Rambo got more violent over the years, but did he grow more modest? The below table shows a detailed breakdown of Rambo kills for all four movies:
Can you visualize this data? Let's see your skills, Adrian. Oops, wrong movie.
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To save time for anyone else interested, here is the table as a CSV:
Dimension,I: "First Blood" (1982),II: "Rambo: First Blood Part II" (1985),III: "Rambo III" (1988),IV: "Rambo" (2008)
Number of bad guys killed by Rambo with his shirt on,1,12,33,83
Number of bad guys killed by Rambo with his shirt off,0,46,45,0
Number of bad guys killed by Rambo no matter how attired,1,58,78,83
Number of bad guys killed by accomplices of Rambo acting on their own,0,10,17,40
Number of good guys killed by bad guys,0,1,37,113
Total number of people killed,1,69,132,236
Number of people killed per minute,0.01,0.72,1.30,2.59
Time at which the first person is killed (mins:secs),29:31,33:34,41:09,3:22
Number of people killed per minute from that point until the end of the film (not including the ending credits),0.02,1.18,2.39,3.04
Sequences in which Rambo is shot at without significant result,12,24,28,2
Number of sequences in which good guys are tortured by bad guys,2,5,7,3
Number of sex scenes,0,0,0,0If I made any mistakes in typing, please post corrections, thanks :)
I am guessing that 41:9 means 41:09. Also be aware that some applications auto convert the min:sec fields to something else or makes some other assumption about them. So here is that row of data as seconds:
Seconds,1771,2014,2469,202
oh what a kind man. thanks, joe.
Also, here is the data reshaped with additional structure into two tables that can be joined as needed. This makes it more flexible to graph and filter with some tools. I added the documented running time for each film, only to find that the documented running time seems to include ending credits, which was subtracted before calculating the second average kills per minute (AKPM).
The first AKPM for the fourth film of 2.59 seems off, I think 91 minutes of running time was used instead of the documented 93
I reverse calculated the running times used in the table after subtracting the length of ending credits to get the following approximate number of minutes for each film (these lengths are prior to subtracting the seconds until first kill):
I, 79.5
II, 92
III, 96.4
IV, 81
If I use this to recalculate the first set of AKPM, I get:
I, 0.01
II, 0.75
III, 1.37
IV, 2.91
I feel this provides a more valid comparison where both film lengths do not include the ending credits.
It would be more interesting to have raw data with a row for each kill with details and time stamp instead of working with pre-aggregated data, and the film/ending credits length used. I completely agree with: Data Is A Dish Best Served Raw.
Type of Guy Killed,Attired,Killed by,Film,Year,Number
Bad,With shirt on,Rambo,I: "First Blood",1982,1
Bad,With shirt off,Rambo,I: "First Blood",1982,0
Bad,However attired,Rambo,I: "First Blood",1982,1
Bad,However attired,Accomplices of Rambo,I: "First Blood",1982,0
Good,However attired,Bad guys,I: "First Blood",1982,0
Bad,With shirt on,Rambo,II: "Rambo: First Blood Part II",1985,12
Bad,With shirt off,Rambo,II: "Rambo: First Blood Part II",1985,46
Bad,However attired,Rambo,II: "Rambo: First Blood Part II",1985,58
Bad,However attired,Accomplices of Rambo,II: "Rambo: First Blood Part II",1985,10
Good,However attired,Bad guys,II: "Rambo: First Blood Part II",1985,1
Bad,With shirt on,Rambo,III: "Rambo III",1988,33
Bad,With shirt off,Rambo,III: "Rambo III",1988,45
Bad,However attired,Rambo,III: "Rambo III",1988,78
Bad,However attired,Accomplices of Rambo,III: "Rambo III",1988,17
Good,However attired,Bad guys,III: "Rambo III",1988,37
Bad,With shirt on,Rambo,IV: "Rambo",2008,83
Bad,With shirt off,Rambo,IV: "Rambo",2008,0
Bad,However attired,Rambo,IV: "Rambo",2008,83
Bad,However attired,Accomplices of Rambo,IV: "Rambo",2008,40
Good,However attired,Bad guys,IV: "Rambo",2008,113Film,Year,Total number of people killed,Number of people killed per minute,Number of people killed per minute(not including the ending credits),Time at which the first person is killed (seconds),Number of people killed per minute from that point until the end of the film (not including the ending credits),Documented Running Time (minutes),Running Time used (not including the ending credits) (minutes),Sequences in which Rambo is shot at without significant result,Number of sequences in which good guys are tortured by bad guys,Number of sex scenes
I: "First Blood",1982,1,0.01,0.01,1771,0.02,97,79.5,12,2,0
II: "Rambo: First Blood Part II",1985,69,0.72,0.75,2014,1.18,94,92,24,5,0
III: "Rambo III",1988,132,1.3,1.37,2469,2.39,101,96.4,28,7,0
IV: "Rambo",2008,236,2.59,2.91,202,3.04,93,81,2,3,0Can't beat the original...
Mr. Rambo may have gotten more violent in the latest installment, but it looks like he also grew more modest.
I'm sure you all can come up with something better than that :)
p.s. Here's my original post where that graph came from in case anyone's wondering where Tim got that.
http://flowingdata.com/2008/02/22/rambo-kill-counts-from-parts-i-ii-iii-and-iv/
Here is my visualization of kills in the Rambo films as a dashboard (as always, Tableau is tool of choice):
You can download the free Tableau Reader to see larger versions of each graph.
Looking at the Kills by Type of Killer, you can see some interesting trends:
Looking at the Sequences and Scenes:
In regards to Rambo's attire:
Comparing the Average Kills per Minute in each film:
For the distribution of total kills over all the movies, you can see these approximations:
I went more old-school in my approach. Unfortunately, it doesn't look too good when it's small.
I made the individual plots with R and ggplot2 and arranged them in table with LaTeX.
My second plot is something of a cheat since I brought in outside data. It shows the body counts, IMDB ratings, and gross revenue of the four movies.
I hadn't realized how little the last movie had made relative to the others. The last movie also reversed the trend of more killing being associated with lower quality.
The plot was made with R and ggplot2. The revenue data is from Box Office Mojo (http://www.boxofficemojo.com) and converted to 2008 USD using the CPI deflator from the BLS, http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl.
Really, for displaying all of the data, you can't beat the table. In my opinion, there are just too many different dimensions included in the table for all of it to be cleanly displayed in one datavis (number of deaths, time, types of scenes). Because of that, I focused exclusively on a subset of the data: number of deaths by good vs. bad, and deaths per minute.
I wondered, though, how Rambo compared to other violent movies. Thank god for the internet: believe it or not, there is a website called moviebodycounts.com that, yes, counts the "actual, visible, on screen deaths/kills/bodies of your favorite action, scifi, and war films."
The number one all-time spot is currently held by Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. My visualization compares the Rambo franchise to the LOTR: Return of the King movie.
The initial tables were created in Excel, and then the rest was completed in PowerPoint (yes, I know, I really should learn Illustrator).
Enjoy!
Naturally, I found a typo in my visualization...(had 408 as total number killed in franchise - should read 438).
You can find the updated graphic here:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3599/3675959542_e352105c18.jpg
nice work, all. thanks for gettin' involved
ok, i am late, I know. But here is my entry:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29087633@N00/3682800841/sizes/l/
I think its not high res and I didn't get how to upload the file that can be zoomed in. Let me know if I should send you the original. It was so much fun Nathan. Keep going the competitions!
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