Rocky is the only movie I can think of whose title appears onscreen twice in the opening credits.
The very first image of the movie is its title — ROCKY — in huge block letters scrolling from right to left across the screen as Bill Conti’s triumphant fanfare plays.
After the title passes off the screen, the scene shifts to a boxing match that appears to be taking place inside an old church. Club fighter Rocky Balboa dukes it out with another pugilist, Spider Rico. Rocky wins the fight, but he gets headbutted above his left eye. Rocky’s prize for this glorious victory: Forty bucks and a scar on his forehead that will never heal.
The whole scene, from opening bell to the final emotional gut-punch of learning the pathetic amount of money he’s earned for a night’s work, takes about five minutes. Then the opening credits resume and once again the word “Rocky” flashes on the screen. This time the name’s tiny, and appear over a wide shot of a dingy, dirty Philadelphia street. Now Rocky’s name is almost literally in the gutter; he nearly steps on it as he stumbles home.
The dual titles, one big and one small, introduces one of Rocky’s most important and prevalent themes: The gulf between people’s big dreams and their hopeless realities, and the struggle to press onward when that gulf seems insurmountable and everyone around you makes you feel small. When Rocky begins, the “Italian Stallion” has already been a boxer for years; later we learn he’s already 30 and mostly earns a living serving as muscle for a loan shark.
Through sheer luck, he receives a title shot against the heavyweight champion of the world, Apollo Creed. The night before the fight, Rocky can’t sleep. He goes to the Philadelphia Spectrum and wanders around the empty arena. From the ring, he gazes at an image of himself on an enormous banner — the big “ROCKY” of his imagination and the little Rocky of the streets juxtaposed in a single image.
At that moment, Rocky doesn’t believe in himself, partly because nobody has ever believed in him before. Even some of Rocky’s friends underestimate his spirit and his intelligence because he looks like a palooka. That’s how it’s been for the last half century for Rocky as well. A lot of cinephiles underestimate it because it looks like a simplistic sports film about a palooka. They fixate on its bombastic moments and don’t catch its subtleties, like its recurrent use of big and small Rockys to symbolize his insecurities.
They laugh at Rocky punching sides of beef as part of his eclectic training regimen without observing how that act parallels the insult that stings Rocky a few scenes prior. When he refuses to break the thumbs of a man who owes Rocky’s boss some money, the loan shark’s driver yells, “So long meat bag!” For Rocky, smashing his fists into a cow carcass is as much a way to strengthen his muscles as it is a rejection of the image forced upon him by society.
Above all, the film’s critics complain that while Rocky may be an effective formula boxing picture, it’s unworthy of the prize of Best Picture, which it won at the Academy Awards in 1977 against some extremely tough competition. The Daily Beast put Rocky in the headline of their “Worst Oscar Winners” piece along with 2004’s Crash. The Christian Science Monitor once chose Rocky as one of the Best Picture winners that “weren’t supposed to win.” The expansive Filmsite.org lists the film on its Oscar winners page next to the word “WORST!” highlighted in red.
The argument against Rocky winning Best Picture is typified by this 2025 piece listing the “worst” Best Picture winners in Oscar history:
This was also the year of Bound for Glory (which was never going to win), Network, Taxi Driver, and the best, most prescient, and most sophisticated of the year, which has since become a classic: All the President’s Men.
Whether All the President’s Men is the best film of 1976, or the most sophisticated, is debatable. (I’m not sure how it was more prescient than Network, which was practically clairvoyant about mass media’s dark future.) Regardless, All the President’s Men is an outstanding journalistic thriller; and Taxi Driver and Network are both exceptional films as well.
But you know what else is an exceptional film? Rocky.
Awards experts often discuss “narratives” and their impact on the Oscar race; the uplifting (or disturbing) behind-the-scenes stories that shape the winners of these prizes as much (or more) than the actual onscreen performances. Sylvester Stallone arguably had the greatest Oscar narrative of all-time: An out-of-work actor, Stallone wrote Rocky’s screenplay in three days and then — despite his financial desperation — refused to let anyone else play the title role, even though his obstinance imperiled the massive paycheck he could have received had he allowed producers to cast an established leading man as Rocky Balboa.
Stallone bet on himself, convinced the powers that be to give him the role, and then delivered a terrific performance. Then Rocky became the single biggest box-office hit of 1976, turning Stallone from a nobody to a massive movie star almost overnight. It’s a great Oscar narrative, even if Stallone ultimately lost the year’s Best Actor prize to the late Peter Finch from Network, and the Best Original Screenplay award to that film’s writer, Paddy Chayefsky.
But Stallone’s real-life story means more to Rocky than some feel-good vibes. Part of the reason Stallone was the only person to play Rocky Balboa is because Stallone suffused all of his own feelings about himself and his own career — his frustrations, his anxieties, his desires — into the character. Stallone may not have directed Rocky — John G. Avildsen did — but many sequences verge on pure autobiography.
Consider the scene early in the film where Rocky goes to visit his buddy Paulie (Burt Young) at a bar. He winds up catching a news report about heavyweight boxing champ Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), whose next fight will celebrate America’s upcoming bicentennial. The bartender is dismissive (and more than a little racist).
“Will you take a look a that guy?” he gripes. “I mean, where are the real fighters gonna come from?”
READ MORE: Sylvester Stallone Blames Himself For Bad Rambo Sequels
After the bartender drops a racial epithet and calls Apollo a clown, Rocky replies “You’re calling Apollo Creed a clown?” then adds “This man is champion of the world. He took his best shot and become champ. What shot did you ever take?”
There Rocky clearly voices Stallone’s own philosophy — as evidenced by Rocky itself. His admiration for those who take their shot dovetails with Rocky’s later confession (not long after he wanders the empty Philadelphia Spectrum) that he cannot defeat Apollo, so he only wishes to survive the fight and “go the distance” — something none of Creed’s prior opponents had ever done.
In other words: Despite the fact that he has has no shot at victory, he’s going to take one anyway. And those words mirror Rocky’s most famous image: Stallone ascending the steps to the entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where he raises his arms in victory to celebrate the conclusion of his training for his underdog bout with Apollo.
The image of Stallone atop the steps remains one of the most iconic shots in 1970s cinema. But while everyone remembers Rocky’s big celebration, and the sound of Bill Conti’s rousing score, they often forget that Stallone’s sprint up the steps is actually the second scene set at the Art Museum.
Rocky first climbs the museum’s steps on the first day of his training. That time, he wheezes and struggles as he limps to the top of the plaza, clutching his side with a nasty cramp. The Conti music in this run is wistful and melancholic.
But faced with adversity, Rocky (and Stallone) continued; kept working and pushing. Eventually, he willed himself to the top of the proverbial mountain. He took his shot. His triumph is not in necessarily beating Apollo Creed (Spoiler alert: he doesn’t beat him) but in seeing a difficult task through to the end.
That is why Rocky endures 50 years later, and why so many generations of audiences have fallen in love with the character and related to his journey. It’s also why, 50 years later, Rocky remains an outstanding piece of 1970s cinema; gritty, tough, funny, sad, and filled with terrific, quotable dialogue — like when Rocky defends his work for the loan shark (“It’s a living!”) and his grizzled trainer Mickey spits back “It’s a waste of life!”
When people dismiss Rocky’s Oscar win, I usually assume what they are actually dismissing are its sequels, which did grow more formulaic and increasingly outlandish over time until, in 2006’s Rocky Balboa, Stallone was literally 60 years old fighting the heavyweight champ of the world. (Then again, no matter what else each Rocky sequel is about, they are all about Stallone’s life at the time he wrote them. Rocky II is about a man dealing with sudden celebrity; Rocky III is about a massive star struggling with career complacency; even Rocky Balboa is about a man who feels he still has more to say and do pushing back against an industry that’s deemed him over the hill. Plus, in a world where a nearly 60-year-old Mike Tyson headlines the most-streamed sporting event ever, is Rocky Balboa in an exhibition match against the champ really that absurd?)
Either way: A movie is not its sequels. And the original Rocky is a masterpiece. That doesn’t mean Taxi Driver and Network aren’t masterpieces as well. They are; if either had won Best Picture, they would have been worthy winners as well. But it’s not Rocky’s fault that a lot of great movies came out in 1976. The film took its shot, and it went the distance.
Every Rocky and Creed Movie Ranked From Worst to Best
It’s the best sports movie franchise in history — but the Rocky and Creed series have had their highs and lows. Here they are:
