The story of 1977’s Best Picture winner, Rocky, was a rags-to-riches story both in-universe, and out, especially where it’s star was concerned.
Rocky tells the story of Rocky Balboa, a down-on-his-luck prize-fighter who ends up lucking out with the chance of a lifetime: fight the heavyweight champion of the world. In a classic underdog story, Rocky follows the boxer as he seizes his chance to gain self-respect, fighting for a better life and a chance to prove that he’s got what it takes to stand in the ring with the best.
And behind the scenes, Rocky was the story of a down-on-his-luck actor, who wrote a screenplay in three and a half days, submitted it to be made into a motion picture, and refused to back down from insisting upon playing the lead role, in the smartest decision of his entire career.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that Sylvester Stallone’s biggest Hollywood role, and biggest step of his entire career, came in the film Rocky, directed by John G. Avildsen.
Rocky saw Stallone as the lead, and the most iconic character he’s ever played up until this point. As Rocky Balboa, Stallone perfected an honest grittiness, a genuine lovable underdog that audiences could recognize flaws in, but instantly choose to root for. To quote Roger Ebert’s review of the film:
“His name is Sylvester Stallone, and, yes, in 1976 he did remind me of the young Marlon Brando. How many actors have come and gone and been forgotten who were supposed to be the “new Brando,” while Brando endured? And yet in “Rocky” he provides shivers of recognition reaching back to “A Streetcar Named Desire.” He’s tough, he’s tender, he talks in a growl, and hides behind cruelty and is a champion at heart. “I coulda been a contender,” Brando says in “On the Waterfront.” This movie takes up from there.”
Stallone’s Rocky Balboa character could easily have been played as a stereotype: a dumb brute with a heart of gold who got lucky. However, Stallone brings to the role a level of emotional intelligence, and a broader character than simply a fighter. He is disillusioned, best displayed during conversations with his trainer, Micky Goldsmith. He is a man in love, he is frustrated by the direction his life has taken, and when he has an opportunity to get out, he is afraid. He is awkward, embarrassed by his circumstances but not by his personality. He is good to almost everyone he meets, and yet we meet him as reluctant muscle for a loan shark. He’s tough, yes, but there is an incredible gentleness underneath.
Although this is the first role that Stallone would come to be known for, it’s interesting that Rocky Balboa stands mostly alone, among the many gritty, brutal action-heroes that Stallone would go on to portray. This is no John Rambo, Marion Cobretti or John Spartan. There is no ‘killer instinct’ or brutality to this character, ironic for the trade he’s in.
While the other characters reached a point, whether in pop culture or in the script themselves, as being boiled down to their ‘job’, or role in the script (cops, soldiers, action-heroes), Rocky Balboa stands as a person, a character. One of the most beloved characters in film history, in fact. For a man who would go on to be known for mostly playing hardened action-men, Stallone’s first big break comes in a remarkably soft character, a fighter with a heart of gold who is incredibly, heartbreakingly human.
Part of this lies in Stallone’s skill in creating a character who, thanks to both screenplay and performance, appears to have been existing in this world before the movie began, and will continue to exist after. Rocky has already been around for a while, evidenced by the numerous relationships and tics in his character: his religion, his pets (two turtles and a dog), his rubber ball…he’s a fully realized character, complete with history, he has a past…but not much of a future.
Stallone perfectly embodies that: the lived-in qualities of Rocky’s life and the hopelessness of the situation. His performance lays the character bare for the audience, so they can see everything about him and feel for him. It is in this performance that the film hinges: in a world full of sports movies, the only thing that can keep an audience invested in the final inevitable victory is the character who earns it. Within a few short scenes, Stallone’s screenplay and performance convey to the audience instantly, without saying it outright, that this character needs the victory coming to him.
And the thing is, it’s not even a victory.
While we’ll cover more of the actual story and climax of the film itself in a later article, it’s important to note for Rocky’s character, and Stallone’s portrayal of him, that ‘victory’ in Rocky’s case doesn’t mean winning the fight. It means earning self-respect, something that you slowly see Rocky gain as the film progresses. This is what he earns.
And thanks to Stallone’s heartfelt performance, we as an audience want him to earn it. We feel for him, and we want him to win, to pull himself out. Stallone perfectly embodies the sympathetic, rough-around-the-edges underdog type character that he had previously touched on, creating in his performance an iconic film character that the audience feels with and grows with. His performance accomplishes exactly what it’s supposed to: making the audience care for, and believe in, a character who has never existed.
And people believed in him so much that Rocky has become a real person, to the point that his native city still has a statue of him. Stallone’s legacy is most easily seen in Rocky, as this character, a character that, to many people, he will always be. It’s the role that made him a star, a breakout, a juggernaut, long before Rambo, the giant success necessary to launch him onto the career ahead.
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Twentieth Century Fun With Film 