Suggestion: Rocky IV

[Muthsarah 124]

1. Rocky I goes in The Canon. You put Godfathers I and II in without a vote. Obviously, Rocky goes in as well.

 

2. Amy, I 100% agree with something you said in this episode (Antichrist). At least I THINK you said it. Maybe I was crazy. I just rented Rocky III and Rocky IV from my local video store. Yeah, video store. I have one of those. Jealous????? Prolly not. You're all Hollywood and fancified and.......

 

Anyway, I rented them just so as to catchup on my 80s cheese, having never seen 'em before. And, yeah, you (I think....) suggested maybe putting Rocky IV into The Canon. Facetiously? To that, legitimately, I say YEAH!!!!. The movie's beyond cheesy. It was prolly cheesy in 1986 or whenever. Now it's pure camp. But it's super-80s camp.

 

Take a step back from your serious arthouse movie conversations. Go pop. Go shallow. Go of-the-time. Pick movies that were the most (retrospectively) obviously of-their-time. Pick the most off-beat rebellious 70s flicks. Harold and Maude. Smokey and the Bandit. The most shallowly Reagan-esque 80s flicks. Rocky IV. Umm...Red Dawn??? The most cynical 90s-esque films. Ummm....I won't say Reality Bites, but...we're prolly bumping up against my own biases here. The most conservative, safe-ish but colorful (in a white way) 50s films. White Christmas (more 40s than 50s, but....), or a Tracy and Hepburn. Whatever. Give the shallow their due. A movie doesn't have to have three layers to be good, or whatever that professor said. It just has to be relevant. The Canon should be not only entertaining, but also instructional, in a historical way. You wanna understand cinema, you gotta learn the past especially, so you can properly appreciate the present.

 

Back to Rocky IV. It's ridiculous. But how can one appreciate pop cinema of the 80s without appreciating something like this movie? It's delightfully dumb. But it still has depth. And nothing more. Nothing more than it needs to have. In its context/setting at least. A highly-simplified, populist take on the Cold War, as viewed through a newly-iconic 1970s folk hero blockbuster action hero type. Highest grossing film of the series, just sayin'. And Sly's most iconic role, clearly.

 

You've had your arthouse now aplenty, lets go mainstream and silly. Soon, at least. Cinematic fluff doesn't usually get its due, but it's nonetheless the stuff so many grow up with. And it counts. Please find a place for it sometime soon.

[chaplinatemyshoe 46]

Rocky III achieved everything Rocky IV did without being a bad movie.

[TKFopp 14]

Rocky III achieved everything Rocky IV did without being a bad movie.

 

To be fair though (and I'm not advocating it for the Canon by any means) Rocky IV is now retroactively more important, even pivotal, to the Rocky canon than III, as without it we wouldn't have Creed, or at least the wonderful version of Creed that we got.

 

And it would have been great if Adonis had found the robot collecting dust in Paulie's old room.

[davhahn 4]

I would be for this if it was a VS episode pitting Rocky IV against some other ridiculous pro-USA 80s camp movie. Maybe the original Red Dawn, Top Gun or maybe War Games. Or my personal favorite: Spies Like Us. I like the idea of pitting movies from completely different genres against one another just because they share a spiritual connection.

[Marsellus_H 118]

I like the idea of pitting movies from completely different genres against one another just because they share a spiritual connection.

 

You mean like Police Academy IV vs Schindler's List?

[Muthsarah 124]

Rocky III achieved everything Rocky IV did without being a bad movie.

 

IV makes III look restrained. That's why IV is better.

 

(Though both are fantastic cheese that EVERYONE has to see to understand pop culture in the 80s.)

 

Rocky IV is the anti-Rocky, but it's also the Rockyest thing ever made. There are two Rocky series: I, II, and VI, and III and IV. Creed's...obviously highly-related (especially to IV), but really, it's the first Creed.

[chaplinatemyshoe 46]

IV's a bad movie though. It might be fun, but most of its fun derives from it being really bad.

 

Plus, there's a huge pivotal sequence that almost entirely involves recycled footage. It's lazy and cheap.

[chaplinatemyshoe 46]

Double post.

[Muthsarah 124]

As far as 80s cheese (especially "patriotic" cheese) goes, I still think Rocky IV is one of the better-made. It's not Cannon. Two Ns.

 

I'm wondering right now, is there space in The Canon for "bad" movies? Good bad movies, that is. Movies that, whatever you want to say about their plots, acting, message, whatever, nonetheless left an impact on pop culture, are fun to watch, and are, perhaps above all, a sign of their times. To me, Rocky IV is an iconic 80s movie, same as Back to the Future, The Breakfast Club, or Robocop. And, FWIW, I hadn't seen it until very, very recently, so I have no nostalgia goggles.

[HoldenMartinson 221]

 

You mean like Police Academy IV vs Schindler's List?

 

You say that as if Police Academy IV wouldn't trounce Schindler's List.

[CaseyLincoln 1]

Of the two movies mentioned at the end of Antichrist, I'd go for 1776 way before Rocky VI.

[jarrycanada 2483]

This is the greatest rocky of them all. for this scene alone.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-8hOKNbtxg

and just like a trip to the dentist just when you think this workout is over it just keeps on going and going.