Why so serious?

Rating: 8/10 (26 November 2008)

Like Part 2, Rocky 3 starts off where the last movie left off, but things are totally different now. Rocky has the feel of a real person with a real, three dimensional life by now, but he's come a long way from the Rocky we knew in the first two movies. Most notably, he's RICH now. He has a genuine career going in full swing in boxing by now, and the first part of the movie is a montage of event fights, all of which he wins soundly and comfortably. He is a tremendous champion with 10 successful title defense fights and a whole list of corporate sponsors. Not surprisingly, he begins to feel overconfident and a little lazy.
There is some ham-handed foreshadowing as we see clips of a concerned Mr. T in the audience at Rocky's fights, and it's not long before Clubber Lang (Mr. T) begins publicly insulting Rocky, challenging him to a fight and taunting him at press conferences. I'm curious about where Lang's anger comes from. He is clearly furious with Rocky, but we know nothing about him. We don't know anything about his past as a fighter other than what is passed on through dialogue, and the unsolved mystery surrounding his uncontrollable rage is probably the movie's only genuine fault.
The important thing that we are told is that Lang is not a boxer, like Rocky, but a wrestler, so it's a completely different, ah, ball game this time.
There is an interesting fight that Rocky has midway through the movie with a hulking giant (Hulk Hogan) curiously named "Thunderlips," in an illustration of what had become of his career. He had reached such a level of success that his fights became little more than performances put on to generate ticket sales, but Rocky's humanitarianism shows through, as he sometimes donates all proceeds, as in the case of the fight with Thunderlips, to various charities.
But as always, Rocky maintains his laid back demeanor, letting the insults and taunts roll off his back, which is one of the qualities that has really allowed him to win so many hearts. But at an outdoor press conference, Lang taunts Rocky's wife, and he gets genuinely angry for the first time in the first three movies, other than the sudden tantrum he had in the first film when Mickey first asked to be his manager.
After this, everything starts to fall apart. It turns out that his championship is not what he thought it was, and he is put into a position where he has to defend his wife's honor as well as his own, and to do that he has to fight a fighter that no one, including himself, really believes he can beat. True to his form, Mickey tells him, "This guy'll kill you to death inside of three rounds!"
And there is no mistake to be made about that. Lang is absolutely a KILLER. This guy has no interest in getting a knockout, he doesn't even seem that interested in being recognized as the real champion, he just wants to hurt Rocky.
Essentially Lang's role in the movie is to knock Rocky out of the rut of complacency that he has gotten into. Thunderlips was billed as nearly 7 feet tall and 390 pounds, which I think it roughly twice Rocky's size, and is clearly a wrestler and not a fighter, and yet Rocky was able to win a fight with him, so it's no surprise that he assumed the fight with Lang would be about the same.
When they finally fight, Lang walks all over him, and Rocky realizes that he has gotten soft. Apollo Creed, by the way, is now a sportscaster, and becomes Rocky's trainer when they learn how tough Lang really is.
The movie loses track a little when Apollo starts training Rocky like he's never been in a gym before, like he's a complete amateur. Yeah, he hasn't been losing much lately, but does that mean he hasn't set foot inside a gym in all those years? Doubtful, but nevertheless, it's great to see Rocky whipping himself back into shape and once again becoming that hardened hero that we have come to love. Although I have to admit, I loved the swimming scene. Rocky swims like my grandmother!
There is one moment of almost unforgivable cheese when Rocky and Mickey have a heart to heart on the beach at sunset in which, for example, Rocky claims that he's really afraid for the first time in his life. Isn't that a direct quote from the first movie?
There is notably more anger in part three than either of the previous movies, and while a second sequel runs a high likelihood of being the one that marks the first really noticeable turn downwards in the quality of the series (hear that, Terminator?), this one is no less watchable than the first two and, amazingly, neither is part 4. Well done!
By the way, it's interesting that, at one point, a sportscaster notes just before a major fight, "The odds of Rocky making a comeback at 34 are long indeed!" Yeah, how about at 60?