Rambo’s MK11 Ending Is Better Than Last Blood

Mortal Kombat isn’t a franchise known for its emotional depth, but NetherRealm Studios made a surprising exception with its latest round of DLC characters for Mortal Kombat 11. Classic characters Mileena and Rain make their return to the fighting series, while First Blood star, John Rambo, makes his MK debut. Rambo is the latest in an ever-growing list of MK11 Warner Brothers characters who have been added to the roster. Unlike the other characters, however, Rambo is handled with more care than in his latest films and is given the proper ending Rambo: Last Blood failed to deliver.

The first film starring John Rambo is First Blood, a touching action movie that highlights the struggles soldiers had to endure readjusting to life after the Vietnam War. Rambo comes home to a country that doesn’t want him. He’s haunted by visions of the horrific things he did and saw at war. The film is heart-wrenching and portrays the issues veterans struggle with after war. Unfortunately, nearly every other film starring Rambo after First Blood dropped any sense of sentiment or meaning in favor of over-the-top action.

It took 37 years, but it seems the Rambo series has finally ended with its fifth installment, Rambo: Last Blood. The film is completely bereft of subtlety, with lots of explosions and a nonsensical plot that borders on racist. By this point in the series, Rambo is living on a ranch in Arizona with his adopted daughter, Gabriella. Searching for her biological father, Gabriella travels to Mexico and is kidnapped and forced into prostitution by a Mexican cartel. The film ends in a Home Alone-esque last stand, where Rambo lures the cartel to his ranch and slowly kills them off using various traps. He then rips the heart out of the chest of the cartel’s leader and rides off into the sunset on horseback. Based on the character introduced in First Blood, Mortal Kombat 11’s ending is much more fitting for John Rambo.

MK 11 Understands Rambo Better Than His Movies

In Mortal Kombat 11, Rambo kills the game’s villain, Kronika, and sits next to her body with a look of remorse. To his surprise, he is given her time-bending powers. Rambo never expected to receive her power; he just wanted to put an end to the fighting in MK11. With Kronika’s power now at his disposal, he considers righting all of history’s wrongs. He then quickly realizes that choosing the fates of billions – choosing who lives and dies – would make him no better than the men who sent him to fight in Vietnam. In the end, he returns the power and decides to live in woodland solitude (in a setting that looks strikingly similar to First Blood’s Washington).

Mortal Kombat’s ending handles Rambo’s character much more delicately than any of his recent films. His story is essentially an allegory for how the horrors of war can change a person. He was never a killing machine, but his country made him into one fighting a pointless war. He’s always finishing fights he didn’t start. In First Blood, the local police hunt Rambo down based solely on his appearance. He doesn’t want to kill, though, and uses non-lethal force against them. Only one person dies in the film, and it’s by accident. He doesn’t want to be a killer. Every other Rambo movie, and specifically Rambo: LastBlood, focuses more on how violent the character can be than how broken of a man he is. Rambo is just a simple man looking for peace in his own country after defending it at war.

In Last Blood, Rambo saves his daughter and then goes on a climactic killing spree. First Blood, on the other hand, ends with Rambo in tears, embracing his commanding officer as he breaks down explaining about how war ruined him. Mortal Kombat 11 does justice to the original character by making him seem remorseful over killing Kronika, aware of how war shaped him, and by giving him the peace he never found in the films.

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