Sunday, January 6, 2008

Rambolutionary?


LA is plastered with these Rambo posters in a fevered run-up to its January 25th release.

Driving past them over and over again I've been wondering when did Rambo-- the symbol of Ronald Reagan's 1980s-- become a Cuban revolutionary? Because there is more than a passing similarity to the famous Alberto Korda picture of the communist Che Guevara that has become the uber-symbol of dissent and revolution (and fashion!) for pimply youths all around the world.

Are the guys at Lionsgate serious?




(You know, I can't post this without including the incredibly excessive trailer. Just let it load and skip to minute two. Unbelievable.)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I dunno...There's something a bit too throwback (in the wrong way) about watching the Rambo as great white hope save other white people in distress from ruthless 'savages' in the jungle. Do we need yet another version of that story? What I wanna know is how did John Rambo get so many bad facelifts while living isolated in along a Myanmar river?

Anonymous said...

style is very banksy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy

happy new year, by the way...!

Nicholas Rucka said...

Yep, there's definitely a Banksy thang going too. But I'm guessing that they're going for the old grassroots revolutionary feel here.

Thanks for the New Years greets. Same to you! May it be a good one!

Cheesesteak the Impaler said...

Hey Nick,

Thanks for the comment and link earlier. I just learned about it bec I had my comment notifier disabled. Anyway, I posted a followup re: a NYT article where a Lionsgate exec actually comes and says Che was exactly what they were going for with the ad. I got the story linked to my new post. I get a little harsh on the Bansky connection in this thread, but I got a pet peeve about people saying "Bansky" to everything with an "ironic/subversive" appearance. My apologies.