faceless Viet Cong and Soviet soldiers, proving the US was right to attack Vietnam after all and erasing any evidence of a moral compass from its gung ho nationalism.

We all love some onscreen ultraviolence, but when the Washington Post is calling your film “the cinematic equivalent of carpet bombing” and its predecessor criticized real-life campaigns of the same, it might time to reconsider the target of the flick’s indiscriminate gunfire.