A Rocky Revival Is Exactly What We Need

Stallone has also published The Steps , a memoir about the years between his arrival in New York City in 1969 and the night Rocky won Best Picture at the 1977 Academy Awards, while I Play Rocky , a new biopic about the almost unbelievable story of how he got the film made, arrives in theaters this fall. The symmetry is almost too perfect, especially because Rocky was already an American anniversary movie the first time around. The final fight isn't merely happening in Philadelphia during the Bicentennial; it is literally the Bicentennial Heavyweight Championship Fight. Apollo Creed enters the arena dressed as George Washington crossing the Delaware, then sheds the costume to reveal Uncle Sam underneath. The whole thing is so exuberantly patriotic that it would probably be considered satire if someone tried it now. But it isn't satire. Neither is Rocky . The original movie is remarkably sincere about things Americans once believed about themselves: that a nobody is entitled to nothing except an opportunity, that effort matters most, that dignity can exist even without victory, and that losing is not the same thing as being defeated. Which makes this particular Rocky revival feel extremely well timed. Nostalgia is big right now, but nostalgia alone doesn't explain why a 50-year-old story would come back into cultural consciousness with such force. Perhaps it's because it contains something the present moment has misplaced. Going the distance Rocky Balboa isn't supposed to win. He's a failing club fighter with no real prospects, collecting money for a loan shark and taking punches for small purses, and Apollo picks him because he needs a fun Bicentennial gimmick. Give some unknown Philadelphia fighter with an appropriately patriotic nickname a shot at the heavyweight champion of the world. "Great television." Rocky understands the arrangement. He doesn't tell Adrian he's going to win, because he knows he probably won't. But nobody has ever lasted 15 rounds with Apollo Creed, so if he can at least still be standing when the final bell rings, then, as he explains to Adrian the night before the fight, he'll know for the first time that he wasn't "just another bum from the neighborhood." He loses the fight. And of course, he wins. This was the part I understood even as a kid, before I understood much else about the movie. I had already developed an unfortunate habit of quitting things by then—piano, voice lessons, tap dance, baton, soccer, basketball, probably more I'm forgetting—and quitting was wonderful because I hated looking foolish and failing at things. I felt enormous relief never having to practice scales or dribble around cones again. But then I watched Rocky lose and felt, with the absolute certainty available only to children, that everybody in the movie had gotten the ending wrong. Apollo had won the title, yes, but Rocky had clearly won something more important. The promise is that you at least get to try, even if you come from nowhere or have very little. I think many Americans still understand that message instinctively. America's promise was never really that everyone "wins," because that would be ridiculous, and Rocky would be a terrible movie if Apollo suddenly slipped on a banana peel in round 15 and handed him the belt. The promise is that you at least get to try, even if you come from nowhere or have very little. It's a unique promise, but it asks something difficult of us in return: we have to live with the possibility that we can try our very best and still fail. I know that seems obvious, but many people aren't particularly good at it, and I understand why. When faced with a truly daunting task, it is much easier to decide beforehand that the system is hopelessly rigged, that participation itself makes you a sucker, and that if victory seems impossible, there's no point in fighting at all. The equally popular alternative is to simply "burn it all down." Rocky offers a much less sophisticated answer to life's uphill battles. He doesn't pick simple resignation or blind rage. Instead, he shows us: fight anyway. But if that were the entire message of the movie, I don't think this revival would interest me nearly as much. There are plenty of stories about grit and plenty of people willing to tell you to work harder, become tougher, wake up earlier, destroy your excuses, crush your enemies, and conquer the world. Rocky is more interesting because it is not really a movie about conquering the world. Rocky's great ambition is actually modest. He just wants a chance, and he wants his dignity, but most of all, he wants love. That's why, after 15 rounds and the biggest opportunity of his life, the person he is desperately looking for isn't a promoter or a reporter. It's Adrian. Rocky is not only optimistic about human potential, it's furiously optimistic about almost everything our culture has learned to approach with mean-spirited subversion and a cynical smirk. A love story It's refreshing, almost toe-curlingly optimistic about love. Rocky and Adrian are two shy, awkward, unimpressive people by worldly standards, and the movie treats their tenderness toward one another as enormously important. It's optimistic about friendship and reconciliation; across the series, rivals become friends, damaged relationships are repaired, and difficult people remain worth loving. And it is optimistic about faith. The first film literally opens beneath an image of Christ, Rocky crosses himself before he fights, and religion continues to appear naturally throughout the series, as part of the moral universe these people inhabit. Stallone later described Rocky himself as "very Christian-like" in his ideals and said he had deliberately worked spiritual imagery into the films. In a BBC interview just after Rocky became a phenomenon, Stallone explained that he had become discouraged by movies he thought were "anti-society, anti-Christ, anti-government, anti-everything." He wanted, he said, to get back to the kind of older movies in which morality was at the forefront and there was actually somebody to root for. It simply refuses to believe that suffering makes love foolish, faith embarrassing, friendship impossible, or courage pointless. That may be the most interesting explanation for why Rocky still feels so refreshing 50 years later. Stallone answered cynicism with earnestness and optimism, but he also did it without making a saccharine movie. Philadelphia is cold and dirty. Rocky is poor. Paulie is a mess. Mickey can be cruel. Adrian is frightened and withdrawn. The hero gets his face beaten almost beyond recognition and then loses. Rocky doesn't achieve optimism by pretending that life is easy or people are naturally wonderful. It simply refuses to believe that suffering makes love foolish, faith embarrassing, friendship impossible, or courage pointless. This is what I think is worth reviving. And it also puts a necessary limit on all the striving, fighting, and "never quit" energy that permeates the story. Because there is a danger hidden inside that story too, and it's easy to miss. So easy, in fact, that I think Stallone himself missed it for many years. If you really believe, as you should, that human beings can transform their lives through courage and effort, there will also be a temptation to make transformation itself the ultimate goal. And if that happens, you can spend your entire life proving that you weren't just another bum from the neighborhood and then wake up one day wondering what all the proving was really for. Fifty years later Which brings us from Rocky Balboa to the now 80-year-old man who created him. I've watched a lot of Stallone's interviews surrounding this memoir. He's as interesting and enigmatic as ever, but what has interested me most in the new interviews isn't Stallone's achievement. It is what he regrets. His ambition is incredibly impressive, don't get me wrong, and it obviously worked. He wrote Rocky when he was broke, held onto the lead role when more established actors could have taken it, became one of the most recognizable movie stars in the world, created characters that have lasted for half a century, and got the sort of cultural immortality artists dream of. But in his recent New York Times interview , Stallone describes the drive beneath all of that in much less romantic terms. He says he was consumed with proving he wasn't another nobody from the neighborhood and now considers that level of competitiveness unhealthy. When asked about fatherhood, he is even more direct: "I really wasn't a very good parent." During his first marriage, he says, he was in "warrior mode." He wanted to conquer the world, and everything else fell by the wayside. This isn't a brand-new realization for him. A few years ago, while talking about how his priorities had changed, Stallone called acting a "second priority" and said of his family: "The priority is the things that you're responsible for. You brought them on this planet. You must guard them with your life." That is an extraordinary thing to hear from a man whose entire mythology was built around achievement. He got the applause, the money, the fame, the awards—almost everything the striving young man in Rocky could have imagined wanting—and still, looking back, he points to family as the one thing that mattered more. It makes me think of C.S. Lewis's The Weight of Glory , where the real weight finally belongs to people; to the immortal human beings we "joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit." Eventually, applause dies down and awards sit on shelves, but the people whose lives are bound up with yours remain. What the fight is for And that is the important tempering of the American "fight and win" spirit; perhaps something the Rocky story itself knew better than its creator did when he was young. Fighting is not the highest good, and winning for its own sake certainly isn't. The fight matters because something outside the ring is worth fighting for. The point is not simply to prove that you can go the distance, but to know what has enough weight to make the distance worth going. And what, ultimately, was Rocky's prize? It's Adrian shouting his name at the end of the first movie. It's Mickey becoming something like a father. It's Apollo becoming a friend. It is family, loyalty, memory, forgiveness, and faith. The boxing element gives the movies their shape, but those things give them their weight. The fight matters because something outside the ring is worth fighting for. That changes what "go the distance" means to me now. When I was a kid, I heard: don't quit. And I still believe that with all my heart. I hope my own children learn it sooner and with fewer abandoned extracurricular activities than I did. But at this point in my life, I hear something else too: don't fight so hard that you forget why you're fighting. Ambitious people are very good at allowing lower goods to consume higher ones while giving the process an impressive name. We are providing, building, serving, creating, making an impact. Sometimes we are. Work is good, excellence is good, achievement is good, and America itself would be a much poorer place without people willing to work obsessively hard at things other people thought were impossible. But if strangers routinely receive the best of you while the people in your own home survive on what remains, eventually you have to ask what, exactly, you are winning. The revival we need That is why the Rocky revival feels bigger to me than another round of nostalgia. We don't simply need Rocky's grit; we need his moral optimism, too. His lack of embarrassment about loving people. His instinct that a rival can become a friend, that a shy girl at the pet store can become the great love of your life, that a flawed person can become better, that faith can sit comfortably beside strength, and that hope does not require denying reality. We also need Rocky's peculiar combination of toughness and gentleness. Inside the ring, he is almost impossible to put down; outside it, he is awkward, sentimental, tender with animals, patient with people who are difficult to love. The warmth does not weaken the toughness. It keeps the toughness from becoming ugly. We have no shortage of cynicism now. There is always someone available to explain why the institutions are corrupt, why your opponents are irredeemable, why love is naive, why marriage will fail, why the country is doomed, why trying is embarrassing, and why having hope only proves you haven't been paying attention. Rocky tells you the truth. The odds are bad. The hero is limited. The world can be a very mean and nasty place. People fail each other, time runs out, and winning is never guaranteed. And still: you should fight anyway. And love anyway. That, I think, is the revival we need. Not merely the confidence that you can become something, or the willingness to drag yourself up the steps one more time, but the wisdom to remember what all that effort is for. The American instinct to strive is a beautiful thing, but achievement alone isn't what made Rocky a story people still care about 50 years later. Love did. And now, at 80, Stallone's own life seems to complete the lesson his younger self wrote. Take the chance, keep slugging, and refuse to be defeated before the fight has even begun. But keep your eyes on the real prize.