He won't fight again, but it's good to see Stallone as Rocky one last time

It was 38 years ago this week that I saw "Rocky" for the first time.

It probably wouldn't have been so memorable except for the setting. I was living in Vienna with my first wife and we were about halfway into a three-week Eurail race around Europe. We had already been to Venice, Rome and Nice and we were spending a week in Paris.

We both loved going to the movies, but during a year in Vienna, we were in a city where the only theaters were ones that dubbed English-language films into German.

So in Paris, one of the movie capitals of the world, we decided we would go sightseeing in the daytime and catch a few movies at night.

We saw "Network," we saw "Silver Streak" with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor and we saw the surprise winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, Sylvester Stallone's "Rocky."

I don't know if others have looked at it this way -- they probably have -- but "Rocky" was one of the last great movies to come out of the "old" Hollywood. It was a good story with a great script, and most important of all, the main character didn't win in the end.


The defining moment comes the night before the fight, when Rocky admits he has no chance to win the fight.

"It really don't matter if I lose this fight. It really don't matter if this guy opens my head, either. 'Cause all I wanna do is go the distance. Nobody's ever gone the distance with Creed, and if I can go that distance, you see, and that bell rings and I'm still standin', I'm gonna know for the first time in my life, see, that I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood."

That was exactly what happened. Rocky managed to go the distance and actually managed to lose only by a split decision. And when the champion locks up with him at the final bell and says, "Ain't gonna be no rematch," Rocky can legitimately say he doesn't want one. He has achieved everything he really wanted.

There were actually two very good sports movies in the mid '70s, this one and the original "Bad News Bears," and they had one thing in common. In both films, the hero(es) lost in the end but gained respect.

"Rocky (VI) Balboa"

But with the changes that were already happening in the movie business, with studios looking for repeat business and nine-figure grosses, movies where the hero lost just weren't going to work anymore. The big movies that started coming out in 1977 were more cartoonish, with stories that were a lot less important except for getting the audience from one set piece to the next.

"Star Wars" in 1977, "Superman" in 1979 and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in 1981 were all fun movies, and each one spawned sequel after sequel, but none of them were movies with half the heart of the original "Rocky."

Of course, neither did the many sequels to the original "Rocky." He may not have wanted a rematch, but the studios sure did, and one way or another, four sequels (Rocky II-V) always ended with him winning.

"Rocky V" (1990) was a big disappointment, because it essentially took everything away from Rocky except his wife and son and left him back in the old neighborhood as if nothing had happened. It sort of left fans with bad feelings, which is one reason Stallone came back with one last chapter 16 years later. And if "Rocky Balboa" had a little bit of cartoon in it -- a 60-year-old former champion fighting the current undefeated champ in an exhibition -- it was still in the spirit of the original.

"Creed"

Now, nine years later, comes what is essentially "Rocky VII," although Ricky doesn't get into the ring. "Creed" has an interesting premise, with the older Rocky taking on the job of training the son of his late rival and friend Apollo Creed.

Stallone himself became something of a cliche over the years, a sort of Schwarzenegger Junior action star, but if he had never played any part other than Rocky in six, now seven, films, he would still have earned himself a place in the pantheon.

More than anything else, Rocky had what so many movie heroes lack today.

Humanity.

And heart.