10 Film Characters Who Suffered Horrendous Fates In Other Media
3. John Rambo - First Blood
And now we come to perhaps the most legendary change from novel to film: Ted Kotcheff's adaptation of David Morell's novel First Blood. Both the novel and the film follow John Rambo, a Vietnam vet turned homeless drifter wandering through a small Washington town. But Sherriff Brian Dennehy doesn't take kindly to strangers, so he runs him into the station. Soon, the local cops playfully yet cruelly start to torture Rambo, triggering his PTSD and military training.
The film, and novel, is much more poignant than what followed. It was a bleak meditation on the real forgotten soldier who was forced to fight an unjust war, then rebuked by his fellow countryman. He wasn't Rambo, muscle-bound, bazooka-wielding, throat-ripping commie-killer. He was John Rambo, a vulnerable veteran who had witnessed his friends die in pieces for nothing.
The novel, as well as the film's original ending, was much more true to the material. In Morell's book, Rambo has rigged the Sherriff's station to blow with him inside it. He's about to light the fuse when the shot rings out - not an explosion but a shotgun blast to his stomach from his former Military Colonel Trautman.
The film originally stayed true to the spirit of the end, but made Rambo's death more a self-sacrifice.
Stallone, of course, had other ideas - namely arming Al Queda by part III.