Having starred in more than his fair share of bad movies over the years, Sylvester Stallone has regularly put his hands up and admitted that some of his career choices were wrong.
In one case, he can at least blame Arnold Schwarzenegger for tricking him into a critical and commercial catastrophe in what was admittedly a god-tier troll. However, for the most part, he’s got nobody else to point the finger at other than himself. Based on his involvement and investment, though, Rocky V sticks out as a particularly sore point.
It marked the return of the original’s director, John G. Avildsen, in what was presumably intended to be a full-circle moment for the franchise. While Stallone himself directed the three chapters in between, the fifth entry in the boxing saga proved to be a damp squib in every sense of the word.
As well as being the worst-reviewed and lowest-grossing entry in the entire Rocky series to date, it gathered seven nominations at the Golden Raspberry Awards, including ‘Worst Picture’, ‘Worst Actor’, and ‘Worst Screenplay’ for the script penned by Stallone. The movie regularly enters the conversation anytime the topic turns to the worst sequels to have left a black mark against Hollywood’s most iconic properties.
During an interview with Jonathan Ross, where he ranked every Rocky film out of five, the fifth was slapped with a big fat zero by its own creator, with Stallone admitting “it was that bad”. Going so far as to call it “a goose egg”, the actor and filmmaker admitted that his heart was never in the project from the beginning, saying that “I was definitely not there”.
Ironically, given the standing it finds itself held in by the person who wrote the script and played the title role, Rocky V’s failure led to the resurgence of the ‘Italian Stallion’ a decade and a half later. Stallone’s refusal to let the titular pugilist’s legacy end on such a dour note prompted him to bring the character back to screens in Rocky Balboa, which he’s labelled as his personal favourite out of any movies he’s ever made in a career that dates back over half a century.
Even that proved to be a double-edged sword in certain respects, with Michael B. Jordan being drafted in to headline the Creed spinoffs and getting off to a phenomenal start for Stallone when he landed an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Supporting Actor’. Following that, he continued to cede the spotlight to his on-screen protégé in the sequel.
However, the decision to cut him out of the picture for Creed III and continue mining the Rocky mythology for new storytelling avenues left him furious, with Stallone calling out the producers for their call to carry on without him in no uncertain terms. More than 30 years on, then, the shadow of Rocky V continues to loom large, given how it affected the subsequent four films in a variety of ways.