The Rocky films are lauded as being some sort of masterpieces of theater and I suppose if I had been aware of what was going on in life at the time in the late 70's and early 80's I would have agreed. I hadn't seen these films in probably 20 years so when they popped up on our server, I felt obligated to go back and watch them.
I often say that sometimes things are better left in your memory and I believe this to be absolutely true with the Rocky films.
In Rocky 1, Sly plays "The Italian Stallion" who is a pleasant enough person who isn't very smart but has a knack for boxing. He works his way up without really even trying to get a shot at the World Championship and nobody really expects him to win but because he is a hometown favorite, people are on his side. In the first film he doesn't win, but he becomes the first person to ever last a full fight with Apollo Creed and this is what leads us to Rocky 2.
Rocky 2 is essentially the same film as Rocky 1 but at the start Rocky has determined that he isn't going to box anymore. He retires at the start and take the money that he got from his World Championship fight and does what so many real-life athletes who come into a bunch of money do in real life: He spends it like it isn't ever going to end.
He buys everything he wants without negotiating or even putting any thought into the fact that he only has the one fight purse. He buys designer clothes, a flash car, a house, and a bunch of watches for him, his wife, and his friends. Next thing you know he has nothing and because he doesn't really have any talents outside of being a boxer, he can't make ends meet and he is emasculated when his pregnant wife Adrian" has to return to work to make ends meet.
Then magically he is requested to fight Apollo Creed again because the plot calls for it. he is out of shape, hasn't trained in a while, and has a lot of work to do in order to get in shape for the fight, which of course he initially resists and is later motivated to put his full heart into training when Adrian wakes up from a coma and the first words out of her mouth are to "go win."
Urgh
The training montage is something that remains pretty infamous in all Rocky films and it is the inspiration for a lot of films that came later and these are always appreciated even though they are kind of making fun of it.
Rocky is an extreme underdog in this fight and as such, he starts out the fight getting his butt whooped by the clearly superior Apollo Creed. Of course we know that this is going to turn around because the film is called Rocky, not Apollo.
The fighting is where these movies all kind of rub me the wrong way... and I mean ALL of them, not just this particular one. I'm not a huge boxing fan but the hits these guys take over and over in the ring would kill an actual person if it was to happen just a couple times, let alone dozens of times in a row.
Now I understand that filming a fight, especially in 1982, would have been very difficult. I don't much about boxing but I do know that the referee typically says "listen to my instructions at all times and protect yourself at all times." I can only guess that both of these guys didn't bother to listen to the second thing because neither of them seem to protect their heads at any point in the match.
Even for me, someone that doesn't really follow boxing, this is frustrating to watch as the same person gets hit over and over again clean on the jaw by a full power hook and just shakes it off and carries on. It's annoying to me.
Also, since this film is essentially the same thing as the first one, I don't really understand why people rated it so high. The only real difference between the two is that instead of being a nobody at the start of it all like he was in Rocky 1, "The Italian Stallion" starts out being everything and blowing all of his money to return to being nothing. Other than that, it is exactly the same movie and I guess, this is a great ROI for the people that made the film.
I turned Rocky 3 off about halfway through because I was only really in it to rewatch the completely absurd match between Stallone and Hulk Hogan that was obviously a push to try to get Hulk into acting as well as promote professional wrestling.
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I was tired at that point and I don't actually remember the whole movie but I am willing to bet that Rocky, once again, ends up being the underdog and has a come-from-behind victory in the final fight vs. Clubber Lang.
It might not be popular to say this to anyone that thinks these are epic moments in cinematic history, but to me, this is the Marvel type of cinema that existed in the 80's. They discovered a formula that is going to put butts in the seats at the cinema, and then just reworked the same story multiple times in a row.
Should I watch it?
I am going to say something that gets me in trouble here and say "no." While I can appreciate what these films accomplished at the time, which is to say that they created a repeatable formula that allowed them to tell the same story 5 or 6 times in a row, I don't like how that trend was adopted by the entire market for basically all of the 80's and to some extent exists to this day.
I suppose for the younger folks you can go and see it so you can understand what propelled Sylvester Stallone to stardom and how much films have evolved since that time.
There is no mystery here: We know that Rocky is going to win in the end in the same fashion that he always does. He would end up doing exactly the same thing in Rocky 4 against Ivan Drago in Russia - which by the way is my favorite movie of the entire franchise and would actually watch again. I know it is considered one of the worst but whatever man! I have my reasons.
Go ahead and lash out at me for hating on this famous movie franchise. I just don't think it is very good.
there is no one place that has all the Rocky films in one location. They are spread out. Rocky and Rocky 2 are available on Netflix. Basically every streaming service has all of them available for a small fee.
