Gonna Fly Again

My wife tells met that her first journal entry came directly after she came home at the tender age of thirteen, right after her family had attended a screening of Rocky. This was the seventies, and she had this to say about it, in her journal: "What a feeling!" She was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the only person to be inspired by the story of this nobody from nowhere who was suddenly given a shot at the title. That underdog story wasn't exactly a brand new invention, but it became a trope all of its own after 1976. Back in those days, before video and before Star Wars demanded all of my movie-going attention, I went to see the story of the Italian Stallion going the distance at least five times. At that time, I firmly believed that Rocky was the best movie I had ever seen, and this guy Martin Scorsese and his Taxi Driver was just a bloody mess standing in the way of world domination by Sylvester Stallone.  
Myself, I went home and got my older brother's barbells out and started working at what I assumed would become my regular workout regimen on the way to my becoming the next heavyweight champion of the world. Or at least I would "get my shot" at "going the distance." Before I owned a Walkman or any kind of personal stereo, I heard Bill Conti's theme in my head whenever there was any kind of physical exertion involved. Gonna fly now, indeed.
And somewhere in those intervening years, Sylvester Stallone started reading his own press, and he became a product of his own imagination. Eventually he needed to genetically engineer a nine foot tall Russian killer boxer to kill his friend Apollo and then be avenged by a one-man American flag draped Glasnost ambassador from Philly. Who would have imagined that after four decades I could still be moved by all that hooey?
The recipe for Creed is so simple, it's almost embarrassing. Apollo's forgotten son decides to chase his father's legacy, and he wants Rocky in his corner as he does it. Will the kid get a shot at the title? Of course he does. Why make the movie if he doesn't? But taking great big chunks of the Balboa myth as a base of operations, it is a formula that works. It works because of that feeling we all get when we see someone succeed, especially when they aren't supposed to. Again, if they aren't going to get a shot at redemption, why make a movie about it?
I was surprised by how well it worked, and how much I took in: hook, line and sinker. I came right home and wrote about it. How about that?