Rocky IV is easily the most deranged of the pugilist saga. It’s the one where Sylvester Stallone’s working class Philly boy takes on the Soviet Union and solves the Cold War. It’s the one with James Brown. It’s the one in which about half the length of the movie is montages, a couple for scenes that happened mere minutes earlier. It’s the one that was semi-remade, less nuts this time, as Creed II. But perhaps most of all, it’s the one where Burt Young’s Paulie spends most of his time hanging out with a giant robot. It’s the most ’80s of Rocky movies, if not the most ’80s of all movies.
Don’t fix what ain’t broke, as they say. And yet that’s exactly what Stallone is doing. In a post on Instagram, Stallone — who, as with half the Rockys, wrote and directed on top of starring in it — said he’s going back to the franchise’s most notorious entry, giving it a rehabbed director’s cut. Alas, it already sounds like he’s making it worse. When one commenter asked if it would “expand on the relationship between Paulie and his robot,” they were met with most grim news: “The robot is going to the junkyard forever,” Stallone wrote, “No more robot.”
https://twitter.com/murderwizard/status/1300160957436563457
When another commenter pleaded with Stallone to change his mind, asking him simply, “Don’t cut the robot,” they, too, were met with despairing news. “I don’t like the robot anymore,” Stallone replied.
Will cooler heads prevail? Can the internet save Stallone from himself? Will people take a quick break from protesting and social justice reform and whip out a change.org post defending one of the Reagan era’s strangest cinematic sights? Only time will tell.
