Rocky Would Get Knocked Out Today
Trying out a "Film Friday"!
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My younger daughter recently asked if we could watch Rocky, and I was all for it. She loves cinema, and I think she’s interested in films that have won awards like Best Picture, but also those that have assumed a larger-than-themselves cultural status—like Jaws or the first two Godfather films.
So we watched it, loved it, but I will say this—there is no way Rocky would get made today or be the “blockbuster” that it was. Why? It is an arthouse film to the core.
When most people think of Rocky, they picture the match with Apollo Creed, blood, and Rocky screaming for Adrian (also, drinking raw eggs). But when you dig into the film’s two-hour run time, maybe, and I mean maybe, there are 20 total minutes of boxing. The opening scene depicts a depressing club fight between Rocky and some “bum” (an oft used word in the film), and that runs at least 5 minutes, and the final fight with Apollo Creed covers 10 to 15 minutes of the film. What is the rest? A lot of character interaction, development, and charming dialogue.
The screenplay—I’ll never get over this—was written by Sylvester Stallone, and it is excellent. So what is Rocky about because it’s certainly not about boxing? The message is clear and stated openly—Rocky is about two people (Rocky and Adrian) who live largely invisible lives as adults. They are “nobodies” and know it. Rocky has been regularly overlooked by the trainer Mickey because he views him as a bum who resorts to collecting money for a local mobster. Adrian is deeply shy, works in a pet store, and is completely under the thumb of her brother Paulie. So that’s the arc—how do these two nobodies become somebodies? By bonding together an inspiring each other. That’s it. Most of the film is a goofy, charming, high-schoolish courtship between two deeply awkward people.
The film is also surprisingly progressive. Apollo Creed, a black man who will box a white man, which is ripe for misinterpretation, is written as a good person in this film. In fact, he selects Rocky for the fight after the original opponent has to back out. Without Apollo, there is no opportunity for Rocky. He gives the entire city of Philadelphia a genuine hometown spectacle based on “America being the land of opportunity,” and selects a “nobody” to reinforce that principle. He is nothing but generous and nice to Rocky (while being deeply overconfident), and we get some serious Hamilton foreshadowing when he enters the arena dressed as George Washington crossing the Delaware. Yet, the key is that he is cast in the drama as a “nobody,” and that truly bothers Rocky. It’s what he’s actually fighting against.
Apollo Creed is smart, talented, driven, and presented as someone with incredible business sense. In fact, there is a moment in the film when someone in a bar, where Rocky has stopped briefly, uses a racial epithet to describe Apollo. Rocky takes offense—again, around the theme of being “somebody”— and says that Apollo is the greatest because he has put in the work and earned everything he has. Rocky, lacking in self- confidence, does not believe he’s earned these things, and he’s right. Apollo is indeed better than Rocky.
And the fight itself is largely irrelevant. Its purpose is to allow Rocky to call to Adrian to express that he is indeed “somebody.” His stated goal was to go the distance and let people know he was a person of worth—by film’s end, Rocky and Adrian view each other as real people, and that view reflects on themselves in the form of self-confidence. In other words, this is some real arthouse film business!
Most importantly, this film would not get made today. Never. It would get knocked out.
There are no explosions. There are more minutes spent in the pet shop and/or talking about turtles, birds, and goldfish than there is boxing. The film’s featured sport might truly be ice skating, as this is the venue for Rocky and Adrian’s first date. The final fight is short, with little verbal interaction between protagonist and antagonist (I’m not even sure Apollo is the film’s antagonist). No one says, “We’re not so different, you and me.” And finally, rarely do you get a film that is not classified as a comedy where the protagonist completely lacks confidence, is incredibly awkward, and bumbles through life. Today, Stallone’s character would be cast in a comedy starring Michael Cera or turned into a film like Bottoms (which is great, by the way).
We’re lucky Rocky got made, and we’re lucky for some of the freedom and experimentation that in the 1970’s was mainstream. Without Rocky, the film Creed does not happen (also excellent), directed and co-written by Ryan Coogler (African American) and starring Michael B. Jordan and Tessa Thompson (African American leads), as well as Stallone himself, who is amazing and was nominated for best supporting actor.
Whatever led Sylvester Stallone to write Rocky, a 100% arthouse film that would never be greenlighted in the world of Marvel, Top-Gun, John Wick, and Mission Impossible, it is truly the character and sensibility he was meant to inhabit as an artist. It’s the only time he ever feels real. Unfortunately, outside of Rocky 1 and Rocky II, it’s a sensibility he left behind, I think both to his and all our detriment.
And let’s not forget the film’s score, by Bill Conti, which was also a literal mainstream hit! My parents, like many other normal folks, essentially bought their first album of classical music and listened to it all the time! It reached #4 on the Billboard Charts and, surprisingly, #32 on the charts for “Top R&B Album.” I know a lot of our cinematic lives are dominated by composer John Williams, but Conti also did the score for The Karate Kid films, as well as The Right Stuff, for which he won an academy award. Ah, my nostalgia for a good score instead of a “soundtrack.”
Rocky is an arthouse film, not an “action film” or “blockbuster.” Maybe Netflix would call it a “slow burn.” So tell your friends and re(watch) it. I guarantee that if you’ve seen it before, you will, like me, have forgotten 95% of the film.