Action hero Smackdown: The Bride vs. Rambo!

ACTION SMACKDOWN!

This week, it’s the mysteriously named “Bride” versus the absurdly named J.J. Rambo. ONe is synonymous with weddings, the other with sweaty meat! Who will stand victorious? Tune in!

Let’s get it on like Marvin Gaye.

RobbieRobTown:

In this week’s gripping epic, we have John J. Rambo (The “J stands for “John”, or maybe both J’s stand for “J. Jonah”) vs. The Bride. We might know “The Bride” best in her titular role as the bride of Frankenstein in the gripping 1985 remake of the “classic” Bride of Frankenstein. Seriously, google “The Bride”. The Bride features Sting (Yeah, Sting) as Dr. Frankenstein, who has finally created the perfect woman: Eva, portrayed by the inimitable Jennifer Beals of Flashdance fame. Perhaps you remember Jennifer Beals as an apprenticed and trained TIG welder who gives up a highly lucrative career in a complex and specialized form of welding (used most commonly on non ferrous metals and also in aerospace engineering), and also abandons a gig moonlighting as a mediocre,  but non-drug-addicted stripper to become a dancer.  The next time someone asks you about the plausibility of any element of the Lord of the Rings, you ask them to explain Flashdance.

In any case, I wouldn’t call Jennifer Beals an action hero, so I’m ready to call this one early for Rambo.

What’s that?

Oh, Beatrix Kiddo? Oh.

Let me come at you this way. A cubic foot of topsoil weighs about 78 pounds. Let us assume (though we know this figure to be highly variable and dependent on local conditions) that a grave is six feet deep. Let us now assume that a coffin is, roughly, 24″ wide, 18″ high, and 6′ long.  Resting on the bottom of a six foot trench, the volume of topsoil resting atop the coffin would be about 54 cubic feet.  If one cubic foot of topsoil weighs 78 pounds, and Dearest Fans, please let me know if I am doing my math wrong (I’m terrible with volume calculations), I get 4,212 pounds of dirt atop your average grave.

Any chick who, after being in a coma,  can flick the lid off of a coffin, with her fingertips, from beneath over 2 fucking tons of dirt is going to win any fight.

You: But if you claw the dirt into the grave, and backfill as you go, you don’t have to lift the entire weight of the dirt!

Me: Yeah, but in the movie she basically punches through. Eat it.

You: I recall some clawing

Me: Well, I recall being happy once, but it doesn’t mean it matters to anyone.

You: Jesus, Emo Kid, cheer up.

Me: (cutting myself) No!

Winner: The Bride

Loser: Dudes in headbands.

 

Tbinns

Before we proceed with the actual fight, there are two things that need to be brought up.

ONE: Does The Bride have Super Powers?

My friend Trevor once said that Quentin Tarantino is less like a director and more like a club dj, ony instead of sampling other peoples music…he samples other peoples movies. In his effort to be stylistically true to the often ridiculous Kung Fu movies of the 70’s, he has deliberately thrown verisimilitude to the wind when creating Kill Bill. This is why it would APPEAR that Ms. Kiddo has super powers. While I can see where an argument could be made, the fact is all of her “Superpowers” come from training. Like Batman’s. Batman does equally unlikely things with no powers, so I say if Batman falls in the unpowered category, than so must The Bride. Therefore no disqualification, the fight is on.

TWO : Tbinnsing Uma Thurman. Yeah. I can’t do it. She weirds me out a little. There is an unsettling hint of Gollum in that face.

In the other corner we have John Rambo…who would like it known for the record that he did not draw first blood. What he did do was bitchslap that annoying guy from CSI Miami so kudos to him for that.

“Careful….we wouldn’t want you to cut yourself…” (ASSWHOOP!!!) YEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

John Rambo is synonymous with action hero. He takes on entire police departments/Leftover Vietcong Armies /Russians (Or was that in Rocky IV?) all by himself. Not an easy guy to beat. So let’s go to the tale of the tape. Rambo is stronger, good with knives, guns, bows and arrows, guns that are meant to be mounted on aircraft, dynamite arrows etc. He was trained by the Green Berets to be a killing machine.
The Bride has survived being shot, willed herself out of coma induced paralysis, has beaten the deadliest assassins in the world, oh and taken out 300 men with nothing but a sword and a bad attitude, not to mention punching her way out of a grave. Kinda makes shooting guys with dynamite arrows look like the pussy way out, doesn’t it? She was trained by the legendary Pei Mei to destroy her opponents and to use chopsticks when her hands are very sore.
So what’s on the platform? Well a Hanzi sword for sure, but what about Rambo. I’m going to go with his trusty knife. I know he uses every weapon under the sun, but the knife is to Rambo what the utility belt is to Batman. He even has a do it yourself surgery kit in there. Knife sword buzzer goes.
Aaand three minutes later John Rambo is dead. Why you ask? Because even though he CAN do hand to hand, The Bride does it better. She’s faster, so even if she decides NOT to engage him in hand to hand, she’d get to the weapons first. He’s stronger…sure, but she’s not likely to get herself into a situation where that comes into play. If it was a gun fight…oh yeah definitely Rambo. But it’s not, so cancel that Rambo 5 : The Ramboening sequel.
Sorry John, here comes the Bride.

Winner: Beatrix Kiddo

Admin_Rock

Okay, so here’s the skinny. I like Tarantino. I think he’s capable of great work. I also think his ego shoots him in the foot a LOT. His last film, “Inglorious Basterds” had some of the best work he’s ever done. Go back and rewatch some of the conversations between the farmer and the German, or the scene in the cafe with the projectionist. Well paced, tense, great! Then there’s every scene with the “Basterds”. Almost without fail, bad. Unnecessary, cloying, dull.

Which takes us to Kill Bill. Hated. This. Movie. 4 hours of bridging to get us to exactly what we expect. yawn. I remember liking the scene with the two women fighting in the suburbs. I could go back and describe it better, but I’m not sitting through the rest of that overwrought mess to do it.

The Rambo films are not exactly brilliant cinema either. I watched the most recent one a while back, and I remember it being the most violent film I’ve seen in a long time. I see a lot of films, this one was more violentery.

For me, this comes down to a skilled close combat expert against a skilled close combat expert. Oh, except the second guy also knows how to shoot every gun ever made. And that’s where this one becomes pretty damn clear. The fight starts, they both scramble for weapons. The Bride gets her fancy sword and lives for about another 30 seconds, as Rambo straps in behind a Browning M2HB.

Game Over.

Winner: Rambo

Decision: The Bride

So The Bride Moves on, completing our first round. The matchups for the Quarter Finals:

Indiana Jones vs Ellen Ripley

The Man With No Name vs Han Solo

John McClane vs James Bond

Beatrix Kiddo vs Jason Bourne

Comments, shaming, and emasculation await below!!!!

19 Responses to “Action hero Smackdown: The Bride vs. Rambo!”

1. admin_rock says:

   November 4, 2011 at 12:30 pm

   TBinns, while I respect your decision, on what planet Rambo represented by a knife rather than massive machine guns?

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   • admin_rock says:

     November 4, 2011 at 12:32 pm

     I did a quick GIS to check my theory. Let’s see…. gun, gun, BIIIIG gun, hunting bow, gun, Rocket Launcher, gun, gun, bow.

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     • Tbinns says:

       November 4, 2011 at 1:44 pm

       @admin_rock, Two points. One, His big Fuck off knife was his main weapon in First Blood. The guns are interchangeable, the knife is a part of him. Secondly, you can put a gun up there if you want, but the fact is she’s faster and more agile and will get to the weapons first, so what the weapon is is actually moot.

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   • Homer says:

     November 5, 2011 at 12:19 am

     @admin_rock, Quit longing for Rambo’s big gun.

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2. The M-Daddy says:

   November 4, 2011 at 12:31 pm

   You know, TBinns addressed both my concerns (albeit I find Uma attractive in a ‘different-but-in-a-good-way way, much like a younger Tilda Swinton, yeah, I SAID THAT!), The Bride Wins (of course) and there was even some science in there (thanks RRT!)

   However, TRAINING? You can’t TRAIN jumping 20 feet in the air. Even (uh-oh, here it comes) BATMAN can’t ‘train’ to jump 2 stories high. And RRTs math proves it further (as did Mythbusters…) that it is inhumanly possible to bust out of a grave like she did without the aid of something extra.

   The Bride has super powers. Period. No amount of debate will tell me otherwise. Of course, you all knew that I was going to say that after weeks of stewing on it so this isn’t a surprise……actually, never mind. I yield to my own dreaded predictability. It must be my new glasses.

   The Bride wins it all or I complain on your Comment boards uselessly. You’ve been warned!

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   • admin_rock says:

     November 4, 2011 at 12:34 pm

     @The M-Daddy, but can he handle the shaky cam that Bourne will be bringing? Her weakness… lack of Gravol?

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3. Len says:

   November 4, 2011 at 12:56 pm

   Yeah I’m going to ignore the super powers of the Bride, because you all apparently did. So that leaves me with a trained martial artist against a trained soldier. And exceptional soldier, the best at what he does, against a trained martial artist who is apparently the best at what she does. Probably the hardest fight to call of them all so far.
   Hand to hand really hard to call. I’d want to see the Deadliest Warrior computer simulation correlate 100 fights to see who came out on top.
   BUT: Rambo needs a gun. that really is his thing, not the knife. With gun in hand Rambo takes it. They are so evenly matched otherwise, but the gun dominates in the hands of a well trained shooter.
   So there is that.

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   • Tpiper says:

     November 4, 2011 at 6:58 pm

     @Len, She’s a trained assassin, so it’s safe to assume that she has training with guns as well, which is shown when she’s in the hotel room. She just prefers a hand-to-hand combat.

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4. Cub Reporter K says:

   November 4, 2011 at 3:33 pm

   Well done. My only regret is that we don’t get Rambo vs Jason Bourne next round.

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5. spcMike says:

   November 4, 2011 at 7:33 pm

   Question about the quarter finals, does a blaster shoot through a metal plate? Otherwise how else will we get the inevitable Han vs Indy finals?

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6. Artor says:

   November 4, 2011 at 9:05 pm

   Rambo has always represented, for me, everything I hate about overblown, musclebound, steroid-saturated ‘Merican machismo. I’ll be sitting in the stands with my box of Jujubes, cheering as Kiddo turns Rambo into a platter of thiny-sliced sandwich meat.

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   • Homer says:

     November 5, 2011 at 12:22 am

     @Artor, Can you tell us everything you love about “overblown, musclebound, steroid-saturated ‘Merican machismo?”

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     • Artor says:

       November 5, 2011 at 1:14 pm

       @Homer,
       Mostly that I and my friends don’t have much of it.

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7. deepfriedcheese says:

   November 4, 2011 at 9:22 pm

   For that to happen an archaeology professor with a latent BDSM fascination would have to defeat a space marine in close combat.

   No one’s luck lasts forever.

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   • deepfriedcheese says:

     November 4, 2011 at 9:23 pm

     @deepfriedcheese, This was intended to respond to SpcMike. You win again technology!

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   • admin_rock says:

     November 5, 2011 at 12:34 am

     @deepfriedcheese, If you mean Ripley, i’d point out that she’s not a marine, but rather a warrant officer on a commercial ship.

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     • deepfriedcheese says:

       November 5, 2011 at 9:52 am

       @admin_rock, You seem to have an unhealthy affinity for facts. Facts are the crutch of those with an addiction to research. If you continue down this path you will end up strung out on journalism. And not the weekend-bender, I-can-quit-when-I-want journalism of MSNBC or FOX News. I’m talking about the hard-core stuff like Frontline and Charlie Rose. No one comes back from that without damaged family relationships and friends that blanch when you mention an episode of Mythbusters.

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       • admin_rock says:

         November 6, 2011 at 8:39 pm

         @deepfriedcheese, I think I love you.

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8. Homer says:

   November 5, 2011 at 12:24 am

   I’m fairly sure that once Johnny boy saw what Kiddo could do, the other side of his face would start drooping too. Kiddo wins this in a landslide. She may even pause to spank Rambo with her Hanzo sword before killing him, then run him over in the Pussy Wagon (don’t know how anyone can hate those movies, they are great).

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