Rocky
Sometimes you really need someone to take a chance on you and believe in you. That’s it.
I genuinely didn’t expect Rocky to be about love and feeling like a loser. Rocky shocked me about how it focuses on the topic of being a loser, how it feels through different people, and when given a lucky break Rocky really only cares about Adrian which tbh got me a little. I’m a romantic! It’s about love! Cmon I’m gonna love it! Who doesn’t love love?
Start of this movie I couldn’t stop laughing at parts, it’s definitely The Italian Blueprint. Ive seen boys like this, do I know any Italians? No. But it’s something that so clearly became the blueprint I’ve seen boys like this. Also Rocky can’t stay still for one second and the way everyone has to move him around made me laugh it’s just such a small thing, the pull of “are you listening?” as he shuffles and rocks back and forth.
Stallone has the saddest eyes you ever did see, they are droopy yeah but there’s this just sad distant eye vibe and he looks SO Italian it’s like 100 things clicked into my head that all lead to “I see why Jeremy Allen white has that vibe, Stallone did it” not to say they look the same just yk that’s his grandpa in a sense. Basically I understood the cultural impact of Stallone so quickly through this movie.
I find, I really did need to see this movie. Which is really really funny. Not haha funny, just funny. Rocky is 30, he’s a little dumb, but he has a good heart, he likes a woman who’s really shy, and is a failing boxer. He wins matches but it’s nothing good, and honestly his life is so shit but he’s living it. So what? It’s the admitting of being a loser not the actual loss that hurts which I find to be Rocky most interesting part. When Rocky admits he’s a loser, been a loser, 30 and gonna box this big shot in his dingy apartment unable to convey it to Mike face but yelling enough he definitely heard I went “yeah. This movie is gas”.
But it already sold me before that, this movie shows you how everyone Rocky interacts with is a loser. And i can’t even hate them, not really, because in the same way they are losers Rocky gives them all a chance not to be. And this feeling of being a loser, living with losers, not going anywhere not being nothing not for the lack of trying or because you don’t want to but because-honestly-it’s just not happening. And there’s something about that bit, that part where that’s the reality of your situation really really makes me love this movie.
Apollo isn’t even a bad guy, i can’t even be mad at him even in the face of his little American outfits (which was honestly so funny) because he started this whole ball of giving people a chance. Even in the ring the second he took it seriously that was also a chance he gave Rocky to be serious to be seen seriously.
My favourite scene is Adrian and Paul scene, again for the same thing as Rocky and Mike but for her it’s her clarity. She isn’t scared, well she is, but she’s fed up. And the perspective splice on the same idea the blow up from all characters but hers really touched me because you can be good all your damn life and still be seen as a loser. So what was being good all for? If you’re just gonna be called loser by the person you’re being good to?
I genuinely loved how this movie was about love, being given a chance, and about losers. You aren’t somebody until you are and even then what does it matter? He didn’t win in the end but it definitely felt like it. I think someone seeing you is worth something, even before you were something. I love that a lot.