Since I've started wirting on my own novel, I've paid more attention to the begining credits of movies to see if a movie is based on a book or not. Well a few days ago I ran on a guy that was selling off some of his DVD for 2 bucks each. Most weren't worth even the 2 bucks they wanted for them. It was a who's who of the Wal-Mart Bargin bin. Despite this there were a few winner among them. I ended up taking V for Vendetta, Reservoir Dogs, and First Blood. AKA: Rambo 1.
I hadn't seen First Blood since the 80's and so I popped it in first because out of all the movies I bought it was the one I had forgot the most about. So title credits start to roll and "Based on the Novel by David Morrell" and I was like What the Fuck...Rambo is a literary character?
So I did a little checking and indeed it was based on a book, of the same name. Published in 1972. They did end up changing the book a lot, making Rambo more the hero and the police the bad guys, unlike the book where the roles where reversed. Now the sequels First Blood 2 and Rambo 3 weren't based on any books. In fact Rambo may or may not have died in the book version. I havn't found that out yet. However, David Morrell did write the novelizations for both Rambo 2 and 3.
In sidenote, there was actually an alternate ending where Rambo was in fact killed by Colonel Trautman. We could have had a world without Rambo 2,3, and the Upcoming Rambo 4. Go figure.
