Are You For or Against Stallone Cutting the 'Rocky IV' Robot?
Rocky IV is one of the most emotional of the series... and also the weirdest. But should that weirdness be nixed from the upcoming director's cut?
The deeper we dove into the Rocky universe, the weirder the movies got. Just look at Rocky IV. The first film in the franchise was about getting your shot, Rocky II was about being a winner, Rocky III was about staying on top...and finally, Rocky IV was supposed to be about handling loss.
But even though we all remember the Ivan Drago portions and the training montage, there are some weird tonal inconsistencies that Sylvester Stallone wants to address in his upcoming director's cut, which is set to be released in celebration of the film's 35th anniversary.
He took to Twitter to let people know he was going to improve the movie.
Stallone also put the story on Instagram, where some users are worried that a new cut means the removal of the robot from the movie. When confronted with this, Stallone said he intends to fully cut Paulie’s robot from the movie, responding to questions with stuff like “the robot is going to the junkyard forever, no more robot."
“Don’t cut the robot,” wrote one Instagram user. To which Stallone replied: “I don’t like the robot anymore.”
This is all funny, but why are we cutting this robot anyway?
Well, aside from being so out of the tone of the movie, it moves the Rocky franchise into something kind of goofy. How can you take Drago seriously if you have to wonder about the kind of universe this story takes place in?
I mean, Paulie is probably having sex with this robot...and do we have similar robots fighting in the military? Are sentient robots just a thing rich people have?
I usually think the director's cuts are tricky, there are amazing ones, like Kingdom of Heaven, but you can also go overboard and have too many cuts of the film, like in Blade Runner. Really everyone should study the way Ridley Scott does it, because he makes both sides of the argument.
In my heart of hearts, I like the idea of editing this movie in a way to make it feel like it belongs with the others and in a way that exploits the emotion without cheap laughs. But I also don't want Paulie to be lonely for the rest of his life. The guy really loved that robot.
Are you for or against the removal of the robot from Rocky IV?
Let us know in the comments.