No item
struck greater fear into the hearts of movie reviewers
everywhere than the recent announcement that Sylvester
Stallone intends to return as that renowned Philadelphia pug
Rocky Balboa in Rocky VI.
I was a big fan of Rocky (I). And maybe future
generations able to forget the namesake sequels that came
after it will once again deem it one of the great film
flukes of all time.
In 1976, Stallone made people identify with -- and even love
-- a loan shark's thumb-breaker. It wasn't just because he
had a heart of platinum. And it wasn't just because he was
an underdog fighter with the ambition to become a champ and
the guts to seize the day when an Ali-like record-breaker
named Apollo Creed offered him a bout as a stunt.
It was because Stallone, as a young writer and performer
grabbing for his own brass ring (he wouldn't sell the script
unless he could star in it), created a character filled with
native wit -- smart and insensitive in unconventional,
streetwise ways. To polite society, he was a loser, but we
knew from how he joked with his turtles, Cuff and Link, or
made his wallflower lover Adrian (Talia Shire) bloom, that
he was born to win. Or at least "go the distance."
But Stallone began to devalue his franchise with Rocky
II. The only tale he knew how to tell was that of the
underdog triumphant, and the only way he could retell it was
to make Rocky Balboa forget everything he knew about life in
the first film.
Stallone had one rule as a sequel writer-director: More is
more. When he raced up the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum
of Art in Rocky II, he suddenly became the Pied Piper
of Philly, with hordes of kids emerging from buses and cabs
or off street corners.
In short, Stallone became the doggerel poet laureate of
sequelitis, repeating the same trajectory for Rockys
III, IV and V. Every time you see a sequel seem to give its
hero or heroine amnesia to duplicate an original film's
success (think Legally Blonde 2), you're witnessing
the legacy of Rocky II. Maybe some adviser can stop
Stallone before he remakes it again.
