After the “United Artists Presents” card, we expect the traditional Rocky fanfare to trumpet while the title crawls across the screen. Instead, 39-year-old writer-director-star Sylvester Stallone is telling us right away this is not just another run-of-the-mill Rocky retread:
Notice, of course, only the Soviet robotic boxing glove explodes; the USA glove remains steadfast and unmoveable. For this is East vs. West…and only the Champion will remain standing.
Forty years after its production Rocky IV remains a camp classic and fan favorite, but did Rocky IV actually help propel the Cold War to its crumbling conclusion?
The Hollywood Reporter noted on March 12, 1985 principal photography for the film would begin March 18 in Wyoming (standing in for Russia). A day before that report, Mikhail Gorbachev would assume office as general secretariat of the Communist Party. In a nice touch, Gorbachev and other members of the Politburo attend the final fight between Rocky and Drago:
The film was released domestically on November 27, 1985. Just a week earlier, and only a day before Rocky IV’s Los Angeles premiere, President Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev met at the Geneva Summit. The goal: to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world.
The president was able to view Rocky IV at Camp David, along with Mrs. Reagan and a few aides. The screening is chronicled in the memoir Movie Nights with the Reagans by Mark Weinberg (Simon & Schuster, 2018). According to Weinberg, Reagan considered Stallone “one of the most prominent Hollywood supporters.” The president and former actor believed the fourth Rocky “offered some of the most realistic fight scenes he’d ever seen,” and he appreciated the film’s happy ending — a happy ending for non-Communists the world over, at any rate — which depicts a heartrending speech from Balboa (translated into Russian by the ring announcer) about first impressions and changing attitudes, which ostensibly is Stallone’s takeaway message for the masses at the multiplex: that the Drago-Rocky fight was really a symbol for world peace, nuclear disarmament, detente, anti-war, and whatever else one wishes, so well received that Premier Gorbachev (David Lloyd Austin) gives a standing ovation, goading Drago’s manager (Michael Pataki) to do the same.
On the western hemisphere, Rocky IV was a smash hit, the second-highest grossing film of 1985 with the biggest Christmas season gross to that time. It also received the widest distribution of any film to that point.
For such a powerhouse, Rocky IV is an extremely safe PG family film, by-the-numbers, slight on character, plot, running time…and politics. However, Stallone slyly makes use of the cultural tensions at the time through casting, wardrobe, music and lighting; he and his fellow filmmakers relished playing into the good versus evil motif that characterized U.S.-Soviet relations in the ’80s.
Throughout the crisp 91 minutes, apart from the final speech, the Cold War insinuations are baked into the film, but Stallone clearly has no interest in veering from the lane of predictability, as stylish and as “current” (i.e. MTV) as he intends Rocky IV to be. Gone, for instance, is Bill Conti, in favor of Vince “Transformers” DiCola and an endless parade of songs attempting to equal Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” hit from 1982’s Rocky III.
The tone and look are vastly different from the first three. Philadelphia, once a pivotal character in the series — and perhaps one of Rocky V’s saving graces — is non-existent, even though the first act ostensibly takes place in the City of Brotherly Love. Act II, in Vegas, features a musical number as gaudy as a tourist from Texas wearing an American flag jacket in the Roman Colosseum. The third act, in Russia, is where the film at last takes off with its contrasting training montages and final bout.
There are few deft touches in a not-so-subtle film. One of them, though, is not the requisite press conference between the two fighters:
Michael Pataki: It’s all lies and false propaganda to support this antagonistic and violent government!
Paulie: Whoa…violent?! Hey, we don’t keep our people behind a wall with machine guns!
Another over the top sequence is the aforementioned Vegas segment, particularly with Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) hamming it up — exponentially evoking his George Washington parody in Rocky — with James Brown. Other than possibly Paulie’s servant, the infamous robot, the Vegas number is Stallone’s commentary on American over-confidence and excess; Creed dies in the ring moments later. Rocky’s subsequent match against Drago is less a statement about capitalism versus socialism than it is a revenge mission.
But there are two nice touches involving Creed’s former trainer, Duke (Tony Burton). One is when Rocky’s small crew arrives in Russia (Vancouver, British Columbia) and we see the reactions of Paulie, Duke and Rocky as they each exit the small craft. Duke gazes on the billowing Soviet flags. The group is constantly followed by presumably Soviet KGB agents. Later, in the secluded cabin before a fireplace, while Paulie roasts marshmallows listening to “The Chipmunk Song,” Duke quietly beats one of the KGB agents in chess. “Checkmate, friend.”
According to Philip Taubman in the New York Times (Jan. 4, 1986), Soviet cultural officials denounced both Rocky IV and Rambo: First Blood, Part II, “saying they were part of a deliberate propaganda campaign to portray Russians as cruel and treacherous enemies.” Stallone’s Rambo debuted in May of 1985, and ranked just above Rocky IV (and behind Back to the Future and Beverly Hills Cop) as the third top grossing film of the year.
Was there some kind of agenda from Stallone’s camp to produce anti-Soviet “lies and false propaganda” at the start of Reagan’s second term? In any event, by the time of ill-fated Rocky V’s release, November 16, 1990, the Berlin Wall had already fallen; the formal collapse of the USSR occurred on December 26, 1991.
One could argue, however, that the Cold War truly ended decades earlier, citing the Cuban Missile Crisis as the climax of Cold War tension, at least between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. In fact, a boxing movie debuted that year, Requiem for a Heavyweight, written by Rod Serling and starring Anthony Quinn, Mickey Rooney as his trainer, and Cassius Clay as the young boxer who pummels him.
In reviewing Stallone’s 2021 director’s cut, Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago, Terri White of Empire wrote, “[I]t’s not about solving the Cold War or even a simple revenge yarn wrapped in bombastic patriotism,” arguing the director’s cut improved the characterizations of both Apollo and Balboa.
In wake of its popular success, Rocky IV was generally belittled in the press. It collected a number of Razzies, including Worst Musical Score and Worst Actor (Stallone). Almost four decades after its release, its unapologetic nationalism is reflected in elements of today’s polarized America. Its place in American culture, for better or worse, is secured.