Alec Guinness and Harrison Ford once made a film where the great James Earl Jones gave voice to – a character later played by Jake Lloyd, opposite Jar-Jar Binks.
Star Wars didn’t win any of the top Oscars (film, director, actor/actress), and Jar-Jar or not, none of the prequels were at the Rocky V level of disaster.
No.
This. The whole point of the movie is redemption. Rocky is not a loser, because he wins the love of Adrien. He’s not even listening to the announcement of who won the fight – it’s irrelevant to his real victory.
Interesting tit-bit: In one of the early uses of the Steadicam, the scene running up the Art Museum steps was pure improv, and ended up being a “signature shot” of the film, with people currently running up the Art Museum steps in Philly and striking the “Rocky Pose”
Cool summary, bro.
Yo.
I recall enjoying III, but that was a long time ago.
There was the one big song when he runs up the steps.
Not until III.
Yes, I should have put that in. I almost did. The final scenes of the movie:
Rocky has completed the fight. They pull Apollo and Rocky off each other, both beat to hell and exhausted, and move them to their corners. Adrien was hiding in the locker room, but moved to the doorway at the back of the arena. The referee calls out the judges’ votes, and announces the winner. Rocky lost the match but won by achieving something. The crowd goes wild, people are swarming, and all Rocky cares about is Adrien. He sees her at the back, and starts yelling her name. She starts shoving her way to the front, yelling his. She gets blocked at the ropes, but her brother intrudes and she slips on to run up to Rocky. He’s swarmed by officials and Mickey and stuff, but he’s just got one thing on his mind - he wants Adrien.
It’s interesting to see the blossoming of Adrien because of Rocky. At the start of the movie, she’s the mousiest mouse working in a pet store, wearing a stocking cap at all times and with her head and eyes down. Rocky comes in frequently to chat her up, with stupid whatever he can think of, like muttering about the turtle food (where he practiced the complaint in front of a mirror), playing with the dog in the store, and generally trying to get her to pay attention to him, but she doesn’t even speak to him.
When he first shows up for the first date, her brother surprises her with it, she doesn’t want to go, the brother takes her turkey out of the oven and throws it in the street to make her leave the house. Rocky has to try to talk to her through the door to persuade her to come along. They end up going to a skating rink that is closed because it’s Thanksgiving Day, but he bribes the guy to let them in for 10 minutes, and then walks around on the ice while she skates. He’s chattering away inane stuff, anything he can think of, just to be saying something.
He drags her back to his place, she doesn’t want to go inside, won’t sit down, tries to leave. He finally kisses her, and tells her she’s pretty, and suddenly she’s kissing him back - a lifetime of shyness exploding in one second.
Anyway, they date but don’t fool around (he’s training, doncha know). He gives a shout out to her at the press conference announcement by Apollo Creed that he’s accepted the bout. Slowly she starts dressing better, looking sharper. And she’s more open and communicative with him.
Eventually, there’s a fight when the friend comes in, is hurt by Rocky saying something about him not being up to the job of being a loanshark enforcer. He goes ballistic, takes a bat smashing stuff up and yelling at Adrien for being such a mousy loser. But she yells back, and then moves in with Rocky. By the end of the movie, well I don’t know how she reacts with people in general, but she’s dressing better and looking better and pushing her way through the crowd to get to Rocky.
Where their lives go from there, who knows (at this point), but they have each other, and it’s the best thing that’s happened to either of them.
I posted after a post mentioning II & III.
Thanks for the synopsis. I too had forgotten how good the first movie was because the sequels were pretty bad. Rocky winning the title in the sequel and becoming the best boxer in the world kind of destroyed the point of the first movie in my opinion.
Rambo was the same thing. The first movie was about a Vietnam vet returning from a very traumatic war, to an indifferent or hostile population. Instead of being looked at as a hero or at least a defender of the country, Vietnam vets were scorned, called “baby killers”, hassled by the cops, etc.
Then John Rambo became an invincible super hero, which was kind of the opposite of First Blood.
As has been stated before, in the book First Blood, Col Trautman isn’t sent to bring Rambo in. He is sent to kill him. And he does. A much better ending than the movie. And Rambo’s crying to Trautman at the end has not aged well.
Godfather III was well on the way, in my opinion. Tired and formulaic at best. Not quite dreck, but pretty close.
Exactly. Rocky was based in part on Chuck Wepner, a club fighter who got a shot against Ali. Wepner never had a prayer of winning " but gave a respectable showing and lasted 14 rounds. But even at his best, Wepner was no match for Ali at his worst. Wepner could NEVER have been champ and neither could Rocky Balboa.
The Rudy of boxing films.
Quite a trick, since Rocky was released 18 years before Rudy.
mmm
I’ve heard before that the odd numbered Rocky movies are good. I think that’s probably true if you pretend Rocky Balboa was the fifth one and ignore Rocky V. The first Rocky was by far the best film and the only one worthy of Oscar consideration and the like, but Rocky III may be my favorite.
Okay, having Rocky as the world champion robs the first one of its punch and is unrealistic after showing him as the schlub who can’t win. The thing is though, is that the first movie was equally unrealistic standing alone. Rocky is portrayed as a washed up club fighter who had never fought anyone of note who is basically picked at random for a catchy nickname. No way, no how is a fighter with that record going to jump to the front of the line and get a fight with the heavyweight world champion. In the true story that it was based on, Chuck Wepner had lost some fights, but he’d at least fought before at the top tier. He wasn’t expected to win against Ali, but he was at least in his class as a fighter. Wepner lost tough fights against former world champions still regarded as some of the best heavyweight fighters who ever stepped in the ring, like George Foreman and Sonny Liston, and he had been considered a good fighter before those losses. Rocky is a nobody club fighter picked at random. Guys like that may fight as tomato cans for future world champions on their way up who are looking to pad their records, but they don’t get shots at the world heavyweight champion. Boxers everywhere love the movie but chuckle at the idea of the washed up nobody fighting the world champion; good fighters fight all their lives and don’t get that. So if you’re willing to accept that, Rocky’s eventually becoming the world champion himself isn’t too much of a stretch.
The stretch of Rocky becoming world champion is made just slightly more plausible by the fact that his win against Creed was basically a fluke, and in Rocky III Micky reveals that he’d been fighting hand picked fighters ever since then. When the dangerous fighter he finds out he’d been unkowingly ducking comes into the comes into the picture, everything he thought about himself as a fighter is shaken, and when he loses to him, shattered. That’s the part of the movie that appeals to me - everyone thinks of fighters as mentally and physically tough, and they are, but the ego of a fighter can pop as easily as a soap bubble. Losing an important football or basketball game is depressing, but there’s something visceral about getting your ass completely kicked in front of your freinds, family, a roomful of strangers, and possibly national television. Sure, Clubber Lang is a bit two dimensional, but the movie probably would have suffered if it tried to stretch out his character and show how nice he was to his mom and so on. His character doesn’t need to be deep, he need to be menacing, and that he is in spades. Lang represents naked fear. Rocky is not only afraid that is he gets back in the ring with Lang that he will be proved a fraud once and for all, but that Lang literally might cripple or kill him. He finally gets it together after a rousing speech from his once mousy wife telling him just get in the fricking ring even if you lose or regret it for the rest of your life, and when he finally does fight him again he’s not only overcome that bone deep fear of Lang, he’s actually taunting him: “You ain’t so bad, you ain’t so bad, you ain’t nothin’. C’mon, champ, hit me in the face! My mom hits harder than you!”
Okay, it’s not Oscar material, but it hits the nail on the head about the fragility of a fighter’s ego and the fear of getting in the ring, and it’s hard not to cheer when Rocky not only faces that fear, he taunts it and knocks it out. Plus the last scene with Rocky and Apollo? Classic! 
The boxing match is irrelevant. It’s all about “Yo Adrian!” And I’m not joking or being ironic, the last 30 seconds of the movie is the whole movie.
I didn’t intend to imply Rocky was ripping off Rudy.
Rocky, the Little Miss Sunshine of boxing movies.
Rudy is the Rocky of football movies.
Bulwinkle is Rocky’s friend.
Boris and Natasha tried to steal Moose and Squirrel.
Boris is a Russian name.
Rocky fought a Russian and lost and won.
I fought the law but the law won.
Won and won and one is three.
Got to be good looking 'cause he’s so hard to see.
[Nitpick]
Wepner actually lasted 14 rounds, 2 minutes and 50 seconds. The ref called TKO with :10 left on the clock for the 15th round.
[Nitpick]