Rocky vs Drago (2021)

Director: Sylvester Stallone

Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Carl Weathers, Dolph Lundgren

Have I Seen it Before: Huh. Well, that’s the real question, isn’t it? I’ve never seen this movie like this. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to watch it, either.

Did I Like It: I mentioned a couple of things in my review of the theatrical cut of Rocky IV (1985) that probably bare mentioning again. If you cut out all examples of montage from the film, it would run about twenty minutes. Also, one of my weirder movie moments was when my question about Sico the Robot got included in a Q and A with Stallone and aintitcoolnews.com (kids, ask your parents).

So what do we have here? I’m a little leery of director’s cut as a genre. We can get an infinite amount of re-edits of Blade Runner (1982), and it still never works for me*. The Godfather: Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone (2020) is still, basically The Godfather Part III (1990) with a slightly more sensical ending. And Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) I was so tried of talking about by the time that it premiered, that it’s the only review I’ve so far outsourced.

Here, the robot is nowhere to be found. Could I have gotten into Stallone’s head? I can’t imagine so… And yet, I can’t rule it out, so that’s fun. Ultimately, the first half of the film is far less ashamed of itself than it once was, freeing it to be more about the friendship of Rocky (Stallone) and Apollo Creed (Weathers) that was started in Rocky III (1982). The second half of the film is largely the same, with a couple of exceptions. The politburo doesn’t get won over by Rocky’s victory. Also, there is no echo of the end of Rocky II (1979), which I only realize now never worked for me.

This is ultimately still a movie aggressively tethered to the 1980s that is about a man winning the Cold War using only his fists, but it is a much better version of that insane movie.

*You can direct your ire to the comments section of that review.

Rocky IV (1985)

Director: Sylvester Stallone

Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Dolph Lundgren

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, but let me tell you. We could dwell for a long spell on the fact that this is a film where the Balboa family buys—and incorporates into their family dynamic—a robot.

It’s a deeply perplexing turn in a series of films which is, at least nominally, about boxing. For years, it bugged me. Honestly, it should have bugged humanity. So, in the lead up to the release of Rocky Balboa (2006), when Stallone started answering questions coming from the readership of Aint It Cool News, I had the temerity to pose the question, and he answered it*. Honestly, he seemed kind of put out by being reminded about it. Cut to several years later, and apparently he included it because it was therapeutic to his autistic son and thus meant a lot to him. Had that been the answer back then, I might have felt bad about it at the time.

Did I Like It: Here’s a potentially controversial statement: If Stallone isn’t a truly great director, then he is certainly one of the most consistently underestimated directors. Truly, the fact that he was able to assemble one of the most beloved 80s cinematic confections, when the objective truth is that there is 40 minutes of actual plot here (the rest is filled with endless variations on the same montage), and that plot centers around a former low-level mob enforcer single-handedly winning the Cold War with his fists… Well, it’s a Rocky film, the fists aren’t even all that important. The guy defeated the Soviet Union by being able to take a punch.

I can’t account for how the film is so insanely watchable even now. So much so that it’s certainly on my agenda to take in Stallone’s recently released director’s cut.

I even hear that he cut the robot out of the new version. Maybe he felt bad about it, too.

*Don’t believe me? You can read about it all here. I swear to God I had a devil of a time trying to track down a 17-year-old article in the archives of a website which has essentially—and justifiably—been abandoned. Coming up short for the better part of an hour, I was starting to feel like Winston Smith quietly suspecting that the truth about Eurasia (or a robot named Sico) had been deleted by forces unknown.

Creed II (2018)

Director: Steven Caple Jr.

Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Tessa Thompson, Sylvester Stallone, and Dolph Lundgren

Have I Seen it Before: Well, no… But I’ve seen a Rocky movie before, so in a sense, yes… But don’t let that scare you away.

Did I Like It: Yes. What’s not to like?

Highly dubious spoilers about the film to follow.

Look, even if Ryan Coogler had directed the followup to his transcendent Creed (2015), it probably wouldn’t have been quite as searingly good as the original film, and in that parallel dimension, Black Panther (2018) is directed by some lesser mortal. So, as long as we get that out of the way, Creed II is still pretty terrific. Taking the bones of the most preposterous (not necessarily bad) Rocky movie and making a familiar rehash. But if this series is the Thanksgiving dinner of movies, then I’m glad that we still get a feast every once in a while. It is a delicious meal that cannot help but make one feel good.

It’s predictability may keep it from completely blowing the paint off the walls, but it does manage to throw some curve balls. Adonis is brought low in the second act not by losing his newly won Championship Title to the antagonist, but retaining it in a fight he was well on his way to losing, had not the referee’s ruling disqualified the Baby Drago (Florian Munteanu, who with his quiet anguis may take the title of best actual-boxer to play in these movies). That’s mildly surprising, but when Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren, doing easily his best work, lurching through scenes like a coiled snake ready to pounce) throws in the towel ending the final battle between the two younger fighters, my jaw hit the ground. I would have been highly dubious if someone told me that this movie could have easily been called The Redemption of Ivan Drago, but here we are, proving once and for all that if he can change, really, truly, everyone can change.

Cue the end of the United States’ current troubles with Russia, no?

Ahem.

Now, Stallone recently announced (although it wouldn’t be completely out of the question to guess that he might be engaging in contract negotiations through the press) that this will be his swan song as Balboa. I think I’m okay with this. As I mentioned in my review of Creed, I kind of assumed that our last ride with the Stallion had happened years ago, and if this is it, that’s okay. It was nice to get some extra time with him. But, with that doubt in the back of my mind, it might even be better that we may have more time with him yet to come.