The Rocky Films

First topic message reminder :

Now I know the films have very little to do with boxing realism, and other films such as Raging Bull, The fighter, The Hurricane etc will have a much closer realism.

However, I would still like to know what everyones favourite Rocky Film is. I personally love them all, and could quite happily sit and watch them all back to back. But which is your favourite and why?

Rocky - the original under dog story. Stallone gives a great performance of a guy handed a dream shot at the champion.

Rocky II - the rematch for the Italian Stallion where he takes Appollo Creed on for the final time.

Rocky III - Clubber Lang takes his bow and Mickey makes his final one.

Rocky IV - I will break you. Well Ivan Drago certainly broke Appollo.

Rocky V - Tommy "the Machine" Gunn averagely played by Tommy Morrisson. I think Sly is actually very good in this film and it gets undeserved criticism.

Rocky Balbao - the finale to the series. A broken man given one last dream fight. Great film and a great ending which completes the story perfectly.

So lets see your thoughts.

We had 2 video shops near us a large brightly lit one with multiple copys and a little dingy one which had just a couple of copys of films and didnt even get all the new films in ....... but that was the shop i loved .. walking around the shelves that went right upto the ceiling with the naughty films on the top shelf and the even naughtier ones available under the counter if you knew the bloke who owned the shop .... of course i didn't know that at the time

Ohh god, this discussion brings back memories of when I was a kid and lived halfway between a Blockbusters and a local garage/video rental place, we'd always browse through the 'end-of-line' cheap videos in Blockbuster and pick up some classics (as well as some watchable rubbish) from Blockbusters, with maybe a PS game, and then get a new release or 2 from the video shop - great times, and I've still got my video player still working and going strong...

My video packed ages ago , but still got hundreds of videos that i cant sell but refuse to take to the dump . In fact im sure i have a box set of Rocky videos upto Rocky 4 maybe 5

u can still pick up video recorders - the british heart foundation has sum for £5 usually, and it allows u 2 watch loads of old classics unil you manage to buy them on dvd

I watched Rocky 2 last night on ITV4. What ever happened to films? They don't make 'em like that any more!

Morgannwg wrote:I watched Rocky 2 last night on ITV4. What ever happened to films? They don't make 'em like that any more!

I watched it last night on ITV4.

Fantastic isnt it - my fave of the lot.

Forgot how good the music is too.

Been youtubng the theme all morning

Morgannwg wrote:I watched Rocky 2 last night on ITV4. What ever happened to films? They don't make 'em like that any more!

Got to admit I am not a massive rocky fan, and prefer the recent fighting films like the Fighter, The Wrestler and Warrior. Thankfully from my POV they dont make them how hey used to

On the topic of the thread.

Rocky 1 is my fav, the original and they did something different- In that the hero actually lost.Stallone also did a very good job. The rest of them are a bit mehh to me, but its just not my sort of thing if truth be told.

Adam D wrote:

Morgannwg wrote:I watched Rocky 2 last night on ITV4. What ever happened to films? They don't make 'em like that any more!

I watched it last night on ITV4.

Fantastic isnt it - my fave of the lot.

Forgot how good the music is too.

Been youtubng the theme all morning

I can't decide which is the most fantastic between the first four movies though. Just great, cinematic history. Well done Stallone.

mystiroakey wrote:

Morgannwg wrote:I watched Rocky 2 last night on ITV4. What ever happened to films? They don't make 'em like that any more!

Got to admit I am not a massive rocky fan, and prefer the recent fighting films like the Fighter, The Wrestler and Warrior. Thankfully from my POV they dont make them how hey used to

I've only seen the Fighter, didn't think it was any good. I don't know many good films from the 70s. The best ones come from the 80s and 90s IMO. They haven't been many good films since those era's.

Warrior is my personal fav- Amazing performce from Hardy(its ultimate fighting though).

But it wasnt massively promoted over here- Great film. Much more stylised than rocky, but one of very few films I have seen this year that left a lasting affect on me!

Great films from the 70's for me would be

taxi driver
one flew over the cuckoos nest
the godfather 1 and 2
apocolypse now
the sting
monty python

rocky and dog day afternoon also up there as well- Others would also rate star wars , aliens and jaws- but not my cup of tea

Of top of my head good 70s films godfather, deliverance, papillon, easy rider, mean streets (i think 70s), dog day afternoon, airplane (i think it was late 70s) and apocolypse now. The 90s have sum classics as does the 00s

Did anybody watch, the real Rocky on ESPN last night?

It was the story about Chip Wepner, the man who Rocky was allegedly based on.

Back to the 70's.

Can't beat Start Wars

mystiroakey wrote:Warrior is my personal fav- Amazing performce from Hardy(its ultimate fighting though).

But it wasnt massively promoted over here- Great film. Much more stylised than rocky, but one of very few films I have seen this year that left a lasting affect on me!

Great films from the 70's for me would be

taxi driver
one flew over the cuckoos nest
the godfather 1 and 2
apocolypse now
the sting
monty python

rocky and dog day afternoon also up there as well- Others would also rate star wars , aliens and jaws- but not my cup of tea

Aliens is an 80s film isn't it? But I agree with u, I don't rate Jaws or Star Wars either...

Yes you are correct. I meant Alien

Rocky 3 this thursday ITV 4 10PM

without doubt Rocky 1 was the best just loved how it was gritty and hard for its time

Was watching the Rocky II training montage on youtube this morning. Great stuff.

Will watch the fight later. IMO, the best fight out of all the Rocky's as well.

I know I’m a bit late to the party here but I thought I’d throw my 2 cents in here anyway.

We had Rocky 3 and 4 on VHS when I was younger, watched them both 100’s of times, absolutely loved them, but only saw 1 and 2 last year, absolutely blown away. The first movie is amazing. I still love 3 and 4 for the cheese, 5 was terrible, but 6 was a good ending.

When I’m on my way to watch a match and want to get pumped up, I listen to Hearts on Fire from Rocky 4, savage tune.

I thought the training montage in Rocky III was pretty dire and a bit cheesy, even for Rocky.
The fights were also lame but Clubber was supreme with his one liners and mean look.

Its very much like the Rambo series. First Blood, despite the violence which is what it was sold on its actually a deep challenging film with a message that open to interpretation. people assume Stallone is just a meat head from the roles he played, not realising he wrote the things and is actually a very intelligent guy.
As the series goon though they become increasingly silly and playing to the lowest audience. They are great fun, and full of epic moments, but they dont have the depth of the first one and do just get repetitive.
I love them all, in different ways. V should just never have happened, it had a real budget feel about it although it did explore a side of boxing (Don King) that was big news at the time.
The "comeback" films for both Im torn on. They try to go back to the original feel as much as possible and get back into the darker aspects of the characters past but suffer from bad editing. They also get cheesy in a slightly different way to say Rocky IV which was fun cheese, it just becomes cliche Cheese in Rocky Balboa. The training montage , which like Arnie tooling up montages, is what you want from a Rocky movie was just a bit dull and I really didnt like the arty stuff with the fight scenes. RJJs charachter got almost editted out of existnace and whilst he may have been more realistic just didnt have the presence of a Clubber Lang or Apollo Creed who are iconic.

The first 4 are films I will happily sit and watch anytime.

They're all awful movies, the boxing scenes are ridiculous, the acting dreadful, and the storylines even worse. Terrible movies, and I'm a hardcore boxing fan.

But the romance of it!

Maybe you being a hardcore boxing fan is the problem

Think Stella is on the money.

Stop being a buzz-kill Alex!

Yeah well Alex is kinda right as they are abit popcorny. I dont think you have to be a hardcore boxing fan to work that out. But then nothing wrong with abit of cheese know and again..