The movie is about a punk club fighter from the back streets of Philadelphia who gets a shot at the World Championship. The movie is not about a story, it’s about a “hero”. A hero not in a real sense but an ordinary man who is way more compassionate and determined about boxing and at the same time working as a debt collector for a loan shark because he’s gotta pay his bills.
This ordinary man Rocky is the movie all about. The character is a fighter and a fighter should not only hit hard but also should get up and “go the distance”.
Plot
At that time, Apollo Creed was the World Champion of heavyweight boxing. He announces a New Year’s Eve bout, to prove that America is still a land of opportunities. In order to spice things up, he gives a chance to a local contender to challenge him. For the very same task, he selects Rocky Balboa who goes by the ring name “The Italian Stallion” as he belonged from an Italian neighbourhood.
At first, Rocky was reluctant about the idea of competing with the champion. Rocky’s trainer Mickey, a former boxer from the 1920s, always used to scold and castigate him for not being serious about boxing and wasting his talent. He also wanted to kick him out of the gym. But after Apollo’s offer, Rocky trained well for several weeks with whatever he could get, including meat carcasses as punching bags.
While all this, Rocky develops feelings for Adrian who is his friend, Paulie’s painfully shy sister who works part-time at a pet store. When Rocky visits the arena a night before the fight, he gets very nervous and loses moral. He tells Adrian that he is not expecting to win but his goal is to “go the distance”.
Finally, it’s the judgment day i.e. New Year’s Day. On one side of the ring, we have the defending champion Apollo Creed and on the other end, we have The Italian Stallion. In the first round, the world champion has been knocked down for the first time in his entire lifework. Creed takes him more seriously thereafter. The fight went on till the 15th round with both the contestants fostering many injuries.
During this moment of the movie, I felt like I was filled with some kind of energy and didn’t know how to channel it. Rocky was not ready to give up and Creed had so many punches coming up. At the start of the final round, they both decided that there will be no rematch. As soon as the fight got over, the crowd went wild and Jergens announced that the fight was “the greatest exhibition of guts and stamina in the history of the ring”. The final decision came in the favor of Creed but we all had already declared Rocky as the real winner. Just after the fight, Rocky looks for Adrian and they avow their love for each other, not caring a bit about the results of the match.
Production
The movie was written by Sylvester Stallone himself and directed by John G. Avildsen. The movie had an initial budget of $1 million with further expenditure of $4.2 million on advertising. The producers had some trouble casting some of the major characters of the story such as Creed and Adrian. Joe Fraizer also played an important role in the movie. No, I am not joking guys; some of the scenes shown in the movie were taken from the real life of Fraizer which includes Rocky running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
During the filming of the final fight, both Stallone and Weathers suffered injuries, opposite to what their characters had. Gonna Fly Now, the theme song of the movie by Bill Conti, made it number one on the Billboard magazine’s Hot 100 list for the entire week.
Box Office & Critics
The movie made over $5 million on the release weekend and reached about $117 million approximately after 8 months. Rocky received a positive response from its viewers. As a result, it also made places for some of the awesome awards which include “Academy Award for Best Picture”, ”Academy Award for Best Director” and “Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama”. Rocky has got 8.1/10 IMDB ratings, 93% on rotten tomatoes and 70% on metacritic, which is more than enough to tell us that movie is a great success.