Why research is so important

It doesn’t matter what genre you work in, basic research is an important step in any project.

Here’s why:

Recently, I was in the mood for some 80’s nostalgia and rented Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo: First Blood series. It appears that some ‘improvements’ have been made to those classics with the addition of ‘Survival Mode’. This addition flashes a crosshair on the screen indicating to the viewer that you can now hit the ‘Menu’ button on your remote and get some cool inside information about the film in regard to characters, equipment, locations, weapons, etc.

While this is a nice addition to the DVD, it’s a weak attempt to compete with Blu-Ray and soon became blatantly apparent that basic research hadn’t been done. Sure, Survival Mode was entertaining for some parts of the first film, First Blood, but once the action shifted to the forest, it became lost in the woods much like Sheriff Teasle and his deputies.

Apparently, this new feature has been added to the entire series. Here is an excerpt from one viewer:

‘Where the discs really fall apart is in the extras. The real appeal of the set is supposed to be the “survival mode,” an enhanced viewing mode that interrupts the film with annoying non-interactive distractions. These consist of Metabrief, which explains a bit about the characters. Clever viewers will realize that these are just like menu “character bios,” except for the interrupting the movie part. Then, there is Metascope, which gives some quasi-military sounding jargon about the weapons and vehicles used in the film. There is also Metasight, which ironically just puts a green translucent target sign over the film image. And it beeps when a character is on the screen. Clever. The Metapoint mode shows a tiny overhead map of the area, showing movement of the characters. Finally, there is the Metamap mode, which builds a fake satellite image of the surroundings during action scenes. I can’t speak for anyone else, but the last thing that I want in the middle of an exciting action scene is something this pointless breaking up the suspense. None of the information is very useful: those interested in the military specs will already know more than this, and other people won’t care. It was a very poor choice to replace the DTS tracks with this lame survival mode.’

That about sums up the usefulness of ‘Survival Mode’ but, there are other issues. For those familiar with the first film, there is a scene where the local National Guard corners Rambo at an old mine. They engage him in an attempt to kill him before the officer in charge orders one soldier to fire an anti-tank weapon. If at this time, you the viewer click on the crosshairs you will see the weapon is identified as the M136.

Wrong answer.

Given the time frame of the film, 1982, and that the National Guard was not being as readily deployed overseas as they are now and were still receiving hand me downs and cast offs from Big Army, the weapon that the National Guard soldier uses is the M72 LAW. But, wait there’s more. To back this up, the M136 aka AT4 was not even in the US Army inventory at that time frame as it was still being evaluated by the Swedish military. The M136/AT4 didn’t arrive in the US until 1983 when it was being evaluated along with six other anti-tank weapons as a replacement for the M72. The US Army then reported to Congress in November of 1983 that the AT4 came the closest to meeting their requirements. That means that sometime in the mid to late 80s it was finally approved and was maybe starting to be issued to units by the late 1980s to early 1990s.

If that’s the case then how could it have been in a movie made in 1982?

Simple answer: it wasn’t.

Just in case you need to verify this yourself, let’s look at the differences in those two weapons.

M72 LAW

M136 AT4

As you can see, there are distinct differences between the two and that just goes to show you that adding special features to a movie then re-releasing without checking your sources or doing research can cause problems.

Let this be a lesson to those out there that fail to do basic research, it leads to you looking like a total idiot.