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I read through a pair of interviews that Stallone gave to Roger Ebert around the time of Rocky II’s release and, two years later, as he was beginning to think about Rocky III. In the former he was already conflicted about the fame that the role had achieved (as opposed to making him famous) and in the latter, he expresses his desire to end the series with the third film, laying out the specifics of a grand fight at the Acropolis in Greece, which Rocky would win, and then collapse and die.

That dynamic tension that Stallone was already feeling toward his creation (which he had fought for the right to play) in 1979 is palpable in Rocky II. Rocky’s relationship towards the success he has achieved and the way in which it changes his relationship towards the people in his life and vice/versa, feels very much like Stallone’s not-so-hidden commentary on what the “million-to-one-shot” had wrought for him.

Rocky would like nothing better than the stability of a 9 to 5 job, but in the end he must confront the truth that the things he does best are pummeling someone and withstanding his face and body being ground into one giant bloody open wound. Stallone is shameless in his manipulation of the audience during the fight’s closing seconds, as shameless as Apollo’s taunting of Rocky to get him back into the ring. I would be fibbing if I didn’t say that it worked on me as well. I never imagined how sublimely nerve wracking it could be to watch barely conscious men attempt to prevent themselves from keeling over.

I don’t know how serious the talks ever were for a movie in which Sylvester Stallone would have done double-duty as both Rambo and Rocky (actually, I guess it would be quadruple-duty as he most likely would have directed and co-written). Under what auspices would they have teamed up? Immediately, I envision either a really bad version of I Spy (the Owen Wilson/Eddie Murphy version, which wasn’t spectacular to begin with) or Stallone’s own take on a Beverly Hills Cop-type fish out of water scenario, perhaps to make up for turning down that film to do Rhinestone?

But which character would have been the one outside of his element? And what tone would the film have adopted? Would it have been sentimental like 2006’s Rocky Balboa, gory and violent like 2008’s Rambo, a family-friendly wacky comedy, or some strange amalgam of all three? I also have to wonder if Rambo would have become less psychotic or Rocky more so? And what if it had been Rocky vs. Rambo? Could Rambo’s survivalist skills meet their match in Rocky’s ability to withstand an inhuman amount of punishment? It sounds obscene and atrocious to suggest such an idea, but no more so than the existence of Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot.

In the same year that Rocky Balboa stepped back into the ring to battle Clubber Lang, Stallone also made his first appearance as his other soon-to-be signature character, John J. Rambo. First Blood - helmed by Ted Kotcheff, whose career included the seriocomic football expose North Dallas Forty and the fun-with-a-corpse laughs of Weekend at Bernie’s - may have been intended as a souped-up action movie with a message (the mistreatment of Vietnam vets), but it suffers from both poor pacing, stranding the majority of the action in the movie’s first third, and a schizophrenia about how whether to position the film as a veteran’s cry for help, or a more generic everyman fighting back against an unfair system (i.e. Billy Jack with less karate, and more crazy).

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