Sylvester Stallone teases director's cut of Rocky IV, says he'll cut Paulie's robot
Aux Features Film
Sylvester Stallone has spent the last few decades of his career trying to remind everyone about the greatness of the first few decades of his career, especially when it comes to the critical and commercial acclaim of the Rocky movies. Now, he’s going to… continue to do just that by putting together his own director’s cut of Rocky IV. There’s no need to rally the internet behind a hashtag for this one, though, because Stallone says MGM is already on board and isn’t going to try and bury this one like Warner Bros. did with the “good” version of Justice League that Zack Snyder wasn’t allowed to release.
Stallone announced this news on his social media pages, saying that “so far it looks great,” which is especially exciting since you know you can trust Sylvester Stallone to give you an accurate assessment of a Rocky movie.
There is one worrying detail, though. Apparently, Stallone intends to fully cut Paulie’s stupid robot from the movie, responding to questions about the robot on Instagram with stuff like “the robot is going to the junkyard forever, no more robot” and “I don’t like the robot anymore.” Seriously, how could someone not like that stupid, stupid robot?
Stallone didn’t offer much other information about his new cut of Rocky IV, a.k.a. The Non-Robot Cut, but he did say he’s doing it for the 35th anniversary (which is this year) so maybe we won’t have to wait too long to see it. Also, if anybody wants to put in the digital effects work to replace Paulie’s robot with cosmic DC Comics villain Darkseid, we wouldn’t object to that. It seems like it would be pretty funny. Just throwing it out there.
82 Comments
That’s like Space Camp without Jinx.
It’s like Star wars without Darth Vader.
Friends for-eeeever!!!
#ReleasetheStalloneCut
Not only should there be more of Paulie’s robot, it should be the opponent in Creed 3.
Don’t cut the robot. George Lucas the robot.CGI the sex robot of Paulie’s dreams. Give it James Earl Jones’ voice.
Sounds like somebody got punched in the head too many times.
I still suspect Carl Weathers wasn’t told about the robot. That completely baffled look is way too genuine.
You do that, Stallone. What’s next, removing the arm wrestling and bitchin’ semis from Over the Top?
It’s been, what, 30 years since that came out, and I’m still baffled by the idea that there was such a wave of popularity for competitive pro arm wrestling that someone thought they could ride it into a major motion.Now, granted, I’ve never actually seen it, but I imagine it to be gloriously, audaciously stupid, and I kind of don’t want to see it lest I ruin that vision.
Oh it’s completely absurd. Rocky has a weightlifting contraption rigged up in the cab of his truck so he can practice the arm wrestling motion. It does have Robert Loggia as the baddie, which is a plus.
Sorry, that should say “major motion picture” in the post I can’t edit above, though every word of that phrase may be debatable…But anyway, that contraption kinda makes sense, actually…. though at the same time, a little too much dedication to the sport perhaps.
The whole thing is just fucking ridiculous in all the right ways. I can’t go so far as to recommend it, but wouldn’t discourage you either.
What’s next, a Judge Dredd director’s cut without Rob Schneider?
Or a Lord of the Rings Trilogy without Tom Bombadil!Oh, wait.
Or a Battlestar Galactica without Muffit II.Why just why.
Or a Game of Thrones season without Lady Stoneheart!
Or Home Alone 2 without Donald Trump!Oh wait, that only makes the movie better. Dammit, I’m just no good at this.
But he’s the KEY To the film! Without him, Kevin doesn’t find the front desk, and the rest of the movie doesn’t happen.
One can dream.
The Die Hard 5 director’s cut takes out Mary Elisabeth Winestead.Sure Mr Director, *that* was the problem!
Honestly, any director’s cut without Rob Schneider has a certain level of appeal. Removing “comic relief” from eighties films however is doing Gods work.
Not super sure on that poster design, looks like Rocky draping himself in the flag and celebrating the death of Apollo (who also for some reason appears to be wearing a white shirt…though it looks like there is someone else’s hand restraining his bicep as if to say “hey man, this is in bad taste”).Also confusingly, Rocky and Drago aren’t touching gloves in that poster, but are clearly embracing each other’s hands.Also also, how much did Tuf-Wear pay for their endorsement deal when Rocky IV came out that they still get so prominently featured 35 years later!?
it also looks like they have an additional boxing gloved arm coming out from their crotches
Making the subtext into text.
it’s definitely not gay if you’re just smashing the heads together, right?
The guy in the white shirt is Tony Burton who played Duke (who becomes Rocky’s trainer for the Drago fight).The telling detail is Burton’s bald head (Weathers had a nice 80s fro)
Yes, and he is holding up Rocky. Drago is clenching Rocky’s gloves, Rocky’s pair on the inside of Drago’s.Do not cut the robot, it’s an awesome part of the franchise. It show how successful Rocky became during his reign as champion of the world.
Indeed, that looks like Burton’s head in Sly’s crotch. In both ‘entendres’.
Looking at that poster, my first response was to shout “Awe, why don’t you kiss instead of punching each other to death?”
They went to all the trouble of feminizing Lundgren’s facial features, so why the hell not?
i’m hearing the directors cut is really going to embrace the until-now latent homoeroticism of the original – i’m hearing it’s gonna do BIG things for the gay boxing community
Can’t fuck with Dolph’s haircut though, look at that thing
Oh yeah.. I like my wars like my boxers’ haircuts, coooooold as ice.
What? The flag draped on him is from the original poster. Come on.
You entire list of nitpicks are all wrong. Nice comment/username synergy.
The robot is canon, not just of the Rocky films, but the secret lore of the Planet Hollywood triumvirate. The robot was a product developed by a subsidiary of the Nakatomi corporation, later spun off and renamed Cyberdyne Systems, and is a precursor of the T-800.
But Cannon was Over the Top.
LOL. Butt Cannon.
There’s no way to improve Rocky IV by making it more serious and/or less silly. Everything good about that movie comes from how dumb it is.
I think they can squeeze in another montage or two. The montages and the last fight are like 90% of the movie. Maybe he can unearth an unreleased Frank Stallone song for montage #7.
Word is that the soundtrack is going to feature a brand-new song by Megan Thee Stallone.
https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2017/11/sylvester-stallone-forced-teen-threesome-threatened-to-beat-her-head-in-1986
Giggidy!
Pretty sure you’re projecting some of your own personal demons through your incessant, pathological posts.
Do you think you might ever acknowledge that sexual violence against women is widespread in our culture or are you going to continue to be an empathy-free flea
1) I wonder if Stallone found a way to retcon Adonis Creed into Rocky IV.2) If Stallone was serious about revisiting his early films he’d chop an hour of Rocky/Adrian tedium from Rocky II and replace it with whatever Apollo Creed footage he had left on the cutting-room floor.
…and at the end of the final bout, the CGI of Apollo Creed
appears as the Undead and rips Drago’s heart from his chest.
I’d managed to see a bunch of Rocky sequels without actually seeing Rocky until very recently. The way people talk about Adrian in that movie is fucking wild.
That first movie is REALLY problematic when it comes to the Rocky/Adrian “romance”
Rocky II still plays it pretty straight, but anyone who first saw any of the others (not including the recent Creed films) is probably completely bewildered at the praise the first one gets. It’s a legit great movie.
Bad humor
#ReleasetheRobotButtCut!
This is only acceptable if Burt Young is allowed to do a sidequel that’s focused solely on Paulie and his robot side piece.
Rocky IV w/o that robot scene would be like seeing Mad Max w/o the Toe Cutter scene. The robot scene is just pure 80’s overthetopness and would only have been made better if it had been holding a mirror with lines of cocaine.
Sam Barsanti pretends he likes rocky movies so he can get an erection and then he cries after sex.
#SavePauliesRobot
Now if they can only release “Heartbeeps” without Andy Kaufman or Bernadette Peters.
I’m shocked anyone even remembers Heartbeeps lol.
Unfortunately, some of us do! PS: Music by John Williams!
I’ll take any excuse to post a Brad Neely toon, but in this case it’s all bout dem Stallone Cuts.
Hope Paulie has this:
If Sly wanted to be petty he should have cut Brgitte Nelson out of the movie too.
Travesty. The robot is perfection.
this CANNOT STAND! That robot was EVERYTHING
Not sure how he can fix Rocky’s terrible boxing form. Watching the Rocky movies now, you’ll realize how bad the boxing was. Arms were down and the punches were comic book wallops. The 80’s was an amazing time.
The first film had fairly realistic boxing. The sequels got increasingly absurd. Rocky III I think is the most ridiculous.
While the first movie may have been less cartoonish, there is nothing realistic about the actual boxing.
I said ‘fairly’. It’s realistic enough to be passable to the untrained eye. In the sequels, it’s ridiculous enough for someone who knows absolutely nothing about boxing to know it’s bad.
What’s absurd is the number of head shots everyone takes. Watch a real heavyweight fight and you might see half a dozen clean head punches land, and when one does the guy who delivered it immediately goes for the knockout because it almost always stuns the recipient. The idea of letting a boxer pound you in the head until he gets tired enough for you to take him out would almost certainly result in death. Rocky movies may as well not even have refs in the ring.
They SORT of address that in Rocky Balboa, with Max Kellerman expressing astonishment of the number of punches landed in the fight, which is probably more than five real boxing matches combined.It was also sort of addressed in Rocky V, where it was literally just a street fight, but the less said about that, the better. I think it’s non-canon now anyway…
The robot is stupid and the way that scene is shot is like an ad for the thing. But finding out that Stallone put it in for his autistic son is heart warming. He passed about 8 years ago so maybe Stallone may want to cut it because of the hurt seeing it may cause him.
removing a robot from the film isn’t going to change the fact that Rocky IV is one of only two films that have a recap of the movie so far, midway through the movie, set to a song made for the movie. “No Easy Way Out”
What’s the other? And can we add Paulie’s robot to that movie?
Well this damn well better mean an extended training montage, Sly!
Just change it into Paulie getting a sex robot he’d be down with that. also you can’t cut out the robot scenes the movie would only be 78 minutes long.
Are you implying it wasn’t a sex robot?
Great, that’s great and all, but can he cut Rocky V… Out of existence?
A gloriously stupid film. Way to incite a nuclear war, Sylvester!