I can’t think of another movie marketed to a mainstream audience that’s anywhere near as graphically violent.
Or am I wrong?
What are you talking about? Rambo doesn’t even feature any deaths! And its gore factor pales in comparison to most modern films.
Which Rambo are you talking about? There was like 4 of them.
Saving Private Ryan?
Starship Troopers?
According to Movie Body Counts the most violent movie is The Return of the King in which 836 people were killed on screen. Assuming you accept various non-human races like orcs as people - if you only count humans, its bodycount drops to 147. But that still beats Rambo III - the most violent of the Rambo movies with 127 dead.
Again, I used the word *graphically *on purpose. None of the movies mentioned even approach *Rambo *for the graphic exploding gore that distinguishes each and every onscreen death.
He must mean the most recent one, release internationally as John Rambo. It was called “Rambo” in America, the first one in the series to bear that name.
The newest one really is pretty graphic. Surprisingly so for a mainstream action flick. I don’t know about the most graphic, though. I guess it depends on whether you consider something like Kill Bill or the Hostel films to be “mainstream.”
Yeah. I’d go with mainstream for KB, but I still think *Rambo *out-graphics it; KB was pretty cartoonish, while *Rambo *is pretty, um, gritty. And no, films marketed strictly as torture porn I’m not considering as mainstream. In other words, if its only raison d’etre is gore for gore’s sake, then no. But as a non-horror film, I can’t think of any other action, or war, or what genre you have, that’s anywhere near as graphically violent as Rambo.
How about the Saw films? You might not think they are mainstream, but they opened wide and all of them have made over $50 million dollars in the US alone.
Saw - $55 million, 2,467 theaters
Saw II - $87 million, 2,949 theaters
Saw III - $80 million, 3,167 theaters
Saw IV - $63 million, 3,183 theaters
Well again, see my post directly above yours. If the entire and only point of the movie is torture/gore porn, I’m not including that under the “mainstream” rubric. Obviously if you include movies made specifically to out-gore each other, no action or war movie that makes any attempt at realism is gonna come close.
You cannot just define torture porn out of the mainstream. It is a part of the mainstream. Putting the issue the way you are is like asking: what is the funniest mainstream movie excluding comedies?
That’s an interesting discussion; maybe someone will start a thread on it.
Meanwhile, my question remains: Is *Rambo the most graphically violent mainstream movie ever?
*For definition of mainstream, see upthread; no point in retyping it all here. Unless someone wants a recap?
ETA: If it will help you answer the question I’m sure you can get the sense that I’m asking, please supply your own word in place of “mainstream.”
I didn’t see the film, but I did see a trailer for it which features a scene in which Rambo punches a man’s head off, and then uses a big machine gun to blow another man into giblets. All this is shown quite plainly in the trailer. If that’s what they have in the TRAILER, the movie must be unbelievable.
So I’m going to guess it probably is the most graphically violent mainstream movie ever. The trailer was disgusting.
The aforementioned Starship Troopers (which I’d think you’d think of) is definitely more graphic than Rambo.
I’d say A History of Violence (which was nominated for 2 Oscars) was too.
Crossing over into horror movies, the Dawn of the Dead remake and the Final Destination movies (especially number 2) make Rambo look tame.
Hmm. He doesn’t punch a man’s head off in the movie–(who’da thunk it, a dishonest trailer?)–but he does slowly, almost lovingly remove a man’s throat with his bare hand. And then–my favorite–he stabs a guy, makes good solid eye contact with him, then yanks the knife out sideways. Then as the rolls down the hill, his top half’s rolling and his bottom half’s rolling are not quite synced. Subtle, but effective.
Wow, I disagree strongly; neither one is even in the same ballpark, IMO. What is it about those two movies that makes you think of them as more violent? You’ve seen Rambo, right?
You do seem to be setting up a “no true Scotsman” argument.
Can you start another thread for the hijack? I feel like I’ve been pretty clear, clear enough that there is not, in fact, any Scotsman in this thread at all. But I’d be *thrilled *to participate in a thread discussing the meaning of the word “mainstream” in this context.
Speaking of Scotsmen, I just watched Braveheart again recently, and there are a couple of wonderfully brutal battle scenes. Passion of the Christ was also cringe-inducing.