Rocky IV: Rocky v Drago…Spoilers

Went and saw it last night, and having experienced the original in theaters when it first premiered both my buddy and I turned to each other with the same thought at the end—Stallone butchered the hell out of this.

We both understood what he was going for from the pre-movie introduction and the scenes that were added, but the experience he was trying to present, the movie with more soul than ‘80s flash fell flat.

It is obvious that Sly hates his ex-wife, Bridgette Nielsen. Ninety-nine percent of her work from the original cut is gone. He may as well have digitally erased her from the remaining scenes that she was in. The main issue here is that while her contribution was drastically reduced, Drago didn’t really have much extra that helped it to payoff. The East versus West, Cold War feeling is almost neutered. That plays out throughout the movie, but mostly so at the end where Rocky’s end speech is altered and the Russian premier, instead of standing and leading his fellowmen in applause, angrily storm out.

Surprisingly, all three montage sequences survive, though somewhat altered, but Rocky Jr. Only gets the one speech scene, which has been enhanced as well. The robot is scrapped entirely, which means we don’t see the kids at the end watching the fight on TV, which tells you partially why the end scene, including the music, was altered.

Won’t go into too many technical aspects here, but will say it was bizarre to see some camera angles that were used, color correction was poor at times, and audio/visual weren’t always synced…especially in the James Brown sequence.

I know that I have 35 years of history with the original cut, and maybe that’s too long, but this new cut just didn’t work for an ‘80s kid and someone who genuinely enjoyed Rocky Balboa and the Creed entries into the universe for the most part.