Han Shot First

There’s been some controversy about a famous scene in the original “Star Wars” film (Episode IV: A New Hope) in which Han Solo and Greedo meet up in the cantina in Mos Eisley.   Soon after arranging transport for Luke, Obi-Wan, and the droids to Alderaan, Han is accosted by Greedo, an alien bounty hunter working on behalf of Jabba the Hutt, the huge, ugly sluglike creature we all love to hate.

Initially the scene plays out with Han and Greedo shooting each other at the table, with Han obviously winning the encounter.   He did so by shooting first.  Supposedly this made Han a cold-blooded killer, so Lucas redid the scene so the two characters fire almost simultaneously.

One argument I haven’t heard, and which I’ll make here, is that Han DID fire first, but that doesn’t make him a cold-blooded killer.

He owes Jabba the Hutt money.  He’s just made a deal which should give him enough to pay off Jabba, though he’ll have to travel to Alderaan first to pick up the money.   In the meantime, Greedo is trying to capture him – or shoot him – to take him to Jabba and collect the bounty.   Naturally, Han doesn’t want that to happen.  [Apparently bankruptcy is not an option.   In addition to this, in a distant galaxy in which hyperdrive travel between star systems is possible, they don’t have banks or checks.  Finally, in all these films, I’ve yet to see a single lawyer.  Science fiction indeed.]

Oh, by the way:  wanted, dead or alive.   In “Django Unchained”, Christoph Waltz plays a bounty hunter in the Wild West.  Back then then bounty is the same, dead or alive, so he kills his target, reasoning that (A) the bounty is the same either way and (B) a corpse is less likely to cause problems or escape.   In “The Empire Strikes Back”, when setting up the carbon freeze for Solo and then Luke, bounty hunter Boba Fett warns Darth Vader that “he’s worth nothing to me dead”, referring to Solo.   So presumably Greedo would have simply rendered Solo unconscious but would still deliver him to Jabba.

Anyhow, when Han is finally delivered to Jabba, he starts off as a decoration on Jabba’s wall – in carbon frozen state – and is later brought to the sarlaac (pit monster) to be “slowly digested over a thousand years” (as per C3PO) – along with Luke.  Neither scenario is optimal for Han.   So why isn’t he justified in shooting Greedo first anyway?  That doesn’t make him a cold-blooded killer, just sensible.  Enough already.

Guido?   Greedo was originally called Guido and spoke with an affected Italian accent.  “I’m-a gonna take you to Jabba!”  But this tested poorly with test audiences, so Lucas changed this to Greedo (signifying an inherently greedy character motivated by greed, not working for the public good) and gave us yet more of this peculiar Star Wars affectation whereby the parties to a conversation are speaking different languages (R2D2, Greedo, Chewbacca, Jabba the Hutt, etc.  Of course, we never see a conversation between two characters whose language isn’t English….).   (True story.)

Pirates.   By the way, Han is paid by the Alliance at the end of “Star Wars”, yet in “The Empire Strikes Back” he’s still pursued by Boba Fett.   So why didn’t he pay Jabba with the money?  Apparently, tucked away in the Star Wars multiverse, there’s a story taking place in the three years which divide the events of the two movies:  Han and Chewie are robbed by pirates, who took the money Han would otherwise have paid to Jabba.  For some reason this didn’t make it into “The Empire Strikes Back” or was simply added later to explain the discrepancy. 

Anyhow….

JoJo Signal

I was originally planning on discussing not merely the WWII German propaganda magazine, Signal, but also Soviet Military Review.  Upon scanning through three volumes of hardbound Signal compilations and seeing “JoJo Rabbit” in the movie theaters, I realized that the latter was a more appropriate complement to Signal and I’ll deal with SMR in a later blog.  Sorry, comrades.

JoJo Rabbit.  Johannes “Jojo” Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis) is a 10 year old boy in Nazi Germany late in the war.  Of course he’s in the Hitler Youth, Nazi Germany’s equivalent of the Boy Scouts.  The “leader”, a disgraced and blithely cynical Wehrmacht hauptmann (captain) (Sam Rockwell) and his NCO subordinate (Alfie Allen, probably best known as Theon Greyjoy in “Game of Thrones”) gives a somewhat halfhearted sermon to the boys and girls at the camp.  Jojo himself is ridiculed heavily when, upon given a live rabbit to kill, naturally balks at summarily executing an innocent animal.

His mother Rose (the ever-babacious Scarlett Johansson) looks after him and a Jewish girl, Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) hidden in their house in Falkenheim, somewhere in central Germany (actually filmed in the Czech Republic).  Jojo himself has an imaginary friend, none other than the Fuhrer himself, Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi), very much a comic character rather than a serious dictator.  His father, if the jacket Rose wears in the film is his, seems to be a private in the German Army, described as “missing in action”.  This could mean “killed on the Eastern Front like so many other German soldiers” or “eagerly surrendered to the Amis, to spend the rest of the war in peace and safety in a POW camp somewhere in the US”; the camp leaders treat Jojo as if they assume it’s the latter and they’ll hold him personally responsible for his father’s apparent cowardice.

By the end of the film, the town becomes a battlefield which Jojo manages to survive.  Then German soldiers, Volksturm warriors, and terrified children like Jojo and his friend, are replaced by triumphant GI’s – and also some fairly ruthless and less friendly Red Army soldiers.  This was my favorite part of the film.

Rebel Wilson is even in here as a BDM (girls’ equivalent of the Hitler Youth) leader.  She throws some propaganda materials at Jojo, which somehow don’t include Signal.   Which leads me to my next topic.

SIGNAL was the flashy, full color, slick propaganda magazine of Nazi Germany, produced by Goebbels’ propaganda ministry, under the auspices of the Wehrmacht (German armed forces).   Lots of impressive photos of German soldiers, tanks, pilots, etc.  If you see a WWII photo of a German soldier and it’s in color, chances are it was taken for Signal and originally appeared in that magazine.  The writing was propaganda, of course, in flawless – a little too flawless – English.  I zoned out on that and simply enjoyed the scenery.   While there is fair amount of claiming that the Nazis only had Europe’s best interests at heart, since the magazine was for worldwide consumption there was no mention of the Final Solution, Einsatzgruppen, or any of less palatable elements of Germany’s war efforts.  I see a few Waffen SS soldiers but nothing about Dachau or Auschwitz. 

Actually, this whole business of publishing in English is a bit strange.  The magazine started in April 1940, at which time Germany was at war with the #1 English speaking country, the United Kingdom, and this also included Canada, Australia and New Zealand.  That left Ireland and the US as remaining targets.   In December 1941 the US and Germany were at war, which ended any circulation of Signal in the US, and logistics made delivery to otherwise neutral Ireland difficult.  So where did that leave?

The Channel Islands!  These small islands off the coast of Normandy, mainly Jersey (Old) and Guernsey, wound up being the #1 target audience of the English speaking version of Signal.   Why the Nazis should bother with the inhabitants of these islands, I don’t know.  Another strange thing is that these islands remained under German control until the surrender occurred in May 1945, although the Germans had been cleared out of France by September 1944.  I can understand leaving China, Vietnam and Korea in Japanese hands while you island hop up to Iwo Jima and Okinawa, but the Channel Islands couldn’t have been heavily defended.

One issue has Grant on the cover, and the article on the US Civil War (“The Anaconda System”) covers Sherman’s March to the Sea in which he deliberately obliterated Atlanta and much of Georgia and South Carolina to make the war as unpleasant as possible, destroying as much Confederate infrastructure as possible, though summary executions of Southern civilians wasn’t part of this, and plunder was forbidden.  Somehow the Channel Island inhabitants were supposed to believe that the US Army would do the same to western Europe.   Uh, yeah…  Ironically the article fails to mention that the main US battle tank of WWII was named after Sherman.

The magazine has lots of ads for fountain pens and Agfa, but no Pervitin ads.  Too bad.  As noted, it was obviously a propaganda magazine and taken as such, but aesthetically there was certainly some impressive imagery.   I have three hardbound volumes: a general first volume, Years of Triumph (1940-42), and Years of Retreat (1943-44).  No idea if the three together are the entire collection, but they certainly give us alot to read and see.  Nazi Germany at its most persuasive, for those of us who read English best.  

Nats WIN!

In June 2018 the Capitals won the Stanley Cup over the Las Vegas Golden Knights.  I wrote a blog on the issue almost immediately, and about 3 weeks later had completely erased all memory of this occasion from my brain.  When the Nats recent World Series victory over the Houston Astros had people also bringing up the Caps’ win, I had to look it up again.  Oh, 2018.  No wonder.

Anyhow.

My brother became a Nationals fan in recent years.  I live at Bailey’s Crossroads, in Northern Virginia.  This is very close to Washington, DC, and on many trips, either to New Jersey or to Prince George’s County, Maryland, I take the major highway 395 into DC, a route which takes me past Nationals Park.

On two prior occasions, not during this season, my brother has brought me to Nationals games.  These were regular season games and losses, sparsely attended with a minimum of excitement – especially by the fans who were present and not too thrilled to see their team lose yet again – least of all to the Phillies, who the Nationals do not seem to like.

This time around the Nationals made the playoffs.   I tracked their progress through the bracket, starting with their wildcard win over the Milwaukee Brewers and their ultimate faceoff against the Houston Astros. 

I did NOT attend any of the local games, and of course did not go to Houston to attend any away games.  Some games I watched on TV, some games I followed over the Internet, and Game 6 (10/29) I watched at Nationals Park with my brother and many very enthusiastic Nats fans who watched the team conclusively defeat the Astros and keep their hopes alive to force a Game 7 the following evening.  I found that experience highly enjoyable, especially since the Nats won.  Although the game itself was not occurring there, simply being shown on literally every flat screen TV in the venue, the presence of so many fans, even in the stands – with the game televised on the huge main monitor – it was almost like being at the game itself.   Oh, and they also gave us free small red towels, though they look too small to be of much use for anything other than cleaning your kitchen or bathroom.  I’d welcome an explanation as to their purpose, though I appreciate the gift. 

As a member of the Virginia Bar, I have continuing legal education (CLE) requirements which culminated on October 31, 2019.  I had to watch some of these on the night of October 30, so on that evening I was watching online legal seminars while keeping track of Game 7 – NATS WON!  WOOHOO!

I mentioned baseball earlier but I’ll mention it again here in more detail.

Best of 7.   Part of what turns me off about baseball, basketball and hockey is that the playoffs and finals are best of 7 rather than a single Super Bowl.   Either there’s a 4 game sweep – 19 World Series – a 7 game series – 35 World Series – or something in between.   That taxes my patience  unless I have some particular connection, as I did with the Nationals this year.  With the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the NBA Playoffs, and the World Series playoffs I’ve been printing out the playoff bracket and keeping track of the eliminations, but not watching any actual games.  Here I didn’t actually start watching games until the Nats finally wound up in the final series against the Astros. 

Nats Fan?   Actually, only in the loosest sense.   I had zero reason to support the Astros, and as a Maryland native and UMCP graduate I should be an Orioles fan.   But I’ve never had a chance to see a game at Camden Yards, despite passing it frequently as the main street feeds off I-95 into downtown Baltimore.  Likewise, my sole visit to M&T Bank Stadium, almost next door, was not for a Ravens game but for a Metallica concert in May 2017.  Either way, I don’t think I can truly call myself a Nats fan, especially since the existing fans may resent my bandwagon deal with the World Series win.  But I’m happy to cheer the team and share their excitement, joy, and pride at this victory.

 

Score on Defense.   One thing that highly bugs me about baseball is that you can’t score on defense.  The prior weekend I briefly saw a college football game, in which a defensive player intercepted a pass in his team’s endzone, burst through the opposing players, and run the ball all the way back to the opposite endzone for a touchdown.   Awesome, huh?  But in baseball your best case scenario when your team is on the field is strikeouts, fly balls, or ground outs.

Mostly I catch and understand baseball.  Back when we played Intellivision, the MLB baseball game was one of our favorite games, especially with its crude umpire voice.  “YER OUT!”  Sadly, a game with no runs by either team is dull, UNTIL players actually get on base and then a player hits a home run.   This tedious business of ball…ball…strike…ball…FOUL (effectively unlimited foul balls because they don’t count as a third strike)….whoa! is that a home run??  Oh, dang, too far to the left or right, just a big foul ball…etc. wears me down and puts me to sleep.  Then there’s a ground out or a fly ball – OUT!  Do home runs offset runless innings?  Not sure.  I suppose the bottom line is that I’m probably not going to be interested enough in watching a game unless I care for one of the teams playing, e.g. the Nationals. 

Yankees.  The only other stadium I’ve been to is Yankee Stadium, the current version, seeing them crush the Oreos with my buddy Dave.  He described the PA system as being a bit on the loud side, “Abu Gharib” as he put it.  I picked Aaron Judge as my favorite Yankee player.   

Rendon.  If I had to pick a favorite National, it’s Anthony Rendon, the third baseman.  He hit key home runs in games 6 and 7, and caught some left field line drives and zipped them over to Zimmerman to knock out the runner on his way to first base.   The funny thing is he’s originally from Houston, Texas, and those two games were in Houston.  D’oh!     

Anyhow – I found this World Series exciting and enjoyable, and here’s hoping either the Nats or the Oreos wind up in next year’s series.  

Hoodies

Amidst all sorts of topics I cover, I like to keep a broad range, including some more mundane ones.  In this case, a type of clothing I recently discovered.   They’re highly casual, and maybe beneath my age range (50), but very comfortable and very practical.  They’re light enough for all but the warmest summer weather, and heavy enough for all but the coldest winter weather, and I live in an area – Northern Virginia – which gets snow in the winter and heat waves in the summer. 

The hood itself is nice, as it acts as a de facto umbrella for all but the heaviest rain, for which an umbrella is essential.  The front pocket – which is one reason I prefer pullovers over zip-ups – acts as a handy place to keep the smartphone. 

I’m not keen on zip-up hoodies, preferring pullovers, but in one case I had to take the former as the latter was not available.   I attended a festival which featured a hoodie with the distinctive image of the Maryland flag, so the purchase was not binding but certainly persuasive.

The remaining hoodies are all pullovers, these being the topics thereof:   

All Them Witches (black).   The only decent item at their concession, but it’s good enough to wear. 

Clutch (black).   Psychic Warfare!  You better believe it!

Grateful Dead, Live/Dead (red).  The Live/Dead album from the late 60s is the imagery and theme.

Hofmann (Heineken) (green).  An homage to the famous Swiss chemist of Sandoz.  Note that his name is spelled with ONE f and TWO n’s. 

Judas Priest (black).  Purchased at the first of two Priest concerts at the Anthem in DC, for the Firepower tour (most recent album).

Kyuss (black).   The famous stoner rock band which featured Josh Homme and Nick Oliveiri of QOTSA and Brant Bjork.

Minnesota Vikings (purple).   A very light purple, and VIKINGS isn’t even in the older or newer logos. 

Queens of the Stone Age (red).  My favorite album of theirs is Rated R, which is usually blue.   This is one of the earlier albums back when Nick Oliveiri was still in the band.  Later they re-released it as a deluxe edition in red, Rated Rx.

MetALiCCa

I saw Metallica’s second orchestral collaboration, S&M 2, on Wednesday night at the movie theater, and enjoyed about half of it:  the half corresponding to their material from 1983 to 1991, which was the beginning and the end of the show.  It occurred to me that Metallica has indulged in a few affectations over the years.   These are represented by the A, L, C and C uppercase.

Acoustic.   I got their Helping Hands album recorded earlier this year.  Of 12 songs, a full third, 4, were covers:  “When A Blind Man Cries” (Deep Purple), “Please Don’t Judas Me” (Nazareth), “Turn the Page” (Bob Seger), and “Veteran of the Psychic Wars” (Blue Oyster Cult).  The remaining songs were “Disposable Heroes”, “The Unforgiven III”, “Bleeding Me”, “Nothing Else Matters”, “All Within My Hands”, “Enter Sandman”, “The Four Horsemen”, and “Hardwired”.

I’m getting really fed up with acoustic albums, and I think we can blame Tesla, a band I’d otherwise be praising, for this thanks to their Five Man Acoustical Jam. 

My assessment is that if a song was originally electric it will not sound any better as an acoustic song. 

I suppose I should distinguish songs which were acoustic from the beginning, and metal bands are surprisingly competent at doing so.   That being the case, their electric songs still work better in their original format than pretentiously reduced to acoustic parameters.   When it comes to bands’ ability to write original material in the acoustic format, I give Alice in Chains & Jerry Cantrell the top honors, with SAP and Jar of Flies being superlative.  Everyone else should stick to electric.

Here’s an idea: instead of this acoustic crap, how about taking songs which were originally acoustic and make electric, heavy versions of those?   Go for it! 

Live.  Actually, I can’t really call live albums an affectation.   For that reason I’ll give them a pass on that.  In fact, I’ll give them credit:  they’re releasing all of their shows from the most recent tour as live albums, not just a single live album per tour.  They haven’t matched their San Francisco comrades the Grateful Dead policy of playing a different set each night; their sets are about 80% identical night by night with 2-3 slots as wildcards.  [Dead & Company, the current incarnation of Jerry Garcia’s classic band, are also releasing all shows on MP3 and CD, as Metallica are.]  I picked up the May 2017 show at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, which is the show my brother and I saw for the Hardwired tour.  Of course I already had Live Shit: Binge & Purge, recorded on the Black Album tour. 

More recently, they have Live at Grimey’s, which is setlist heavy on older tunes – “Fuel” being the only one from later than Metallica.  In fact, it’s excellent enough to warrant sharing:  “No Remorse”, “Fuel”, “Harvester of Sorrow”, “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, “Master of Puppets”, “Sad But True”, “Motorbreath”, and “Seek and Destroy”.  THREE songs from Kill ‘Em All!  This show was the night before their Bonnaroo show in 2008, which itself was a remarkable set:  

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/metallica/2008/great-stage-park-manchester-tn-53d6dfc9.html.  Sadly, only one track from that show (“Sad But True”) made it to recording.  We’ll have to enjoy the Grimey’s set instead…

Covers.  Yet again, comrades Tesla did this with Real To Reel, but they did this clever thing of releasing the first disc normally with the second disc picked up on the tour, which of course I attended (fall 2007).  I actually got Frank Hannon, who had been running the concession stand at the Ram’s Head Live at that show (aside from actually performing) to sign my CD insert – after he gave me disc 2.

Anyhow.   Metallica has been doing covers for awhile, and its Garage Inc did a remarkable job of a full new disc (#1) and compiling previous covers on Disc 2.  That’s in addition to the Garage Days Re-Revisited EP, the first endeavor with bassist Jason Newsted.   

Classical.  It’s now been twenty years since Metallica’s first classical collaboration, S&M, which gave us “No Leaf Clover”.  I have it on CD and have listened to it a few times.  At that time ReLoad was the most recent album, so of 21 songs, 7 were from Load and ReLoad, or one third. 

Now there’s S&M 2, twenty years after the first S&M show, a live show with an orchestra backing them up.  They’ll be adding another night, 10/30, on which you can see them in a local movie theater.  I would imagine when the run is over, the soundtrack (DVD/CD/MP3) will be available.  

Here’s what prompted me to do this blog, because I came to two conclusions based on this, one specific to Metallica and the other more general.

Metallica.   I liked Hardwired when it came out, considering it a change from the prior albums, which is to say Load, ReLoad, St Anger, and Death Magnetic, a series I’ll refer to as the Loadwired albums.  However, when it came to the middle of this set of S&M 2, I realized something.  After “For Whom The Bell Tolls”, the band plays nine Loadwired songs, including three (“Confusion”, “Moth into Flame”, and “Halo on Fire”) from Hardwired, before returning to “Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth)” in set 2.  All nine sounded equally “meh” to me.  Now, “meh” for Metallica isn’t crap, manure, commercial, or unendurable, but with so many other awesome songs on Kill ‘Em All through Metallica, I could do without any of the Loadwired songs taking up place in the set. 

And I could not aesthetically distinguish the three from Hardwired from the other six of that era.  That being the case, Metallica (aka the Black Album), is the cutoff point for the material I’m going to listen to on a regular basis and enjoy.  The Loadwired stuff is to be endured periodically and far less often, and I do have all of it on CD. 

On the other hand, some people arbitrarily stick with the Cliff Burton material, meaning you have only three albums to choose from – Kill ‘Em All, Ride the Lightning, and Master of Puppets.  It also means you’re going to miss the 9 excellent songs from …And Justice For All and twelve of Metallica.  This includes “One”.  Because you’re too pissy about “The Unforgiven” and “Nothing Else Matters”, you’ll also miss out on “Harvester of Sorrow” and “Sad But True”. 

Hey, it’s your loss.

General.  The more I hear these live albums where a band performs its material with an orchestra, the more I consider these to be an affectation. 

For songs I already liked, the orchestra really doesn’t add much more.  And for songs – like those Loadwired songs – which I never cared for to begin with, the orchestra doesn’t turn it into a song I now like. 

Let’s go a step further and briefly address bands releasing original classical music of their own (which disqualifies ELP’s Pictures at an Exhibition, by Modest Mussorgsky).

Atom Heart Mother.  I love this Pink Floyd album, although the band itself doesn’t.  Gilmour has been playing “Fat Old Sun” in his solo sets these days, and Waters has been playing “If”, but that’s side two, isn’t it?  And we all love Wright’s contribution, “Summer ‘68”.   I suppose we should say it’s the “Atom Heart Mother Suite” which takes up all of side A that the band really detests as overindulgent and pretentious, but I listen to the album in its entirety on a regular basis.  Hell, the album cover alone, with the cow, is distinctive and noteworthy. 

Deep Purple can claim the distinction of Concerto for Group and Orchestra, from September 1969, not only the first musical operation of Deep Purple Mark II which had finally formed that summer – Rod Evans and Nick Simper shown the door, and Ian Gillan and Roger Glover finally abandoning Episode Six and joining up – but also one of the first rock & orchestra collaborations.  Mind you, this wasn’t Deep Purple’s regular material – which at that point would have been exclusively Mark I material anyway – but original classical music written by keyboardist Jon Lord expressly for this project.  I have it on DVD and watched it once.  Blackmore plays his red ES335.  It’s done at the Royal Albert Hall.  It was interesting but hardly had me compelled to watch it again.

Days of Future Passed.  The Moody Blues album deserves credit as well, and predates Concerto by two years (1967).  In this case the orchestra was real – the London Festival Orchestra – but the material was expressly written and recorded with the orchestra ab initio.  And this is an album I’ll listen to far more often than Concerto.  The Blues themselves have played the album live in its entirety fairly recently (2017) with the full orchestra.  I can venture to say that Concerto didn’t get a repeat performance, and with Jon Lord resting in peace and the rest of the band close to packing it in, isn’t likely to in the near future.

How did we get to Atom Heart Mother and Days of Future Passed from Metallica???  Classical music, two S&M performances.  Given that we know Metallica has no objection to playing covers, perhaps S&M 3 should add in Floyd and the Moody Blues.  Think about it, guys….

*****

People seem to love hating on Metallica, and I find about 50% of the crap to be justified.  But for all my dozing off during the Loadwired material, I certainly came back when “Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth)” resumed a set section I knew would be exclusively older material.  Now let me sit back and enjoy the Grimey’s show….

RAMBO

Running out of ideas.   How long can I keep up blogging every week?  We’ll see, won’t we?  This is actually #708.  

Recently I caught the fifth and most recent, and presumably the last, Rambo film in the movie theater.  I’d seen the first one, of course, in the movie theater in Paris when it came out; I probably saw #2 and 3 on VHS/DVD, and saw #4 on DVD.   I’ll keep it brief as I don’t have a lot to say about this anyway but I still feel the character and films are worth discussing briefly.

RAMBO (First Blood) (1982).   Sylvester Stallone, an aging Vietnam veteran, seeks out one of his ever-dwindling comrades in Twin Peaks, Washington, only to be physically harassed by local police who aren’t particularly nice and accuse him of vagrancy simply for being “not from around here”.   They even physically abuse him, though it appears to fall short of rectal intrusion.  Even so, the experience is unpleasant, evocative of his experiences in Vietnam, and above all totally unjustified.

 

So he fights back, winding up in the nearby forest, successfully defending himself against the local National Guard unit – obviously none of whom have any actual combat experience, let alone with the US Special Forces, aka Green Berets.   His former commander, Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna) shows up and advises the locals of who they’re dealing with, and finally gets to speak to Rambo himself.   The man expresses intense frustration at the way his fellow veterans were treated after the war, which is something we can understand.   Certainly the sheriff, Teasle (Brian Dennehy) isn’t particularly likeable. 

Remarkably, despite much ammo being shot and explosions and property damage, only one fatality – the sheriff falling from the helicopter – which was unintentional on Rambo’s part.  Angry, yes, but not vindictive or sadistic – his violence is measured, targeted, and precise.

RAMBO II (1985).   Rambo returns to Vietnam, ostensibly to ascertain that no POWs still exist, instead finding that they are there.  He teams up with a Vietnamese operative, Co Bao, is captured by the NVA and tortured by their Soviet advisors, but eventually breaks free, destroys the POW camp, rescues the POWs, and returns to camp to confront Murdock (Napier).  Yet again, he’s been set up to fail.   Nonetheless he gets a pardon but stays in Thailand. 

RAMBO III (1988).  He’s recruited again, this time to work in Afghanistan, at this time occupied by the Soviets who are having their own “Vietnam” there fighting the Mujahedeen (which would include Osama Bin Laden, though he’s not mentioned).  Though initially refusing to go, he changes his mind when Red Forman lets him know that Trautman was captured by the Russians.  So… he goes anyway and gets to fight the Russians again.   More violence and explosions, approaching the ridiculous.  This could be considered the nadir of the series.

RAMBO IV (2008).   After a long break (20 years), the series resumes, this time in Burma.   Eschewing any overt political agenda, the bad guys are simply brutal military regime bastards who both sides of our own political spectrum can probably dislike.   The violence and bloodshed are there, of course, but seem to be toned down into more plausible parameters.   The whole thing has a more sober, sedate, measured feel to it:  let’s pick some plain old bad guys and keep the violence to relatively sensible levels.  It’s still not a chick flick, but it’s a blow-em-up film that jaded liberal dudes can enjoy and feel like they still have testicles. 

RAMBO V (2019).   Another long break (11 years), and we’re back again.  This time Rambo goes to Tijuana, Mexico to rescue his friend’s granddaughter Gabriela who went there to find her natural father.  After her father abruptly (but predictably) rejects her offer to reconcile, she winds up in a local club, is drugged, kidnapped, presumably raped, and involuntarily addicted to heroin.    Rambo tracks her down, is beaten up by the bad guys – who are presumably also drug dealers – and manages to survive and return.   This time he brutally wipes out one of the pair of bad guys, the Martinez brothers, and gives the other the clues necessary to lead the man and his small army back to Rambo’s own home, where we know he will dispatch them in turn.  Naturally the climax is a big battle we can all sink our teeth into and enjoy.

The ending is ambiguous in the sense that it has a nice “wrap up the series” feel to it, but we see that despite his injuries, Rambo is still alive.  Like #IV, the bad guys are cartel bastards who neither side has any interest in defending.  I can say I enjoyed it, and from what I understand most others who have seen it feel the same.  Will there be another one?  We’ll see.   

Dodge Charger

While I’ve been driving a 2009 Dodge Charger R/T for a few years now, remarkably I have not blogged upon this model, though I did write a tribute to its famous engine, the Hemi, a few years back (1/23/15).  My former employer, Jerry, alerted me to a Nicolas Cage film, “Drive Angry”, in which he (Cage, not Jerry) drives a ’69 Dodge Charger with a matte black finish and a 440.

The car originated in the 1960s with the 1966 and 1967 model years (first generation).  Both are fastbacks and both available with the famous 426 Hemi V8.  Some prefer this style, but most prefer the subsequent style.  Note: there were no Charger coupes (all fastbacks) nor any convertibles.  

Second Generation 1968-70.  Obviously the most popular – this is the body style of Dukes of Hazzard General Lee.  There are slight differences between the 1968, 1969, and 1970 models, but all three came with the 426 Hemi.

Dodge was confident that its 1968 redesign would win Motor Trend’s Car of the Year award.  However, Pontiac had also redesigned its famous GTO, in particular with body-colored Endura front bumper instead of the chrome bumper the LeMans and most other cars had at that time.  Moreover, Pontiac’s general manager John DeLorean travelled to L.A. in person to pitch the GTO, which so impressed the Peterson crowd who ran Motor Trend that they gave the GTO the award.  Dodge: “D’oh!”   But MOPAR laughed next year when the Plymouth Roadrunner (“meep! Meep!”) won the award.

Plymouth?   Oddly, there is no Plymouth equivalent of the Charger.  The Superbird is based on the GTX/Road Runner, for which the Dodge equivalent is the Coronet.  By the way, Oldsmobile wanted to make its own F body, i.e. an Olds equivalent of the Chevrolet Camaro and the Pontiac Firebird, but GM thought that would be spreading things a bit thin, so it let Olds make a Hurst special edition Cutlass, the Hurst-Olds, which for 1968 was black and silver with an Olds 455 V8.  Anyhow.

Charger 500.   At this time the Charger was running in NASCAR, but the elusive 200 mph target was a bit out of reach.  So they took the ’68-70 body, made the front grille and back window flush, and this allowed the car to go a little faster.   But not quite fast enough to top 200 mph. 

Charger Daytona.  Then they went a step further, gave the car a pointed beak and a high spoiler to clear the trunk decklid, and this one finally passed 200 mph.  Spectators watching the Daytona sprint around the track said it sounded like a jet plane. 

Dukes of Hazzard.  The Duke Brothers’ General Lee is probably by far the most popular Charger and makes the second generation body style the best known.  It was Hemi Orange with a roll cage and a Confederate flag on the roof, along with 01 on the doors.  The series ran from 1979-1985.  By that time no one could go to a Dodge dealer and buy a ’68-70 model brand new.  At least with “Smokey and the Bandit” I (1977) and II (1980) the S/E Trans Am (black with hood bird and T-tops) was still being sold brand new, and Pontiac dealers considered the movies to be de facto commercials which drove customers into their showrooms from the theaters.  

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974).  “The Dukes of Hazzard” gets most of the attention, but this earlier film with Peter Fonda deserves recognition.  Bank robbers ditch their Chevy Impala and pick up a Charger to continue their escape.  They wind up against a cop pursuing them from a helicopter.  The cop knows that Larry has a police scanner and is listening to their pursuit efforts, so he turns the tables by referring to nonexistent patrol cars, manipulating Larry to go where he wants…

Drive Angry.  Nicolas Cage finds himself driving a Charger through most of the movie, eventually having to trade it in for a 1970 Chevelle SS.  He’s accompanied by the babacious Amber Heard and stalked – whose side is he really on? – by “The Accountant”, played by William Fichtner.  In addition to the Charger, there’s also a fair amount of full female nudity which makes the movie even more fun to watch – once.  

Third Generation.  1971-74.   Now more of a fuselage style, Daisy Duke drove one, and Michael Weston (Jeffrey Donovan) drives one in “Burn Notice”.  Obviously not as popular and only the 1971 model available with the Hemi, its last year. 

Fourth Generation. 1975-78.   Looks exactly like a late 70s Chevrolet Monte Carlo.   Any performance angle is completely absent.  Dodge was going for a luxury attitude which didn’t work.

Fifth Generation 1982-87.  Front wheel drive, top engine a 2.2L four cylinder with EFI, turbo and a manual transmission.  There was a Shelby version.

Sixth Generation 2006-2010.  Starting with the Magnum, which was actually a station wagon, then bumping to a sedan.   No coupes or convertibles, sorry.  The R/T model has the Hemi, now 5.7L with EFI and two spark plugs per cylinder, with a coil on each cylinder, putting out 370 HP.  My own car is a 2009 R/T.   The next step up is the SRT8, which has a 6.1L HEMI putting out 420 HP.   I actually drove one before deciding on my ’09 R/T, as 370 HP was enough and the ’09 was newer, allowing me to stretch the payments longer back into my price range.  Note that as a sedan, the insurance on the late model Charger is cheaper than an equivalent coupe with the same engine, i.e. the Challenger R/T.  Oddly, the 2018 Charger R/T engine is still rated at 370 HP. 

Seventh Generation 2011 to present.  Still a sedan, though looking a bit more like the classic second generation.  In addition to the SRT8 model continued, they added the Hellcat, which drops a supercharger on the engine to boost it from 420 to 707 HP.   For $70,000 I’d say that’s an excellent bargain, which I’d be happy to take if I had $70k to spend.  For the time being I’m getting by with base level Hemi and almost 200k miles.  Note that Mopar Performance is making the 700 HP supercharged Hellcat engine available as a crate engine – not sure I want to know how much it costs, but probably well under $70k.  Drop this under the hood of a ’68-70 Charger and see what happens – especially if you don’t beef up the suspension and stick with the stock wheels and tires.  Oops! 

Hemi vs 440 Six Pack.  While the 426 Hemi gets most attention and notoriety, many Mopar enthusiasts prefer the 440 Six Pack.  This was a 440 cubic inch V8 with wedge combustion chambers – spark plugs coming in from the side like most other V8s – and three two barrel carburetors, the so-called “six pack”.  The Hemi ran off two Carter AFBs, basically 8 barrels – though the NASCAR Hemi actually had only ONE four barrel – but the Six Pack set up was a bit more street-friendly.  The engine ran off the middle two barrel at idle and part throttle, the outboard two barrel carbs opening up at wider throttle settings.  Of course, Pontiac’s 3x2 setup on the 389 V8 from 1964-66, “Tri-Power”, was also famous.  All 1967 GTOs got a 400 cubic inch V8 and the new for that year Rochester QuadraJet four barrel carburetor.   Not all 440s got the Six Pack, with the Carter AFB (aluminum four barrel) being standard. 

I am not now, nor ever have been, nor am I likely to be, rich enough to afford a 1968-70 Dodge Charger in decent condition, even without a Hemi.  Even one which was roadworthy would not be a practical daily driver.  Add the Hemi to the equation?  Well, the price guides indicate to double the price of a given Mopar muscle car if it has the 426 Hemi under the hood, meaning I’d have to win the lottery or win a huge case to earn an original Hemi Charger in my parking space.   In any case, knowledgeable enthusiasts might be inclined to go with the 440 Six Pack anyway.

But despite this, I have been able to afford a used late model Charger R/T with the 5.7L Hemi.  Comparing the 426 and the 5.7L?   The 426 works out to 7.0L and 350 net horsepower, notwithstanding its original 425 gross HP rating.  The 5.7L cranks out 370 net horsepower.  The modern version has EFI and two spark plugs per cylinder, as with the older model coming up off the top of the valve covers as opposed to into the side as on wedge engines by Mopar, Ford, and GM.  The EFI engine gets around 15 mpg thanks to almost 200k miles.  I don't want to know how thirsty the 426 was with two Carter four barrels.   And the Flowmaster mufflers certainly piss off the ladies....