Sylvester Stallone's Rocky films mirrored the transition from Watergate-era shame to bloated yuppie self-indulgence. Now a Sly resurrection is in prospect, writes Gareth Higgins.
In the first 50 years of the Oscars, only three people were nominated for Best Actor and Best Screenplay for the same film: Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin, and Sylvester Stallone. In 1976 Rocky came out of nowhere, an underdog boxing story with a central performance by an actor who critics proclaimed to be an heir to Marlon Brando.
Rocky was a post-Watergate story about poverty, about love and, most of all, about self-respect. It is a beautifully paced movie, with director John G Avildsen showing the understanding of film grammar that was so characteristic of 1970s cinema. It featured Bill Conti's unforgettable music and its supporting characters were as well-written as the protagonist. Just think of the parrot-like squawk of Burgess Meredith's Mickey the trainer, or Burt Young's angry meat-packer Paulie, or Talia Shire's delicately nuanced reading of female loneliness as Adrian, the object of Rocky's affection.
Most of all, the film had the courage of its convictions - Rocky loses the climactic fight against the Ali-esque Apollo Creed, but is more validated as a man than ever before. Of course, he also won the hearts of an audience recently betrayed by a president (Nixon) who was unable to accept that honest failure could be an honourable way to go out of the ring. For Rocky, going the distance was more important than getting the prize.
It's hard to imagine a contemporary parallel to the million-to-one shot that was Stallone's arrival on the cultural landscape. He was so invisible previously that the producers offered him more than $300,000 to let them cast someone famous in the role. Imagine Burt Reynolds or Robert Redford running up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum and you get the picture, but Stallone, who had $106 in the bank on his birthday the year the film was shot, refused to sell the script without his name attached as lead actor. No one could possibly think that the producers made the wrong decision in letting him have his way.
YET AFTER THE first film, four sequels of decreasing quality appeared, and by the mid-1980s Stallone was a parody of himself, a fabulously wealthy man who appeared to care little about the quality of his work, who no longer felt he needed to earn a role, and whose public persona was most clearly expressed as a one-man army fighting America's battles by proxy in the Rambo films.
Rocky II (1979) begins where the original left off, but Stallone's hair is much longer, Conti has a bigger orchestra to play with, and the film is flat from the start. Stallone made the mistake of trying to repeat a sure thing, but negated the meaning of Rocky by having his hero fight - and this time beat - the same opponent. Rocky II represents the triumph of commerce over pride: the film stock is cleaner, the clothes are better, Burgess Meredith suddenly changes his accent and starts sounding like the cowardly lion, and Rocky is a caricature of himself, going from grit to glitz in 15 rounds. While there's still some nuance in the relationships, Rocky II doesn't have half the subtlety of the first film. Where Rocky felt like real life, Rocky II feels like a commercial for the Reagan/Thatcher era's shibboleth that enough can never be enough.
Audiences unfortunately agreed with Ronnie and Maggie, and came in their droves. So, in 1982, Sly returned in Rocky III, with even more trumpets, repeating the climax of the last film as if the director knew this was the only thing that worked in it. Rocky is rich by this time and has had obvious plastic surgery (which makes him look less human than ever), and they've even put up a statue of him in the museum. Rocky III sums up the 1980s by having the fight at Caesar's Palace, and there's some of the worst facial emoting in cinema history by Burt Young, alongside the product placement of an entire person with Hulk Hogan boosting the nascent Wrestlemania movement. Adrian is starting to look like Joan Collins in Dynasty, making the audience yearn for the wistful depressive of the past. The terrible electronic music and abstract training montages combine with the fashion and conspicuous consumption to create a world where all the dignity is gone, and Rocky has become a fighting machine, living above the rest of us at the expense of the streets that gave birth to him.
The final bout isn't even that interesting - it's so badly shot that at times Rocky and his opponent, Mr T (yes, that Mr T), look like toy soldiers. In fact, a scene of over-amped shouting between Burgess Meredith and Mr T is the best fight in the film, meaning that Rocky III is at least notable for including the first recorded utterance of "I pity the fool".
THAT SENTIMENT WOULD not be inappropriately directed toward those poor unfortunates who in 1985 had to sit through Rocky IV, in which the self- described "underactive-brained" street fighter manages to defeat communism. The film starts with a stars-and-stripes glove exploding against one with a hammer and sickle, and the rest of the film is even less subtle.
Rocky polishes his sports car while his son dances with a six-foot-tall robot, James Brown sells a music video, Burt Young wanders around like a stoned rabbit in headlights, and then (did I really see that?) there's Donald Trump.
Russian fighter Drago kills Creed in the ring, leading to a montage in which Rocky relives some unusually homoerotic memories of his sparring relationship with the latter, but by this point it's unlikely that anyone isn't so bored that they no longer care. Evil Drago trains with machines (and Brigitte Neilsen), but all-American Rocky uses wood and snow and embarrassing rock music. There are no art museum steps (perhaps because Stallone believed there was no art in the Soviet Union); instead Rocky runs up a Siberian mountain and roars like a tiger.
When the fight eventually happens, behind the Iron Curtain, the Russian fans boo Rocky until they suddenly change their minds. Victorious, he makes an appeal for peace that is applauded by the entire politburo, complete with a Gorbachev lookalike. The film ends with him draped in an American flag.
Five years on, and the orchestra that opens Rocky V is so menacing that it appears to be playing in hell - which is where the audience quickly ends up. We see the words "Sage Stallone" on the opening credits and the ego cycle is complete - Rocky junior is about to make his film debut. As usual, things begin with the end of the last fight: Rocky liberates eastern Europe, and is then seen showering naked - it's Stallone's Greek god fantasy, and a travesty of what the first film stood for.
It's almost not worth the time to recount Rocky V's failings: the bruising make-up evokes memories of the Addams Family's Uncle Fester, there is no dramatic momentum (Paulie and Adrian's fight about money feels like an out-take from I Love Lucy), and there are unlikely coincidences galore. Avildsen, directing again, at least attempts taking the action back to the streets, but the story - of Rocky first training, then being abandoned by, then fighting, a new kid, who was beaten up by his father and has grown a terrifying mullet - is laughably simplistic. Indeed, if Rocky II was the comeback, Rocky III the icing on the champion's cake and Rocky IV the political message film, Rocky V is the "life lessons" sequel. The kid takes a nefarious promoter's money and the film ends with a street brawl played to awful dance music. This is the most incongruous moment in a Rocky film: Stallone's character is egged on by his son to beat the crap out of an abused kid, and there's even a priest on hand to give his blessing to the fight. There the 1980s ended, and Stallone's career has been stalled ever since.
BUT NOW HE'S back, in Rocky Balboa - and here's the sucker punch: word is, it's a tremendous movie. It's a kind of apology for the other sequels, and perhaps we can now pretend to live in an alternate universe in which only two Rocky films exist.
Stallone has taken the risk of going back to what worked in 1976: a story about dignity, about two people healing each other's brokenness, about a man who, in the words of his beloved Adrian, resists the temptations of earthly riches because he wants to "live like a human being".
Once upon a time, Sylvester Stallone wrote a series of films about a boxer, which made us feel like we could triumph over impossible odds but which also told the story of the transition from Watergate-era shame to yuppie consumerism. They also became bloated, self-indulgent, big-budget representations of the star's ego. Yet now Stallone seems to realise that being able to live with your own choices, to "go the distance", is better than winning. In Rocky V, he tried on the hat that he last wore in the first movie, and was happy to say "it still fits". With Rocky Balboa, it seems he's earned the hat back; and maybe, just maybe, Sylvester Stallone feels the validation that Rocky did 30 years ago.
Rocky Balboa is now on release; Rambo IV will be released next year