Trevor Meyer

I really enjoy that, while the Rocky series centers on financial success for the first few films, once Rocky “makes it” to the top, the series takes a turn away from materialism, probably around the time that Sylvester Stallone “made it” to the top and realized that it didn’t solve any of the deeper, internal, existential problems that he faced, regardless of how much money he had.

That’s when it gets really interesting.

Apollo Creed seemingly has it all, but in the end, it’s still not enough. As Duke says at his funeral (in Rocky IV: Rocky Vs. Drago)...

“None of his successes had come close to satisfying the questions he had inside. He gave his life to know those answers.”

That’s why I think it was a brilliant move to make Adonis Creed rich in the first Creed film. Within the first 10 minutes, he’s already living in a mansion. Right off the bat, it’s established that he’s not financially motivated.

We can skip past all of that, because money hasn’t solved his problems. He’s on a spiritual journey.

I think Creed III worked perfectly fine without Rocky. And I previously said that there was really no room for Rocky in it, because Adonis isn’t a boxer anymore, so he doesn’t need a mentor, because he’s acting as the mentor for other fighters at this point in his life. But if you did want to put Rocky in it, here’s how I would have done it….

Put him in the pre-title rematch with Conlan. He’s still the mentor right up until Adonis’ retirement. Then when we cut to the present day and Adonis is retired, Rocky is nowhere to be found. He disappears for almost the entire movie, until the funeral scene. He shows up to the funeral, and he stays for the final fight.

More of an extended cameo than a starring role, but at least he wouldn’t be lingering around with nothing to do for two hours.

(Now that I’m saying it out loud, I’m pretty sure they did a similar thing with Emilio Estevez in D3: The Mighty Ducks.)

I know people had mixed feelings about the final fight in Creed III being a little too metaphorical.

But most Rocky/Creed films show us the first couple of rounds and the last couple of rounds of the final fight, and fill in the middle with a montage so we don’t have to watch the whole fight in real time. After nine movies, it gets a little repetitive. You’ve got to mix it up.

We still see the real fight at the beginning and the end of the climactic sequence of Creed III. That “cage match” bit was just a new way to fill in the montage section. I love it.

If you’re curious about which version of a film has a higher audience rating (theatrical cut vs. extended edition, etc.), but IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes don’t have separate pages for each version, check out Vudu.

More Meat, Less Cheese, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky IV: Rocky Vs. Drago - The Ultimate Director’s Cut

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for the entire Rocky franchise, through Creed II.

The first time I saw the director's cut of Rocky IV, I didn’t like it at all.

You see, I was expecting something amazing, something transformative, because I had just seen the director's cut of The Godfather Part III, now titled The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone, and it had completely changed my feelings about that film for the better.

So when I first saw Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago - The Ultimate Director’s Cut, released in 2021, I was hoping to have yet another amazing cinematic experience. I mean, even the Tomatometer had jumped up from 37% for the theatrical cut to 80% for the director’s cut, so I was ecstatic to finally get to see a truly great version of Rocky IV. But almost immediately, I was both bewildered and discouraged.

Why Did You Cut That Out?

The director’s cut opens with a seven-minute recap of Rocky III, which just felt clunky, unnecessary, and sloppily edited. It felt like filler, as though Sylvester Stallone (who wrote, directed, and starred in the film) had cut out so much material that he needed to stuff it with footage from Rocky III to meet a reasonable runtime.

Right off the bat, the absence of “Eye Of The Tiger” during the opening sequence was distressing. (Anytime you take “Eye Of The Tiger” out of a film, I am going to be a little bit sad about it.)

Time and time again, as the film progressed, I kept asking, ”Why did you cut this out? Why did you cut that out? What was the point of that change?”

For example, during the scene where Rocky tries to talk Apollo Creed out of fighting Drago, a lot of the dialogue is shortened, which I think was meant to make the scene a little bit more clipped and realistic, but the choppy editing is distracting.

It would have been better if the audio was overlapped so that it gave the appearance of the characters cutting each other off mid-sentence, rather than just chopping lines of dialogue in half at seemingly arbitrary points. It's not as noticeable if you don't know the scene by heart from the original theatrical version, but it is very distracting if you know what the dialogue used to be.

Most of Brigitte Nielsen’s scenes have been cut, and honestly I can't think of any reason other than Stallone having a vendetta against her after their divorce, because there doesn't seem to be any story benefit to removing most of her dialogue from the film.

Despite the critics’ love for this version of the film, I just wasn’t sold on it. In fact, I thought it was maybe even worse than the theatrical cut, which I had never been a huge fan of in the first place.

The second time I watched it, the editing felt less jarring, now that I knew what to expect, and I could appreciate more what they were going for. But I still didn’t love it. My third viewing was better, but not by much.

It wasn’t until my fourth viewing that I had my breakthrough moment.

Changing The Landscape Of The Entire Rocky Series

This time, I did a marathon, starting with Rocky and ending with Creed II, which I had done before, except this time I inserted the director’s cut of Rocky IV where I would normally watch the theatrical cut, and when I did that, my opinion completely changed. I’m talking a total 180, because this time I was able to accept the new version of the film as if it had been the only version ever released.

Up until that point, my main criticisms of the new cut were all predicated on the idea that I knew the theatrical cut so well that it felt wrong that pieces of it were missing, which is a criticism that a lot of die hard Rocky IV fans had. From beginning to end, I was comparing the new version to the old version that I had grown up with and knew so well.

But if I approached the director’s cut as if it were the only version of Rocky IV that had ever existed, and contemplated its place in the overall series, it held up much better than I had originally given it credit for. Even more importantly though, it changed the landscape of the entire Rocky series, as well as its perceived trajectory.

Growing up, I had always referred to Rocky IV as “the silly one.” It was the one where the franchise had truly lost its way, despite Rocky IV’s financial success.

Rocky started out as a thoughtful character drama, which continued in Rocky II and also in Rocky III, but by the time it reached Rocky III, it started to get a little bit ridiculous. (The fight with Hulk Hogan comes to mind.)

Also, Clubber Lang was not as well-developed of a character as Apollo was in the first two films. In fact, he seemed like a bit of a caricature, a cartoonish Hollywood villain with no redeeming qualities.

Rocky III was where the series started to move away from character and started focusing more on the action, the training, and the boxing itself.

But then with Rocky IV, it had reached the peak of its absurdity. It was starting to feel like a bad 1980s TV show. I got the sense that they were out of story material by that point and were just checking boxes.

Paulie has a birthday. The Balboa family gets a robot. Rocky and Adrian briefly celebrate their anniversary, just to remind us that their love story used to be the center of this whole thing.

Furthermore, the Rocky character became unrecognizable, getting rich and famous so far beyond the character that we fell in love with in the original film that it felt like a completely different series by this point. The heart and soul of the original had been lost, further justifying the need for Rocky V to bring things back down to earth.

The More Substantial Differences

Before we get into the more substantial differences between the theatrical cut and the director’s cut, let’s address the elephant that’s been kicked out of the room: The robot has been completely excised from the film, which is a miraculous feat in and of itself. That meant losing a lot of other unrelated content, simply because the robot happened to be standing in the room at a time. Still, it was well worth it.

Second, the director’s cut just looks a lot better. It's been converted to 4K, and the aspect ratio has been changed to widescreen. The theatrical cut was shot in 1.85 : 1 (which is about the shape of a smart TV or smartphone now). Converting it to widescreen means that they had to chop off the top and bottom of the frame, which is why I think Stallone chose different takes of a lot of the scenes and had them play out in wide and medium shots, rather than close-ups.

This works better for a few reasons. With HDTV being commonplace now, there's no problem with being able to see all of the details of the frame, even in a wide shot. Also, it adds a degree of subtlety to the cinematography. Where in the theatrical cut they used extreme close-ups to make everything look big, bold, and dramatic, almost like a music video, the new version is much more subtle. It also gives the film more of the feel of the first two Rocky films, in which there are a lot more wide shots where you could see the characters’ physical relationship to one another in the setting.

(Speaking of making the film feel more like the previous installments, the director’s cut even goes so far as to remove some of Vince DiCola’s score, replacing it with Bill Conti themes from the other five Rocky films.)

One of the biggest shifts that I had to make in order to really appreciate the new version of Rocky IV was to accept the recap of Rocky III as part of the narrative structure of the fourth film. The first time I saw it, it felt like a “previously on Rocky” recap that you might see on a weekly TV drama.

But once I was able to view it as part of Act I of Rocky IV, it all played much better in my mind. It was all part of the setup that occurs before the inciting incident, which is when Apollo sees Drago on TV.

If you don't count the recap as part of the setup, then narratively what you're left with is the inciting incident happening in the very first scene of Rocky IV proper, so I can see that, in the absence of the birthday party, the robot, and all of that other stuff that got cut out, they needed a setup before the inciting incident, and Rocky III provided that portion of the narrative.

I really do enjoy the short run time of the film. It's listed as being 94 minutes long (three minutes longer than the theatrical cut), but that’s including credits. Without the credits, it actually comes in at about 88 minutes, so it is a very tight narrative and quite short for a live action film, but that's one of the reasons why it has become my favorite of the Rocky series (yes, really), because it tells a compelling story in a very short period of time, which is rare in live-action films.

One of the other major differences in this cut is that the antagonist, Ivan Drago, is portrayed as being a much more sympathetic, well-rounded character. In the theatrical cut, he was intentionally portrayed as a machine. He looks like a Terminator. He is cold. He is merciless. He is a force to be reckoned with. But one thing he is not is a human being.

Stallone, after a few decades of growth and maturation, realized the error of portraying Americans as “all good” and Russians as “all bad” and sought to remedy this problem in the new cut.

As a result, the American characters are shown to have more flaws, and Drago is shown to have more vulnerabilities. He's portrayed as being a little bit awkward. It also seems, at least to me, that he holds a little bit of admiration and respect for Rocky that is absent in the theatrical version. He doesn't actually seem to have any feelings of animosity toward Rocky.

In fact, in some scenes, he doesn't really seem to want to be there at all. He's basically the Russian equivalent of Captain America. Modern science has transformed him into a super soldier that his government uses as a mascot, a propaganda tool, seemingly against his wishes.

It's even clearer in the director’s cut that Drago has his own individualistic agenda. There's an extended clip after the death of Apollo where he says, “Soon, I will defeat real champion. Soon, everyone will know my name. Drago. Drago.” As much as his government wants to use him as a symbol, he just wants to be the world’s best fighter, like Rocky, Apollo, and every other hero and villain in the franchise.

In this version, Drago has new dialogue, including the line, “I did not come here to lose,” which is interesting, because in Rocky Balboa, Rocky says to Mason Dixon, ”A lot of people come to Vegas to lose, but I didn't.” Also, when Drago says, ”Soon, whole world will know my name. Drago. Drago.” That line is repeated after Rocky’s training sequence, when he reaches the top of a mountain and yells, “Drago! Drago! Drago!” So we can see that in this new continuity, Rocky is actually quoting Drago in a lot of cases, further solidifying the impact that they've had on each other.

On the American side, in the theatrical cut, when Apollo makes an offensive joke about the Russian fighter, it’s followed by reaction shots of the audience laughing. In the director’s cut, however, when Apollo makes the same offensive joke, we see reaction shots of the crowd looking uncomfortable. The looks on their faces say, “I can't believe he just said that.”

Depth, Emotion, And Foreshadowing

There are more scenes with Adrian, which add a level of depth, emotion, and foreshadowing to the tragic events that follow, both in Rocky IV and Rocky V. More than any other character in the movie, Adrian sees the danger in what Apollo and Rocky are doing when they each fight Drago. She seems to sense that tragedy is on its way, and we know from the events of Rocky V that her bad feelings were absolutely correct.

The fight scenes have been extended, which is great for spectacle, but also for the story. In the theatrical version, it appears that Apollo doesn't have a chance against Drago, and Drago mercilessly beats him to death, which makes the antagonist seem even more heartless. But in the director’s cut, Apollo actually gives Drago a run for his money, prompting him to rally and retaliate, which makes it seem like a more balanced encounter.

When they cut out Paulie’s birthday sequence, and the rest of the subplot between him and the robot, I was worried that he wouldn't get enough screen time. However, he still has plenty to do in the film, particularly during the Russia training sequence, and of course he still has his great spotlight moment when he says to Rocky, “If I could just unzip myself and step out and be someone else, I’d want to be you.”

Rocky Jr. also gets less screen time in this version of the film, mainly because in the theatrical version he was always standing next to his robot. (I was always confused about whether the robot belonged to Paulie or to Rocky Jr, now that I think about it.)

Duke gets more screen time and has a great speech at Apollo’s funeral, as does Rocky. Overall, there’s more emphasis on Rocky and Apollo’s friendship this time around.

The added scene of Rocky meeting with the boxing commission to get sanctioned to fight Drago is reminiscent of a similar scene in Rocky Balboa, where his request for a boxing license is denied, which is another bit of connective tissue making the director’s cut more stylistically and dramatically similar to later films like Rocky Balboa and Creed.

Now, I know that this is a controversial opinion among Rocky IV fans, but I would have cut out the “No Easy Way Out'' montage, just because I've always felt that it was shameless filler that just showed us stuff that we already knew, including some bits that we literally just saw two minutes ago.

The transition would have been seamless. Rocky and Adrian could have had their talk on the staircase, Rocky could have walked away, and then we could have cut to him talking to his son the next morning, before leaving for Russia. Nothing would have been lost, narratively speaking.

However, the sequence does play better in the director's cut, because the flashbacks have at least been changed to black-and-white. One of my objections to the sequence in the theatrical cut has always been that it seemed the montage was done for the benefit of the audience, to manipulate them. It was almost like dropping a music video in the middle of the movie for no good reason.

But changing the flashbacks to black-and-white made it more clear from a visual perspective that they aren't there for the audience’s benefit; they’re what’s going on inside Rocky’s head. It's internal. They're giving us a peek inside his mind. It's a small change, but I think it's more effective. Also, Rocky Balboa uses black-and-white footage for dramatic effect, again making this director's cut more consistent with future films in the franchise.

Some scenes have been deleted, but with the dialogue from them repurposed as voiceover narration, giving us even more glimpses inside Rocky’s head, which is also a technique used later in Rocky Balboa.

Rocky’s post-fight speech is also different. In the theatrical version, it feels like a badly written support group scene, where he says, “During this fight, I seen a lot of changing. The way you felt about me and the way I felt about you,” meaning that when he arrived in Russia, the crowd seemed to be against him, and by the end of the flight, somehow they seemed to be on his side, and that was his proof that people could change.

That’s a little too cheesy for a modern Rocky film, so this time he instead calls back to his fallen comrade Apollo when he says, “My best friend, he once said, ‘You can't change.’ He died . . . What I’m trying to say is that if I can change and you can change, everybody can change.”

This slight reframing seems to suggest that they actually haven't changed yet, but if they don't, they'll die just like Apollo, and a close-up of Drago when Rocky says that line, “you can change,” shows that Drago is contemplating changing his ways, which really pays off in a big way during the climax of Creed II, where he does see history repeating itself and does make a different choice, because he knows that if he doesn't change, his own son could be the one to die this time.

There's also a moment, after the fight at the end of the movie, where Rocky and Drago touch gloves after it's all over, before Rocky leaves the ring, indicating that they actually have gained a level of mutual respect for each other.

Finally, the song that plays after Rocky's speech is, “Eye Of The Tiger,” which is a nice callback in honor of Apollo Creed, who first used the phrase in Rocky III. When that happened, even my first time through, I couldn’t help but nod, smile, and say, “Okay, you got me. That was pretty good.”

Better Than The Theatrical Cut

I’ve seen Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago many times since my big breakthrough moment, and despite all odds, it truly has become my favorite of all of the Rocky films. It’s short, it’s punchy (pun intended), it’s a blockbuster, and it looks better than any of the other installments released prior to Rocky Balboa.

Furthermore, I no longer refer to it as "the silly one." For the time being, I think that title belongs to Rocky III. Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago now marks the moment where the franchise begins moving in a more serious, dramatic, and even tragic direction.

For me, the secret all along was to view it not as a standalone film, but to recognize its place in the overall series, and what it accomplishes, better than the theatrical cut ever did.