I stayed up until 2AM last night watching this film - it had been years, maybe decades since I have watched it in it’s entirety.
I was shocked at how weak it really is for an Oscar winning film. Setting aside the utterly unrealistic plot and the fight scenes (Rocky would be dead if he got pummeled like that in real life), it seemed to be a collection of individual scenes thrown together to make a two hour film. Characters and storylines show up and disappear without any relevance to the plot, and some storylines carry on throughout the entire film, but in the end don’t have any real connection to the main story. I am thinking here about Adrian’s brother, who slugs whisky and tries to get Rocky to get him a job as a debt collector throughout the entire film. This has no relevance to the plot at all and just sort of fizzles out at the end of the film. In fact, it is his job at the meatpacking plant that provides one of the few good scenes in the film.
Other things - Apollo Creed and Rocky never appear together until they get in the ring at the end of the film.
The fight promoter is introduced as a Daddy Warbucks bad guy in one scene, and then he disappears.
Burgess Meredith’s character, who I remembered as a wise old trainer, was actually a nasty old man who hated Rocky, and never gave him any good advice at all. Why the two got together is a mystery.
The transformation of Adrian from a debilitatingly shy and mousy woman to a beautiful and confident one happens in one scene. Before it she is one thing, after she is something completely different.
I was not impressed.
Stallone’s portrayal of Rocky was the best thing in the film, but I’m not sure how much acting he was doing.