Rocky IV

Sylvester Stallone wrote and directed the 1985 film. The Soviet fighter Ivan Drago kills Apollo Creed in a Las Vegas exhibition bout, and Rocky gives up the title to fight him in Moscow on Christmas Day. The case is made in cuts, not dialogue: Rocky hauls a sledge through snow while Drago works under instruments and injections. Siberia is Wyoming: Mormon Row in Grand Teton, Cody Peak above Jackson Hole and the Snake River bridge at Wilson, shot in March 1985, with about forty locals as Russian villagers. The Moscow arena was the PNE Agrodome in East Vancouver, a livestock and hockey hall. Vince DiCola scored it, not Bill Conti. Stallone asked Dolph Lundgren to hit for real; the uppercut bruised his heart, he was flown to intensive care and the shoot stopped. The theatrical cut opens with an American and a Soviet glove colliding and exploding instead of a title. The 2021 recut, “Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago”, drops that opening and every scene with Paulie’s robot and adds Duke’s eulogy at Apollo’s funeral. A good fit if you accept a film that argues in cuts, an axe against a laboratory dial, not in speech. Not for anyone waiting for mourning after Apollo dies: the theatrical cut goes straight to training, the eulogy only in the 2021 version.