Category: Rocky 5

Stallone News for the Week

Craig / / 2015, Rocky, Rocky 2, Rocky 3, Rocky 4, Rocky 5, TV

Sly made a few headlines this week…

Every “Rocky” Movie, Ranked

Craig / / 2015, Rocky, Rocky 2, Rocky 3, Rocky 5, Rocky 6, Rocky Balboa

On February 27, 2015, USAToday posted Every “Rocky” Movie, Ranked  by Chris Chase.  For details check out the piece, but here are Chris’ rankings and mine.  We differ quite a bit, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

 

Chris Chase
Craig Zablo
6. Rocky V 6. Rocky V
5. Rocky Balboa 5. Rocky II
4. Rocky II 4. Rocky IV
3. Rocky 3. Rocky III
2. Rocky III 2. Rocky Balboa
1. Rocky IV 1. Rocky

 

Two Stallone Characters That Were Supposed to Die But Didn’t

Craig / / 2015, First Blood, Rocky 5

Recently Mental_Floss  posted 14 Movie Characters Who Were Supposed to Die But Didn’t by Rudie Obias.

Guess who had two characters in the top 14?  That’s right, Sly and here’s what was said:

4. Rambo // First Blood

In the novel First Blood, Rambo commits suicide at the end of a long battle with Sheriff Teasle. Rambo’s death scene was filmed, but Sylvester Stallone saw the potential for a new franchise, so Rambo lived to fight another day in the final version.

 

5. Rocky Balboa // Rocky V

Rocky V was supposed to be the last movie in the franchise, and Stallone ended its screenplay accordingly, with Rocky Balboa dying at the hands of rival Tommy Gunn during a street fight. But during production, director John Avildsen got a call from executives telling him, “‘Oh by the way, Rocky’s not going to die,'” he recalled in 2014. “‘Batman doesn’t die, Superman, James Bond, these people don’t die.” Stallone wrote a new ending featuring Rocky and his son Robert Balboa jogging to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and looking over the city’s skyline.

Rocky 1 -5 Makes the List

Craig / / 2014, Honors, Rocky, Rocky 2, Rocky 3, Rocky 4, Rocky 5

Rocky and Adrian by Aykut Aydoğdu.

On October 24, 2014, SciFighting posted the Top Ten Most Memorable Boxing Movies by Marcus Hogan.  Rocky [II, III, IV and V] came in at #1.  What?  Rocky Balboa didn’t make it?

Here’s what they had to say…

1.) Rocky (II, III, IV, V)

Rocky was the highest-grossing film in 1976, making $225 million worldwide on a $1 million budget. The film was shot in only 28 days, but won 3 Oscars including Best Picture. It is the rags to riches story of Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) who is a loan shark by day and boxer by night. Although this film is not considered non-fiction, former heavyweight boxer Charles “Chuck” Wepner claims that this and all the proceeding Rocky films where based on his life.

The Top Ten Sylvester Stallone Movies

Craig / / 2014, Assassins, Demolition Man, Expendables, Expendables 2, Grudge Match, Oscar, Rocky 4, Rocky 5, Rocky Balboa
On July 5, 2014, The Celebrity Cafe, posted their choices for The Top Ten Sylvester Stallone Movies.   Click over for full details, but for the record their choices were…
  1. Rocky
  2. Assassins
  3. Demolition Man
  4. The Expendables
  5. Rocky IV
  6. Rocky V
  7. Rocky Balboa
  8. Grudge Match
  9. Oscar
  10. Expendables 2
It’s their list, but how could you not include at least one of the Rambo movies or Cop Land or Nighthawks… and Rocky didn’t make the cut??

Rocky and Rambo PodCasts

Craig / / 2014, First Blood, Rambo, Rambo 2, Rambo 3, Rocky, Rocky 2, Rocky 3, Rocky 4, Rocky 5, Rocky 6, Rocky Balboa

Earlier this week, I received the following e-mail:

Hi Mr. Zablo,
I’m Mat Bradley-Tschirgi, Producer of the Sequelcast, a podcast looking at movie franchises. I’d thought you and your StalloneZone readers would be interested in checking out the podcasts we did of the Rocky films this past month. We also covered the Rambo films a few years ago. The podcasts might contain brief moments of explicit language.
Here are the links:
ROCKY III (Guest Paul Goebel of Beat The Geeks): http://traffic.libsyn.com/sequelcast/sequelcast170.mp3
ROCKY IV (Guest Eric Lichtenfeld of The Ultimate Stallone Reader): http://traffic.libsyn.com/sequelcast/sequelcast171.mp3
ROCKY V (Guest Ryan Hoss of the Super Mario Bros. The Movie Archive): http://traffic.libsyn.com/sequelcast/sequelcast172.mp3
ROCKY BALBOA (Guest West Anthony of The Auteurcast): http://traffic.libsyn.com/sequelcast/sequelcast173.mp3
FIRST BLOOD (Guest David Morrell [author of the original First Blood novel]): http://traffic.libsyn.com/sequelcast/sequelcast31.mp3
RAMBO (Guest Eric Lichtenfeld [author of Action Speaks Louder]): http://traffic.libsyn.com/sequelcast/sequelcast34.mp3
Keep up the good work with StalloneZone. The Expendables 3 looks to have a mightier cast than the second. I’m just wondering where Barney’s goatee went in all the promo shots for the film.
Thanks,
Mat Bradley-Tschirgi
***
Thanks Mat for the kind words and the links to the Stallone-related podcasts! – Craig

Crowining Mr. Sports Movies

Craig / / 2014, Death Race 2000, Driven, Grudge Match, Over the Top, Paradise Alley, Rocky, Rocky 2, Rocky 3, Rocky 4, Rocky 5, Rocky 6, Rocky Balboa, Victory

On April 9, 2014, Yahoo! Movies took a look at which actor had played the most sports roles in their piece Crowining Mr. Sports Movies by Brian Enk.

Had they counted each Rocky movie individually (as I think they should have) then Sly would have easily come in first.  At any rate, here’s what the said about him…

—Sylvester Stallone: If we were to tally sports movies as a whole, including sequels, the Italian Stallion would be our champ, with six entries as boxer Rocky Balboa in the “Rocky” movies. Sly’s other sports movie credits include “Death Race 2000” (1975), in which he played deadly cross country racer Machine Gun Joe Viterbo; “Paradise Alley” (1978), in which he played Cosmo Corboni, one of three brothers trying to play the wrestling game in 1940s NYC; “Victory” (1981), in which he played a soccer goalie for the Allied forces as they face off against a German team at a WWII prison camp; “Over the Top” (1986), the greatest arm-wrestling movie ever made; “Driven” (2001), in which he plays former CART champion and car racing mentor Joe Tanto; and “Grudge Match” (2013), in which he plays former boxing champ Henry “Razor” Sharp.