Who would make the better Dad: Rambo or Rocky?
As for the choice of movie, I’m not talking about a ‘You’ve Got Mail’, ‘The English Patient’, or ‘Gorillas in the Mist’ type screening where you’d rather take the chance of watching ‘Batman’ in an Aurora Colorado theatre. I’m talking about a ‘Rambo’ or a ‘Rocky’ - who, FYI, have got to be two of the all-time greatest characters in cinematic history. On top of this, they are also two characters who have resulted in the most amount of arguments amongst my group of friends over which of the two would make the best dad. I mean, in the case of Rocky, your dad is the heavyweight champion of the world, you’re rich (for a time), you get to live like a king and have a talking and walking robot (for a time), he is someone who will read you a bed-time story and dutifully teach you how to be a man (i.e. how to throw a punch, how to shave, how to impress nervous girls who work in pet shops in the seedy parts of Philadelphia)... but then there’s also the fact that he was the heavyweight champion of the world and took more clean punches to the head than any other boxer in history, which probably means his life expectancy (or brain function) is half of what it should be. As for Rambo, you know you are going to go on some wicked father-son hunting trips, he will also teach you how to be a man (albeit somewhat different to Rocky in that you learn not just how to throw a punch and how to shave, but how to kill a man with a shoelace and how to shave with a hunting knife)... but then you never know when Uncle Sam is going to sweep in, take your dad, and drop him into the middle of a war zone that no sane individual would even venture into. There is also the chance he gets flashbacks and goes AWOL for a couple of days, meaning he misses your Little League game, or... since you’re Rambo’s son... the medal presentation in your honour which you received for saving your entire boy scout troop from a grizzly bear armed with only your biceps and a pocket knife (the latter of which you chose not to use because you deemed it an unfair advantage).
At the end of the day, I guess you’d have to go with Rocky, purely on the basis that if your dad was Rambo, on every beach trip your family would take, you’d get pretty tired of explaining to your mates and strangers why your old man has enough scars on his body to be mistaken for a particularly unlucky medieval swordsman.
At the end of the day, I guess you’d have to go with Rocky, purely on the basis that if your dad was Rambo, on every beach trip your family would take, you’d get pretty tired of explaining to your mates and strangers why your old man has enough scars on his body to be mistaken for a particularly unlucky medieval swordsman.
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For other pop-culture excerpts click here