The Rambo Trilogy - The Ultimate Collection

Rating:
Summary: If I were a die hard fan....I would be mad
Review: For some reason Artisan/Lions Gate deems it necessary to release their hit films again, again...and again on DVD. This is the third time that the Rambo trilogy has been released! The first releases were slim discs with no features. Then they relased the "special editions" of each film which you could get seperately or altogether in a really nifty metal case. Just when you thought it couldn't get any better than "special edition", then comes the "ultimate editions" of the films. Enough is enough! If I were a die hard fan I would be majoryly P.O.ed that I would have to keep rebuying the series. Luckily I am not a die hard fan and I didn't have to have the films right away so I was able to pick up the Ultiamte Editions. It's not only the Rambo films. Artison has released Terminator 2 and Stargate on 3 seperate occasions! WFT...instead of remastering these films for the billionth time, how bought putting more effort into your back catolouge as your releases of Fright Night 2, DeepStar Six, Bride of Re-Animator, and Fortress look terrible.

Rating:
Summary: Great Movies, Terrible Set
Review: Hardly "ultimate"! Despite a couple nice features (unused footage and alternate endings plus a commentary by Stallone for FIRST BLOOD) the "extras" in this set are mostly a farce. The so-called META features are gimmicks that turn the movies into poor video games and make the films unwatchable. The previous Rambo Trilogy Special Edition (out-of-print but available used) had tons of worthwhile extras this set doesn't include. In short, this set is an ultimate waste of money.

Rating:
Summary: Kill kill kill!
Review: Rambo rox my sox off! The first episode kicks it with some jerk wad police dude who's tryin to give Rambo a hard time. He arrests Rambo eventually and is mean to him....mean like NAM. And when you're mean like NAM to Rambo...bad things happen! Anyhoo, Rambo flips out and escapes jail and the jerk police follow and one dies by mistake and he shows em who's boss in the forest and it eventually leads to him ruining the town with the beloved weapon..the M-60. Anyhoo...episode 2 ensues him being talked into a photography job that eventually leads him to kill massive numbers of communistic charlie! That rox0r! They kill his woman and that makes him mad so he kill a bunch more. He eventually gets back to the army place that gave him the job and killed all the computers because computers suck. Episode 3 is where the colonel finds Rambo in some monk tribe and he's fighting in some "Blood Sport" like competition. This one wasn't as good as the others.
But all in all...the Rambo trilogy is totally amazing and you should buy it and watch it and revel in the greatness that is Rambo. God is to Lamb as Satan is to Bush.

Rating:
Summary: Not So Ultimate/Stick With Special!
Review: What a waste! How else can I say it? The Special Editions had trailers, great documentaries, and informative production notes on top of that. Why didn't they include the deleted scenes?! That's the only thing of value on these new Ultimate Editions, because all the rest is missing. If it really was an "ultimate" set, they would have included all the previously released great extras. (For those with the far-superior Special Editions, don't bother replacing yours with these; even the deleted scenes aren't anything to get worked up about, with possible exception of First Blood's alternate ending.) And those nonsense "Meta" features are a pathetic insult to serious collectors. Can't comment on audio commentaries. I gave up wasting my time on those things years ago, having OD'd on them back in the days of laserdisc!

Rating:
Summary: Rambo DVDs...take 3
Review: Wow, not a double dip but a triple dip. The Rambo movies are super movies, going slightly downhill with each sequel. All three are good.

So, here we are again, a new batch of DVDs for the series. The first set was awful. The second set which I own is quite good. Video quality and audio are superb on the second set. The second set comes in a tin case and it's called 'Special Edition". I guess in retrospect, it should have been called the "Pretty good, but there's more" edition because that's what it was.

With the superb quality of the Special Edition set, I can only really guess that the extras are the only thing worth making the upgrade for. For current Special Edition owners like myself, we can lok forward to (read: be pissed that Artisan held out on us) the following features:
1) Stallone commentary
2) Unseen suicide ending to First Blood
3) Other misc. stuff

So, worth the upgrade? No.

If you don't have the Special Edition set, you may want to pick this up. But for us Special Edition suckers, oops, I mean owners...Why bother. We can just pick up the super-duper-awesome edition in another year, then the HD version the year after that, and then finally the super-duper HD version, and then the........