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Sly's Rocky Road
by Richard Horgan |
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11/16/2006 at 10:10:25 PM |
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On the one hand, there are the three feature film remakes that have won Best Picture - Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Ben-Hur (1959) and My Fair Lady (1964). On the other, there are the three recent movies that have had the gall to try and redo a movie that has already won the film industry’s top prize.
But unlike 2004’s Around the World in 80 Days ($24 million domestic) and this fall’s All the King’s Men ($7 million domestic), Sylvester Stallone’s December 22nd holiday release Rocky Balboa represents a new level of sheer audacity. For here is a man who, at an age (60) when he should simply be making questionable Academy member voting choices, has essentially gone ahead instead with a carbon copy of his very own Best Picture triumph. And save for a surname, he is barely trying to disguise the new film’s 1976 lineage.
Did Clint box in Million Dollar Baby? Hell, no. Instead, he wisely let Hilary Swank do the heavy lifting while he and Morgan Freeman played to their age. Had Stallone cast himself as say a gym owner or ageing hard luck trainer, Rocky Balboa might have had hope rather than being a geriatric retread.
At last month’s ShowEast gathering in Orlando, Stallone was the star attraction, there to accept the National Association of Theater Owners’ “Icon Award.” But shortly after Sly stepped inside a fake boxing ring at the World Marriott Center with his glass trophy in hand, he dropped it. Maybe he should take that as an omen.
Because no matter what the theater owners say, Sly’s iconic days are behind him. Sure, Rocky VI and Rambo IV are going to put a lot of large-popcorn-bucket-eating butts in the seats the first weekend, but whatever is gained in aggregate box office dollars will be lost in artistic integrity. It’s a de facto TKO, with Stallone willingly whoring his signature twin franchises.
Ironically, the weekend before ShowEast, in Youngstown, Ohio, similarly challenged boxing “icon” Mike Tyson kicked off his “World Tour” with a four-round, roundly booed match against one Corey T. Rex Sanders. There is also renewed word this very day that Tyson is once again seriously entertaining the idea of becoming the number one stud at Heidi Fleiss’ Nevada brothel for women.
Sly had the inkling of a good idea in trying to fill the Mr.T-Dolph Lundgren shoes in Rocky Balboa with a real fighter, Antonio Tarver (he plays Mason ‘The Line’ Dixon). But he should have had the wherewithal to realize that there is absolutely no point in remaking a thirty-year-old classic. Instead, had he instead cast fellow shredded pop culture figure Tyson as his big bad protégé, Stallone could have turned Round 6 into a sly commentary about what ageing brute specimens are willing to do for cold hard cash. That is, besides sullying their Oscar legacies.
(I guess we should still be thankful that the other four 1976 Best Picture nominees didn’t follow Sly’s lead and offer us this year the entertainments Woodward and Bernstein: Abu Ghraib, Travis Bickle’s Rickshaw Run, Still Mad As Hell: Max Schumacher’s Manifesto and Bound for Glory: The Willie Nelson Story.)
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