Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky IV recut shows a deep passion for the series

This look at director Sylvester Stallone’s cut Stone VI was originally published in 2021, when a new edit is released. It was updated and republished with renewed interest in the Rocky series — and in particular Stallone’s place in it — after Article of Faith III.

There’s nothing wrong with Stone IVan extremely commercialized 1980s beauty film. Sylvester Stallone wisely make use of the anti-Russian swagger of Rambo: First Blood Part II to give Western audiences a heartwarming Cold War loser story. Enemies: Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren), the boxer savior, crush of the Soviet Union. “Whatever he hits, he destroys,” boasted Drago’s ashtray-voiced operator. When the Russians kill Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), an old enemy turned best friend of Rocky during an exhibition match, it becomes clear that he is about to have an all-American dinner, and Stallone serves it with loads of it. the flash of MTV. prevalent at that time.

Stone IV was an important film of its time. Nine movies are franchised, which are Still the highest grossing item of a lot. This isn’t Rocky’s favorite movie, but no one in the history of the world has ever started watching it and turned it off. This is a scientifically proven fact. And it is a widely acknowledged fact that no person on this planet has ever want to cut from the director.

Except Stallone.

With its incredible 91-minute story, Stone IV is more training montage than film. So when Stallone announced his plans to cut his extended director role, the concept sounded like an opinion piece for an SNL Digital Short. But the actor-director is deadly serious, and now, too Stone IV. This once gaudy standard stone of ’80s cinema has been transformed into a strangely gritty brood of warrior code. Visual and tonal, it’s a completely different experience. And let’s get this straight: the “42 minutes of new footage” promised in the press release is there, but at 93 minutes (with credit) it also means that a third of the movie’s run time is over. became the mainstay of the cable station since the beginning of the season. The glasnost era is over. This is not your bearded Gen X uncle Stone IV.

Image: MGM . image

Original stone turned Stallone into a global superstar. It won the 1976 Oscar for Best Picture Network, All of the President’s men, And Taxi driver. The sequels are all snapshots of Stallone’s career at the time they were made: stone II is about an overnight success struggling with the demands of sudden fame; stone III struggles with the loss of hunger that affects champions/stars at the beginning of their game; FUCKING ROCK chart the inevitable decline of the champion; Balboa Stone refute F. Scott Fitzgerald’s argument that there is no second act in American life; and Creed The triad deals with the importance of heritage. But Stone IV really not about anything much.

Apollo and Rocky are staring at impending retirement, but the former’s deep-seated fear of Russia taking over the boxing world with its lab-created superheroes has thwarted any what form of introspection means. There’s a bit of a John Henry folklore in it, but at its core, it’s a revenge movie sparked by some kind of lip service about Americans and Russians learning to see each other. is the same kind (something the entire politburo stands up for and cheers for the film’s ending).

So does Stallone’s shortened version, Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago, an improvement? In some cases, absolutely. As described in a documentary remake available on YouTube, Stallone marvels at the unfortunate number of missed punches that made it into the 1985 theatrical film. He prides himself on the fierceness of the final battle (he should be, for a series of hits. punching Lundgren in the chest causing him to have a swollen heart that sent him to the ICU), but in today’s explosive HD world, those occasional occurrences are plainly obvious. In the synopsis, almost every punch has a realistic thud, although some of the absurdly plugged-in sound design has actually been toned down.

Stallone also returned and inserted many alternate scenes that completely changed the tragic arc of Apollo Creed. Confronting Drago is no longer an act of foolish arrogance, but a duty, which is evident in Duke’s eulogy, where Creed’s trainer and default father eloquently defended his boxer’s fatal decision: “The warrior has the right to choose his way of life and his way of death.”

This echoes a newly added moment in Creed’s fight with Drago, where Rocky begs his friend, “Don’t do this to me.” “I’m doing this for me,” Apollo interrupted. This makes Rocky’s inevitable duel with Drago a deeper purpose than revenge; he’s also following the warrior’s rule and he doesn’t care if people, even his loving wife Adrian (Talia Shire), believe it was an act of suicide.

Image: MGM

How this square with Drago’s reconfigured arc is tricky. In the cinematic footage, Drago’s late-game rebellion against his handlers resembles the actions of a petite child. (“I fight for me!”) In this version, Drago is portrayed as a clumsily willing participant in Russian propaganda. He tried to answer questions at the press conference, but was quickly interrupted by the manager of his chat box. There is a human under the robot shell, and thanks Creed IIwe know how his resistance will ultimately cost him.

Unfortunately, Stallone dismissed Brigitte Nielsen’s outburst of outrage, where her heartfelt-sounding statements about her husband’s death threats were ridiculed by the media. There may be a slightly more human side to Drago in the director’s cut (his bewildering angle in James Brown’s performance of “Living in America” ​​makes him feel like a kid). 5 years old gets lost in a carnival fun house), but Nielsen’s apparatus has been reduced to a chilling caricature. This looks like an unfair trade-off.

What Stallone couldn’t completely eliminate was the necessary absurdity of a film shot and edited to appeal to music-video-mad viewers. He convincingly defends the power of editing in documentaries and he didn’t do too much with those scenes in this one. (The biggest change was to make flashbacks in the “No Easy Way Out” scene sepia.) He blames himself for omitting the most compelling elements of the film, but the scenes that he lets take a breather in this remake that is in stark contrast to the stimulating aesthetic of the film he created.

He’s stripped the comic book vibrancy of Bill Butler’s cinematography, which only makes this oversized entertaining film deadly inside. And most controversially, he removed all traces of Paulie’s cyborg, Sico. In doing so, he downgraded Burt Young’s performance to almost nothing, which lessened the impact of Paulie being sillyly touched before the game out of gratitude for Rocky. (“If I could unpack myself and go out and be someone else, I want to be you”) Paulie is an integral part of the Balboa story, and he deserves so much more.

Stallone’s passion for the Drago character is contagious, and watching him meticulously refine scenes shot 35 years ago in the Sunset Strip editing suite is an unexpected thrill. The warrior spirit is still very much alive in the 76-year-old actor. Stallone is out of the game Article of Faith IIIand he’s been away from the franchise, ever since he no longer owns the rights. But he still has a strong sense of ownership over the story and its legacy. It’s no surprise that he’s still invested in how people watch these movies, and what they see when they revisit them, decades after their release.

Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago Available to rent or buy through Amazon, vuduand other digital platforms.