While it might be easy to dismiss Rocky as a great film when you think about the long line of mediocre sequels that came in its wake, that would be a mistake. The second film in the series approaches the greatness of the first, but from the third film on, they turned the character and the franchise into more of a caricature than anything else. The second film managed to hold on to the grit and edge of the first film, and it still had the thematic element of the underdog over coming long odds to succeed. The later films in the series would usually be missing one of those key elements. As the series moved from the 70’s into the 80’s and 90’s, it lost a lot of the grit and rawness that made the original feel so edgy. Rocky III and Rocky IV felt especially polished and lacked the heart of the first two films. To me, that is unfortunate because Rocky is one of the greatest films of the second half of the 20^th Century. It’s arguably the greatest boxing movie of all time, and it’s one of the seminal underdog stories.

There are a lot of things that make Rocky such a great film, but first and foremost is its heart. This is an emotional story about a guy who couldn’t be more down on his luck at the start of the film and shows by the end that he has the heart of a champion. Screenwriter Sylvester Stallone (who also famously starred in the title role) crafted a character that is both flawed and likable. He’s a meathead and an average fighter who has to work as hired muscle for a local loan shark to make his living. He has a good heart, though, as evidenced by his treatment of Adrian (Talia Shire), as well as when he tries to give advice to a local neighborhood girl about not hanging out with the wrong crowd. The girl throws his advice back in his face, but Adrian eventually sees him for the kind man that he is, and she opens up to him and becomes his girlfriend. “Yo Adrian” has become a cliché in the pop culture lexicon, but the relationship that Stallone and director John G. Avildsen built between the two of them is anything but cliché. This relationship was meticulously developed over the course of the first half of the film, so that by the time Rocky opens up to Adrian about knowing that he can’t beat Apollo, but only hopes that he can go the distance, we know that these are two people that love each other and are there for each other. This is important because the film starts with Rocky having no one and not really caring about anyone as well.

Meticulous is actually an appropriate word when it comes describing this film and the story. To be perfectly honest, the script (which was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay) isn’t written with the classic Hollywood three-act structure. There is a clear Hero’s Journey, and all of the stages are there, but Rocky is the perfect example of how all of those stages don’t have to happen in the traditional places in order for the screenplay to be successful. For example, Rocky doesn’t receive his Call to Adventure until half way through the film. Usually the Call to Adventure happens within the first few minutes. Rocky’s Call to Adventure is the offer to fight Apollo Creed for the Heavyweight Championship of the World. Rocky sees himself as a bum of a fighter because that’s all anyone has ever told him he is, so he Refuses the call right away, but the refusal lasts less than one scene. We’re more than half way through the film when the Meeting of the Mentor happens. We’ve already met Mickey earlier in the film, but he doesn’t become Rocky’s actual Mentor until Rocky accepts the Call to fight Creed, and Rocky also initially refuses Mickey’s offer to manage him, citing the fact that no one believed in him until this opportunity landed in his lap.

Indeed, most of the Hero’s Journey happens over the second half of the film. The reason for that is because the first half of the film is meticulously showing Rocky’s Ordinary World and what an awful place it is for him. The film actually opens with the Tests, Allies and Enemies stage, which normally is the start of the second act. No one, and I mean no one, believes in this guy, and he gives people very little reason to believe in him. Every time Rocky turns around, someone else is calling him a bum or some other bad thing is happening to him. Once again, Stallone and Avidsen did an outstanding job of showing Rocky as, not only an underdog in the ring, but as an underdog in life. There’s not future for this guy if he keeps going on his current track, and he sees no way to get off if this track. His life is drab and without color and without any one who cares about him. One rather poignant scene shows Rocky looking at a picture of himself from when he was a boy as it hangs on the mirror. He says nothing but his expression speaks volumes of how ashamed he is on behalf of that kid for what he sees that his life has become. He basically fails every test, has many enemies, and his only allies are the loan shark, Adrian and Paulie.

And then, forty five minutes into the film, we finally get our inciting incident, and that is when Apollo Creed randomly selects Rocky to fight him in a match celebrating America’s bicentennial. That’s when things start going Rocky’s way, but it happens in a very organic way. Again, Stallone and Avidsen worked this perfectly because they avoided everything going right for Rocky all at once. He still had people that didn’t believe in him and he still had a mix of good and bad things happening to him. Things started going well for him in a way that was organic and realistic. They didn’t just pull a switch, and everything for Rocky was better. Things gradually started to go his way, and the mood of the film started to become markedly more uplifting.

So what really is working with the screenplay for Rocky is the overall story arc. This starts out as a largely character-driven piece, with a storyline that doesn’t really move very much over the entire first half of the film. It shows a down-on-his-luck boxer living a life that seemingly will never get better. But we like this guy, because he seems like a good person who has just been dealt a lot of bad luck. Then his luck suddenly changes for the better and the story starts to move at a much quicker pace. All along, we’re learning what Rocky needs. He needs to be respected. He needs people to see value in him and he needs to be able to see that value in himself as well. All that said, we really don’t know what Rocky wants, however, until just before the climax of the film. He confesses to Adrian that he knows he can’t beat Creed, but if he can just go the distance, then he can prove to everyone that he’s not a bum. No one has ever gone the distance with Creed, so he figures that if he can do that, then he’ll gain the respect that he’s never had.

That quiet and tender moment juxtaposes one of the great climaxes in the history of cinema. That might sound somewhat hyperbolic, but the climax of Rocky is truly one of the most emotional, tense and riveting climaxes I’ve ever seen. Even though it’s shown mostly through a montage, when they get back into real time, we feel like we’ve been in the ring with Rocky and Apollo. What a great moment it is when Apollo knocks Rocky down in the 14^th round of the fight, and Mickey is telling Rocky to stay down because he’s taken enough of a beating, but Rocky refuses to be denied and to the disbelief of Creed, Rocky not only gets up, but continues to fight, and lays some hard punches on Creed that cause internal bleeding and nearly make him have to give up the fight. All of that leads us to the epic 15^th round, and the hope that Rocky can fulfil his dream and go the distance against the champ. This is great storytelling. This is a story that is well-told.

One other thing I would like to mention is Talia Shire. She has perhaps the second most important role in this film, and in fact, in the entire series. She did a wonderful job in Rocky as the shy and mousy Adrian, who steals Rocky’s heart and helps us see him as a human being with a heart and with feelings rather than just a knucklehead boxer. Adding a love interest to a story is often a good idea because it gives the hero more to lose. In the case of Rocky, however, it was a little different. We never are afraid that Rocky will lose Adrian because it’s never an issue. The main purpose of Adrian in this film is to humanize Rocky. She’s there as a conduit for his emotions so that we as the audience can relate to Rocky on an emotional level. Without Adrian in this film, we wouldn’t be able to connect with Rocky on as deep a level, so in that case, Adrian is a very important character indeed. Again, we always her “Yo Adrian” as some sort of joke or punchline, but Adrian’s character was a very important device in this film and critical to its success.

Also, this would be the third film of the decade that Talia Shire starred in that would win Best Picture. She was a much more minor character, playing Connie Corleone in The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), but she joined Clark Gable (It Happened One Night in 1934, Mutiny on the Bounty in 1935and Gone With the Wind in 1939) as the only actors (so far, Diane Keaton will join them the following year) to have starring roles in three Best Picture winners in the same decade.

The last thing I want to say before I discuss whether the Academy was correct was that much of this film is so iconic that it’s become cliché. I’ve discussed the “Yo Adrian” line, but the score is one of the most recognizable scores ever. Almost anyone could hear that score and immediately recognize where it came from. The character of Mickey is one of the great mentors in cinema history and his line about Ricky eating lightning and crapping thunder is one of the great lines in the film. The film is also dated. Whether it’s the score or the look of the film, it feels like the 70’s. And as I mentioned at the top, the mediocrity of some of the later entries into this franchise have, I believe, diminished the legacy of the original. That is too bad because Rocky is an exceptional film that is worthy of praise, and shouldn’t be judged on clichés.

Did the Academy get it right?

It would be very easy to look at the list of other nominees in 1976 and say that Rocky had no business winning Best Picture. All the President’s Men was a powerful film starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the reporters who broke the Watergate story, which as we all know led to the downfall and resignation of President Richard Nixon. Network was an equally powerful film with one of the most iconic movie lines of all time (“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”). It starred Faye Dunaway, Robert Duval, William Holden, and Peter Finch, and it was a very dramatic film about the television industry, specifically the news industry. If you haven’t seen that film, or if you haven’t seen it recently, take a look at it. You will be stunned by how many things that film predicted that came true. Perhaps the most deserving film of 1976, however, was Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. Ranked #47 on AFI’s original list of the top 100 films of all time (Rocky is #78 and Network is #66), this was the film that made a name for Scorsese’s and pushed Robert DeNiro closer to superstardom. Taxi Driver is really the antithesis of Rocky. It shows the darkest recesses of people’s psyches and shows the terrible things they’re capable of when they let those negative impulses take control. Where Rocky showed the best of what people can accomplish, Taxi Driver showed the worst, and I think that’s why Rocky won. Even the other two films that I mentioned end on pessimistic notes, and show the results of people acting, if not at their worst, then certainly close to it. I think that in 1976, on the heels of Watergate and the Nixon resignation, and still smarting from Vietnam, Academy members must have been looking for something more uplifting, or something that showed how great people can be when we had been confronted for so long by people being at their worst. Rocky, with its underdog overcoming adversity, and its themes of gaining respect and finding your inner champion, was actually the perfect film for the perfect time. I would not blame anyone for voting for All the President’s Men or Network (one of my 10 favorite films) or Taxi Driver. Any one of those films would have been a worthy winner for 1976. Rocky, however was the champ and it was just as worthy as any of those other films might have been.