His First Blood Part II – the film of which he cheerfully describes as 'a cross between a Western and a Tarzan movie' – pulls more from James Cameron’s early screenplay draft than the one that reached the screen. Morrell was contractually the only author allowed to write Rambo novels, which is why the producers had to use him if they wanted novelizations in bookstores, and why he was given unusual leeway to do what he saw fit with the projects. It’s the only thing he knows how to do, but he’s a genius at it.' 'He hates what he was forced to do, and he especially hates that he discovered he had a skill for killing. 'My Rambo is furious about his war experience,' says Morrell. At the novel’s end, in the ruins of the town, Trautman puts Rambo down like a dog.

It’s genuinely possible to read it both ways (Paul Newman was apparently interested in a pre-Stallone screen iteration in which he would have played Teasle as the starring role). One of the most fascinating things about the novel is the way in which notions of hero and bad guy hinge entirely on the reader’s age and politics. Teasle is an Eisenhower Republican and decorated Korean War hero. Teasle isn’t the bully he seems in the movie, and Rambo isn’t the victim. The chapters alternate between the points of view of Rambo and Teasle, who represent the divide between older establishment and youth counterculture of the last '60s and early '70s. In the novel of First Blood, Rambo isn’t even necessarily a hero. The bones of the plots remain the same, but while relations between author and actor remain cordial, Morrell’s print Rambo is something of a rebuke to Stallone’s. Morrell’s novelizations of that film and the subsequent Rambo III see the author deliberately recalibrating the screen Rambo as far back towards his original vision as is possible. 'I was fascinated to see how… in Rambo: First Blood Part II, Rambo was interpreted as a jingoistic superhero,' Morrell says in his memoir Rambo and Me. But in taking on the print versions of those follow-ups, plotted by other people, Morrell had a specific agenda.

First Blood, written a decade before the Stallone adaptation made Rambo a household name, remains largely a separate entity, even to Morrell’s own sequels. This is all the attention David Morrell gives to the continuity problem of continuing a series of novels where the protagonist didn’t survive the first installment. Alamo Drafthouse's Rambo marathon leading up to Rambo: Last Blood is almost here.

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