Towards the end of the montage, Russian agents in a black sedan follow him down a path, and he foils them by running into the woods. Running along the snowcapped peaks, Balboa cuts a romantic figure, reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich’s 1818 “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.” He is the underdog in a strange land, dwarfed by his competitor and the enormity of nature that he pits himself against. Training outdoors by rustic, antiquated means, he is the pioneer, the kind of intrepid frontiersman that won the West, with his monklike determination and lone-wolf mission that even Adrian cannot understand, though she does eventually come to support him. Rocky is an expression of sheer individual will and a very human desire to avenge a fallen friend and comrade-at-arms. Inasmuch as a totalitarian system (though it may be initiated with the goal of the collective’s benefit) forces its individual members to behave like machines, it is the antithesis of man and his erratic desires and emotions, and in the long run, man himself turns out to be its true enemy. He shows no remorse when his punches lead to the death of Apollo Creed this is simply his ideology’s logical conclusion, the elimination of the disorderly human element from a closed loop of order. He is cold and inhuman, trained with mechanics and technical knowledge, and a few shots portray him as being trapped within the training apparatus, an animal in a cage. Note that in the film’s most famous line, Drago says not ‘I want to break you,’ or ‘I will break you,’ but “I must break you.” Drago fights by mandate, by government edict. In an ironically un-communist twist, Drago struggles against others, whereas Rocky struggles against nature, and more deeply, within himself.ĭrago is a product of scientific specialists and political authoritarians, an instrument crafted for the accomplishment of a singlemineded goal: the defeat of the best American boxer. In one key shot, the camera flashes from Drago toppling some nameless unfortunate to the mat, to Rocky felling an enormous tree in an alpine forest. Where Drago pummels lightweights in a ring for practice, Rocky, humanely, shadowboxes. Rocky trains in the woods and in a barn, often alone, lifting rocks, pulling a sleigh through snow, chopping wood, and climbing a mountain. Two ways of training, two superpowers, two ideologies.ĭrago trains in a windowless facility, surrounded by doctors and trainers with clipboards, using machines, running on a treadmill while wired up to monitors. The midfilm Drago/Balboa training montage is revealing. The fight is to take place in the U.S.S.R., on Christmas Day. Rocky Balboa challenges Russian boxer Ivan Drago to a fight, in order to avenge the death of Apollo Creed, whom Drago has just killed in the ring.
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