Rambo

i think rambo dying would have been ok if they would have done it the way they originally wanted to. where rambo grabs trautmans gun and shoots himself. if you watch the special feature it explains this better, but i thik it would have been good. they just thought it was sending a bad message to the vets, and they wanted to do a sequal.
 
This sounds like it's gonna be a pc travesty. Reinforcing the stereotype that small town people are all racists and lynch people for fun. What a dissapointment.
 
First Blood is one of my all time favorite movies and Stallone's acting I feel was far underrated. I've watched that film countless times and every time, I catch some new nuance that ol' Sly brings to it. One of my favorie scenes is when he was trapped in the old mine because without saying one word, Stallone conveys his mounting stress, more so than any other situation, of being confined. prodigious physical acting IMO.

As for the Neo-Nazis being bad villains, The story would have to be completely different if it involved Islamic fundamentalist terrorists (IFT), and being that the whole premise is that he's 58, starting a family, etc. It's more believeable that he would be trying to settle down at home in rural America, and less believeable to find some IFTs there.
 
Peter La said:
I think it would be rather difficult to find a maker willing to desicrate their name in the name of Rambo.
Click to expand...
Who ever does make the knife, both custom and production will see a huge sales boost, just look what happened after the hunted, the tracker design exploded everywhere with several custom makers putting out their versions.

-Cliff
 
I think Rambo should team up with Foxy Cleopatra and fight Dr. Evil in this new one... :D
 
What about Rambo fighting the Terminator who was sent back in time to help the Aliens fight the Predators, only to find out that he's really in the Matrix? :D
 
Benjamin Liu said:
What about Rambo fighting the Terminator who was sent back in time to help the Aliens fight the Predators, only to find out that he's really in the Matrix? :D
Click to expand...


LOL!

Leo
 
Cliff Stamp said:
Who ever does make the knife, both custom and production will see a huge sales boost, just look what happened after the hunted, the tracker design exploded everywhere with several custom makers putting out their versions.

-Cliff
Click to expand...

Excelent point but their is a difference between United Cutlery and Dave Beck/ Roger Linger.
 
fixer27 said:
To me it seems a shame that the "villians" are neo-nazis. We are currently
fighting a war against fundamenatelist islamic terrorists. Every action film
needs a universally loathed villian and the early Rambo's had several good
ones (out of control authority types, the vietnamese meant to be the NVA
and the at the time despised Soviets) but this one instead of picking the
villians nobody likes they are picking the ones that nobody cares about.
Hopefully there will be re-write as I enjoyed the first Rambo series.
Otherwise this film will end up like the Clancy movie "Sum of All Fears"
were in the book it was islamicists that set off the nuclear weapon but in
the film it was neo-nazis. Anyone here seen it? I know I didn't even bother.
Click to expand...
when this movie was released many people who read the book had the same complaint but the producers said that it would take too much time to explain how islamicists got ahold of a nuke where the book had hundreds of pages to do so.

i think this movie will be good but i must admit i still enjoy watching what steven seagal is coming out with these days
 
I don't think the Tracker design could be compared at all to the hollow handle fad of the 1980s popularized by the Rambo movies. The Beck WSK was always made in limited quantities as it was a custom, and from what I heard they sold well before "The Hunted" was released. The other custom versions and even the TOPS model are also not produced in any great numbers, and all the Trackers together can't really be enough knives for a fad. IMO the movie may have turned knife knuts onto the design, or more accurately, caused the design to be noticed by them. I don't think many people really bought them because of the movie. Personally I think that Tom Brown has enough of a following to for the knife to sell on his name alone.
 
Benjamin Liu said:
I don't think the Tracker design could be compared at all to the hollow handle fad of the 1980s popularized by the Rambo movies. The Beck WSK was always made in limited quantities as it was a custom, and from what I heard they sold well before "The Hunted" was released. The other custom versions and even the TOPS model are also not produced in any great numbers, and all the Trackers together can't really be enough knives for a fad. IMO the movie may have turned knife knuts onto the design, or more accurately, caused the design to be noticed by them. I don't think many people really bought them because of the movie. Personally I think that Tom Brown has enough of a following to for the knife to sell on his name alone.
Click to expand...

Personally I have handled a tracker blade and find it less than useless for outdoors but hey thats me. The fact sales went through the roof after that BS (but entertaining) movie proves its the movie and not common sense that drive sales. TOm Brown was "virtually" unheard of before the movie BTW.

Expect he same from John J's round 4.

Jimmy Lile's first blood blade was a custom and Jimmy was well known for producing decent quality customs. To compare the actual Rambo knife in the movie to those POS dime store kiddy blades is just wrong. Many Many custom makers owe Rambo and Jimmy a thanks for turning the publics attention to the custom maker and back to blades.

Skam
 
I guess we read different forums. Just about everyone on the various survival forums I've read has at least heard of Tom Brown. His books are available in regular bookstores. I bought 3 of them off the shelves without having to special order them in 1996 or 1997, long before this movie was made. I've heard people talk about his classes before the internet was even around.

I'm not one of his students and don't own a Tracker, I just don't think the movie caused the knife to become popular. IIRC TOPS, the most prolific maker of this knife, has limited production to a few thousand units. Beck, Jensen, and Linger probably don't come close to the numbers TOPS produces. I don't see how only a few thousand knives can make a fad. They may be a trend with people on this forum but not the general public. I've only seen ONE overpriced junk knock-off that probably won't get many sales since it is too expensive for the people who usually buy junk knock-offs. If this was anything close to a fad knife we'd be seeing cheap ones from Pakistan or China for $5-10.00. The movie has been out for a while and I've yet to see this knife in large numbers.

I've seen many cheap knock-offs of Striders, and a few TOPS knives such as the Condor Alert, Stormrider, CAT, and Anaconda, but not the TOPS Tracker. If this knife was popular outside of Tom Brown fans and people on forums like this the knock-off companies would be selling many of them. IMO it looks as if TOPS' other knives are more popular than the Tracker.
 
skammer, was it a tops or a REAL beck? ive handled many diffrent tracker knives, and the beck beats them all hands down. i actually got to skin a deer with my neigbors beck, and let me tell ya! i8m didnt need anything but that knife for the job. i was chopping joints sprittin bones, skinnin and guttin with it, and it made the task quite easy.
 
elvenbladesmith07 said:
figured i post this FYI http://budk.com/product.asp?pn=BK785
besides the parallax this is the only knock of ive ever seen.
Click to expand...

It was a tops blade. I gave it a few chops and didn't like the balde for that at all. It may excel at skinning because of its belly though but that to me is not what a survival knife is all about. In the movie at least they didn't tout it as a survival knife per say. The owner of this blade bought it soley because of th e movie cool factor and so did others he knew.

Tom's reputation increased 50 fold after the movie no question. I am not a fan of his survival style but would like to take his tracking course however. I did say "virtually" unknown. Other survival teacher types have had a much bigger rep before Tom Brown. I have taught survival for 15 years now and TOm's name came up once or twice but never in the industry (if you can call it that) main stream chatter.

Unfortunately his course costs are just lunacy so I will get an elder from a native band near me to teach me the ways of tracking for a more reasonable price. TOm certainly does not have a monopoly on the native style tracker skill. Hell hes not even native.

Skam
 
Yes, Rambo / TOP's is lopsided because of the relative success which directly relates over to the knife impact. Rambo was a much more heavily seen and talked about movie and thus its impact was heavier on the style of knife, people still ask about the knives Rambo used.

As for the amount of Trackers sold, well compare them before and after the movie and look at the percentage change. For custom makers even a small handful of orders which gets your name out there and being discussed will make a world of difference, not in terms of specific monetary income for those blades but in terms of advertizing.

If a well established maker was to grind the new Rambo blade it would be one thing, however if a relativly unknown guy was able to land it, it could pretty much on its own jumpstart his career.

Skammer, using the TOP's to judge the design is problematic as TOP's tends to run really shallow hollow grinds and very obtuse and thick edge profiles so the cutting/chopping ability is really low and they also have handle serrations and pointy finger grooves which have ergonomic/security issues.

While the basic design looks problematic to me, I would expect a custom version to be many to one over the TOP's in many aspects of performance. While that still may not make it a knife you would pick, it would be a more likely estimator of the actual performance of the basic design.

-Cliff
 
you said it cliff! skammer try a WSK, then judge the design, i bet youll change your mind. also i skinned with a WSK not a tops tracker.
 
TOm certainly does not have a monopoly on the native style tracker skill. Hell hes not even native.

1) The knife featured in the movie was NOT a TOP Tracker, it was a custom Beck WSK.

2) The knife is never used for any survival purpose on film; hence it never establishes a nexus with the tracker marketing pitch as a survival knife.

3) The Hunted was such a flawed film that I could not remember the name of the film and had to look it up (despite having a copy in my collection and having seen it several times). It really is a forgetable film; the only memorable parts are a few over-the-top knife fights, and in retrospect these are as silly as the rest of the film.

It should be no surprise that the First Blood movie had a larger impact. It was a better film and it was on target.

n2s
 
Granted it wasn't a custom WSK, I will give you that.

However the blade geometry is close enough for me to form an opinion in that I don't like it. I feel it is trying to be too many things and excels at few.

I still feel the blade shape is gimicy and of less utility. I don't believe the Beck will change this any. cOuld be wrong but I don't think so.

Skam
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top