Depending on who you ask, Rocky is the greatest sports movie ever made. Even if you disagree with that statement, you have to recognize it as perhaps the most influential sports movie ever made. Rocky popularized the rags-to-riches story and designed the formula of nearly every sports movie to come after it, with the exception of maybe Caddyshack, which still hints at some similar themes. Basically, since 1976, you can’t escape Rocky.

Apollo Creed is the current heavyweight boxing champion. He sets up a title fight for the United States Bicentennial, a major investment on his part, but just five weeks before the scheduled he is informed that his opponent cannot fight due to an injured hand. To avoid being out so much money, Creed decides to let a local fighter take him on, and he picks the Italian Stallion, Rocky Balboa, to do it. Rocky is initially hesitant to take on the champion, but agrees to it once he understands there’s a $150,000 payout. Mickey, the owner and trainer of a gym that Rocky frequents offers to train him with his unorthodox methods. Rocky spends his downtime wooing Adrian, the sister of his best friend, Paulie, who works at a local pet store. He takes her to an ice skating rink after hours, paying off the night janitor to let them skate. Paulie is jealous of Rocky’s growing fame, putting the two men at odds, but Rocky offers Paulie endorsement of his meat packing business, dissolving their brief feud. Rocky continues his training, not letting up until the day of the fight, while Creed doesn’t take it seriously and focuses more on promoting his name than training. Rocky confides in Adrian that he doesn’t believe he can win against Creed, but hopes to go the distance, as in make it to the last round, just to prove that he can do it. It’s an honorable goal, since no one has ever made it to the last round with Creed. The fight begins, and in the first round, Rocky knocks Creed down, which had never been done before. It puts Creed on alert and convinces him to take the fight seriously. They go blow for blow, both sustaining injuries, but Rocky takes hit after hit, and goes the distance. When the last bell is rung, Rocky and Creed embrace, with a mutual respect for each other. Rocky calls out to Adrian who sneaks past security to get into the ring with him. They embrace and confess their love for each other as the results of the fight are announced. Creed wins by split decision, but Rocky doesn’t even hear it.

The film itself is a rags-to-riches story. Sylvester Stallone supposedly wrote the script in three days, and when he was shopping it around, refused to let anyone buy it if they didn’t let him star. A quickly-written script from an unknown writer and actor is shaky ground for producers in the film industry and it took some time before a studio showed confidence in the production. What helped was Stallone’s commitment to keeping the budget really low – reportedly under $900,000 – which meant that mistakes in the production had to be accounted for during filming. For instance, the production team created a poster for Rocky before the big fight, showing him in red shorts with a white stripe. However, Rocky boxes in white shorts with a red stripe. Since they didn’t have any extra money to redo the poster, Stallone wrote it in the film that Rocky comments on the mistake so the audience would believe it was part of the film. Another example is the ice skating scene. Originally, it was supposed to be filmed in a public rink in the daytime. Since they could not afford the number of extras the scene would require, it was rewritten as it appears in the film. However, despite all of these potential setbacks, the movie was a hit and made over $200 million at the Box Office.

Since its release, love for Rocky has somewhat cooled, at least among critics. In 2005, it was placed on a list of 10 worst Best Picture winners, and a poll of Academy voters indicated that if they could revote, they would have given Best Picture to All the President’s Men. Honestly, that’s fair. If you’ve seen All the President’s Men, you might agree. However, that doesn’t take away from Rocky‘s success or influence, nor does it take away from the sheer fact that Rocky is more well-known among those who don’t spend every available second glued to the TV than All the President’s Men. Besides that, if for no other reason, Rocky deserves its recognition for giving us Rocky IV. Rocky, much like its titular character, has certainly gone the distance.

Bonus Review: Raging Bull

Depending on who you ask, Raging Bull is the greatest sports movie ever made. Allegedly, Robert De Niro read the memoir by the real Jake LaMotta while on set for another film and saw it as an opportunity to make the “anti-Rocky”. However, I don’t know that I believe this. Really, I think he was just really excited at the prospect of bringing Jake LaMotta’s story to the screen. He loved the character so much, he reached out to Martin Scorsese to make it with him. Initially, however, Scorsese declined, as he was not a fan of sports in general and didn’t see the appeal of boxing in particular. After nearly dying of a drug overdose, Scorsese claims to have come to understand LaMotta as a character and agreed to do the movie. Before he even began filming, Scorsese considered Raging Bull his swan song, and with that attitude, he went the distance.

The film covers nearly twenty years of Jake LaMotta’s life. He’s an early success as a boxer, but receives his first loss to Jimmy Reeves via split decision. Jake’s brother, Joey, is tied to the Mafia through a man named Salvy, and Joey tries to persuade Salvy to get Jake a title fight. However, Jake refuses the Mafia’s help, wanting to get to a championship on his own terms. Jake meets Vickie, a young girl at a swimming pool, and, despite his marriage and Vickie’s age (she’s 15 at the time), he pursues her. Jake later fights Sugar Ray Robinson and wins, but when they have a rematch weeks later, Robinson is the victor by decision, though Joey believes it’s because Robinson is being deployed to the Army soon. When she is 18, Jake divorces his wife and marries Vickie. However, Jake is immediately jealous of Vickie’s flirtatious nature and assumes she is having affairs. In a rage, he brutally pummels his next opponent, Tony Janiro. Joey, protective of his brother, sees Vickie approach Salvy and assumes she’s having an affair with, prompting Joey to beat up Salvy. Joey is ordered to apologize and Jake, if he wants a title fight, is told he must throw his next fight. He does so in a lackluster performance, but instead he is suspended by the board on suspicion of throwing the fight. He is later reinstated, and wins the middleweight title against Marcel Cerdan. Jake grows increasingly suspicious that Vickie is having an affair and asks Joey if he is sleeping with her. Joey walks out on him. Jake confronts Vickie and she sarcastically says she’s been sleeping with Joey, as well as several other men, and so Jake walks over to Joey’s house and beats him half to death in front of his wife and child before turning on Vickie and knocking her unconscious. They patch things up, but he and Joey remain estranged. As far as his career is concerned, he defends his title from Laurent Dauthuille, but his career steadily declines without Joey by his side and he loses his title against Sugar Ray Robinson in their third meeting. Jake retires from boxing, moves to Miami and runs a nightclub. He is arrested, however, for introducing underage girls to the men who visit his club and he attempts to bribe his way out of prison with the jewels on his championship belt. Once he is out of prison, he is relegated to performing stand-up comedy at various nightclubs in the area. The movie ends with him prepping before his routine by shadowboxing and quoting On the Waterfront, unable to let go of the high he’s always been chasing.

Over the course of time, Raging Bull has changed in the public eye from “a pretty good film” to “a masterpiece” and “Scorsese’s best work”, even outranking Rocky on the AFI Top 10 Sports Films list. I understand why. Raging Bull is a serious work of art. Scorsese put his blood, sweat and tears into it, as did Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci (who plays Joey, and was his first major film role). It is considered a perfectly edited film. There’s a rhythm to it, particularly in the fight scenes, that dazzles the eyes and punches the audience right in the face. However, the technical proficiency of the film is overshadowed by the nastiness of Jake’s character. He’s so vile and belligerent that he’s off-putting to the typical audience member. Who would want to see a movie about a guy being a major butthole for two hours? Don’t get me wrong, his brutishness and downright abusive personality make for an interesting character study, in fact he’s very similar to Walter White in Breaking Bad in a lot of ways, but really it makes you wonder why De Niro was so invested in the role. Because Rocky is the more uplifting movie, and therefore the more rewatchable movie, and therefore the one I remember better, it makes the Top 100 and Raging Bull gets to sit just outside…sorta reminiscent of their own outcomes.