Stallone owes it to himself: Rocky saga cannot end with a spin-off like Creed II. I’ve been thinking about this for a few months, but after seeing Rambo’s fifth chapter, I couldn’t help but write, because in life everything passes, and at a certain point we have to connect the dots by untying the knots we have left behind; and, for Sylvester Stallone, the final of Rocky is one of these. It can be supposed from his recent statements, that the only obstacle to the filming of the last episode is “the fear that it will not be a success”, but, please, at his age and after such a career, Sly can easily afford to do what he likes, without having to prove anything to anyone.
So here the only grand finale that I imagined for Rocky’s exit. But first, two premises: I am a true Rocky fanatic, plus, writing is part of my job. I gave life to one of my characters, in my small way, so I can understand what it means, with my head and my heart, to accept the idea of putting an end to the history of one’s alter ego. In facts, from the moment you create it, it continues to beat inside, to be part of you. Even more, I presume, if it characterized your career for 43 years by entering the imagination of millions of people around the world.
But now we come to the story. I strongly believe that Stallone should dare bringing to the cinemas a truly unsettling movie, whose protagonists are essentially two: he and Rocky. Yes, you got it right, if I could write the script of the last chapter of the Italian Stallion saga, I would work on the idea of him meeting with the person who gave him life in 1976, writing the script of a movie that became a myth.
Maybe not everyone knows it, but the story in the story is really amazing: Stallone was not doing well at all, since he had to sell his dog (what you see in the movie) because he didn’t have a penny to feed him until, after attending the epic match between Muhammad Ali and the almost unknown Chuck Wepner (who endured for all 15 rounds), he shut himself in his home for three days and gave birth to the first draft of Rocky’s script.
Then, if you consider that the producers interested in the script didn’t want Stallone to perform the main character, and that, once convinced, they gave the movie a ridiculously small budget, here are the reasons why the one between Stallone and Rocky is not just story between the author and a fictional character, but the archetype of the man who goes beyond the confines of his imagination, transposing himself into a cinematographic character capable like no other to enter the iconographic pantheon of, at least, three generations around the world, from ’76 until today.
Definitely glorious.
This is why Stallone must do himself a favour, as well as all of us, by having from Rocky the relay which himself gave to his character 43 years ago, writing that script.
And, still, because we haven’t heard the bell yet.
