John Rambo and Odysseus are two war heroes trying to get back home. They are traumatised by the horrors they have witnessed on the battlefield and guilt-ridden by their failure to protect their fallen comrades.

On their long journey, they will have to fight off monsters and overcome numerous obstacles that threaten to derail their progress. And when they do finally return home, they find it much changed and unwelcoming.

Christopher Nolan’s retelling of The Odyssey and Sylvester Stallone’s First Blood focus intently on the post-traumatic stress of their protagonists, and their hyper-masculine response to it.  They are both instinctively violent, but cunning and resourceful, using brains as well as brawn to defeat their enemies. Odysseus devises the hollow wooden horse tribute to gain entry into the gates of Troy, and Rambo sets a range of deadly traps in the woods to delay and deflect his pursuers. They both use their ingenuity to miraculously escape certain death underground (in the cave of the Cyclops and a disused mine), and then reengage the enemy with renewed vigour.

Yet, sub-consciously they want to escape the horrors of the world and numb themselves from the pain. Odysseus spends seven years on Calypso’s island, addicted to lotus flowers, and it is easy to see John Rambo following the same path after he learns that his last army buddy Delmar Barry has died from Agent Orange poisoning. He wanders away, utterly lost and desolate. It is only the intervention of Sheriff Will Teasle in the town of Hope, Washington, that shocks Rambo out of his torpor.

There is another parallel that is worth looking at: The unravelling of the existing order and the approach of chaos. It was Odysseus’ defiance of the Gods that precipitated the anarchy threatening to engulf Ithaca, much as Robert Oppenheimer’s creation of the atomic bomb ushered in an existential threat to the entire world.

John Rambo believes in a code of honour, a land fit for heroes but he is greeted on his return with distain and disgust, and chants of “baby killer.” He can’t adapt to this new reality, worse still, he is seen by Sheriff Teasle as a lowlife threat to the peace and quiet of small town America, a threat that has to be eradicated. Odysseus, too, is seen as lowly beggar on his return to Ithaca, not worthy of the scraps good citizens thrown away.

In this new reality, is there a place for hyper-masculine heroes who can take on the bad guy and save us all? Christopher Nolan suggests that the burden of being a hero is too much even for a great man like Odysseus to bear, and that perhaps his most heroic act is to relinquish that mantle.

After a cathartic orgy of violence in which Odysseus kills all the suitors encamped in his palace, he renounces the crown and sails off into the sunset with Penelope. Likewise, after blowing up the town of Hope, a cornered Rambo collapses, sobbing into the arms of his former commanding officer Colonel Trautman, and surrenders to fate.

Of course, in Homer’s original text, Odysseus just carries on in his merry hyper-masculine way, and in the Rambo and Rocky sequels, Stallone becomes almost a parody of the action hero. But his initial portrayal of a vulnerable, hurt and haunted John Rambo is a poignant and insightful depiction of the human condition.

Thanks, in no small part, to Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the entire Marvel Comic Book universe, the cult of the hero persists. Today’s movies are saturated with super heroes, and although they are now seen as flawed (Nolan’s Batman being an obvious example), we still hope they are out there somewhere.

Whenever someone performs an act of extraordinary bravery in real life, they too are likely to be saddled with the designation “hero.” This is unfair and impossible to live up to. Even just saying they performed a heroic act is loaded with expectations and assumptions that they are somehow special or apart from the rest of us. Little wonder that most people who are lauded as heroes, immediately disavow the title.

Rather than look to heroes, Gods and saviours, maybe we should just focus on what we can do, in our own limited way, to make life better.