The box office was pretty active as well. 007 was back again with Moonraker, Francis Ford Coppola had another hit on his hands with Apocalypse Now, and Sigourney Weaver was running from Xenomorphs in Alien.
I’ve had to do a lot of thinking over this year. I had to dig down deep and be honest with myself over a couple of films to find what makes this spot on my list. It was the year that Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released. If you know anything about me, it is that I am a Star Trek fan. I don’t mean that I "kind of" like the show a little bit. I mean I had a couple of years in high school that the only literature that I read was Star Trek novels. I watched The Next Generation every evening at 9:00 pm even if I had seen the episode 12 times.
So, I sat down today to write this blog entry with every intention of writing about that film. But, to be sure, I pulled up the Wikipedia page that showed all of the movies that came out that year. Remember that when I started this project, I was going to talk about my favorite films from every year I’ve been alive. I don’t want to write about the movies that made the most money. I don’t even want to write about the movies that I think are the most well made. Some things may end up on my list that may not be as good as others that came out that year…but this is about the movies that impacted me the most. And for 1979…Star Trek: The Motion Picture is not my favorite.
My favorite film of 1979 is Rocky II.
I’m not a sports guy. I never played a sport in high school. I was the last one picked to play anything in gym. I don’t even understand football enough to carry on a conversation with a true fan. For me to say that I love a franchise of sports movies is saying something. But I am a huge fan of all the Rocky films. The original isn’t on my list only because it came out a year before I was born. And I was a grown man before I finally sat down and watched it. But after I did, I felt the need to consume the entire series. I love each one of those films, even though the fourth one was mostly montages. And in the fifth one, he didn’t even get in the ring. And I was more excited when Creed came out a couple of years ago than most of my friends thought was necessary.
Rocky II is an example of a perfect sequel. It brought all of the players back to the stage. It stars Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa, Talia Shire as Adrian, Burt Young as Paulie, Burgess Meredith as Mickey, and Carl Weathers as Apollo Creed. They felt genuine. They felt like they were the same people as before. Sequels can be irritating when they wink at the audience with in-jokes and references to the original piece. Rocky II felt like a true continuation of the first film.
Apollo Creed beat Rocky in the original by a split decision. Rocky II finds him obsessed with the thought that America thinks Rocky could have won. He challenges him to a rematch. Meanwhile, Rocky is dealing with the new fame that has found him and tries to build a life with Adrian.
What I like about the Rocky series is not so much the boxing…it’s the heart. The character that Stallone plays feels like a real man. He is not the brightest bulb on the tree, but he has so much courage and integrity that it is hard not to feel as if he’s someone that you know. In a way, he is someone that you know. He’s the guy that we all secretly want to be. He’s a guy that started with nothing; living in a hole-in-the-wall apartment and making ends meet by boxing for a few bucks in a church basement. He’s such a nice guy that he can’t even do his job as an enforcer for a loan shark correctly because he doesn’t like to hurt people.
The second time around Rocky is finished with boxing. He has money to burn after his famous near-win in a championship fight. But Creed wants a rematch so bad that he launches a smear campaign to force Rocky back into the ring. Rocky obliges to clear his name. I won’t spoil the ending in case some haven’t seen it.
I can’t say enough good things about this whole series, but this one, in particular, is probably one of my top ten movies of all time. And it is my favorite sports movie ever. The first movie is about a guy that had nothing in the world and created a name for himself. This one is about a man who didn’t let fame and fortune stand in the way of his principles and created an empire.
So, yes, my favorite TV franchise of all time launched a film in 1979. And while Star Trek had the special effects and the starships and the phasers and all of that…I don’t feel that it can beat Rocky in the story department. There are only a few movies that have characters with as much heart and depth as the Rocky films. It's lucky for me that the second of the series was good enough to make my list.
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