John G. Avildsen
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Southpaw (2015)
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
influenced by Rocky (1976), The Karate Kid (1984)
Plot Music Themes
Whitaker is a fine actor, reduced to playing a stock supporting character, and Southpaw is so absolutely shameless and familiar that its final derivative moment rips off, of all things, The Karate Kid.
Gyllenhaal, in a role originally written for Eminem (who eventually limited his contribution to a speed rap training anthem that’s no match for the Rocky theme), is so committed and compelling he overcomes the clichés, even when director Antoine Fuqua surrenders to them.
Sylvester Stallone made the boxing term southpaw part of the Everyday lexicon in "Rocky" and this film's finale borrows liberally from that one, one fighter's humble entrance contrasted with Vegas flash, Leila waiting in the dressing room just like Adrienne.
It may be unfair, but it's inevitable that the modern boxing movie will ultimately be compared to John Avildsen and Sylvester Stallone's scrappy but brilliant Rocky.
Although there are plenty of echoes of past boxing films, from the grit of Raging Bull to the heart of The Champ (both versions) as well as the Rocky pics , Champion, Somebody Up There Likes Me and others, this movie has a beating heart of its own.
Boxing films already possess a stigma thanks to the Rocky franchise (save the first ending against expectations in a way that made it near impossible to be a copycat by shunning the “happily ever after”).
Warrior (2011)
Directed by Gavin O'Connor
influenced by Rocky (1976), The Karate Kid (1984)
Plot Themes
But, this is a fantasy rags-to-riches, brothers-in-competition saga that bargains on its “Rocky” and “The Fighter” influences, but tries to be more intense, and less inspirational, than its predecessors.
…aking an unusually respectful approach to the new sport of mixed martial arts (MMA), "Warrior" refurbishes material we've seen in the "Rocky" films and a thousand other populist dramas about ordinary people making their mark.
As the film works its way toward the pivotal fight, unlike the Rocky movies, Warrior has two combatants to embrace and cheer for.
A double-barreled " Rocky " for the mixed martial arts generations, the practically epic fight film " Warrior " is one of the most exhilarating surprises of this summer movie season.
Like Rocky (1976), the patron saint of all gritty underdog sports movies, Warrior has its roots in the working class milieu of Philadelphia.
So the up-and-coming combat sport of Mixed Martial Arts finally has its “Rocky.”
Hence the “Rocky” franchise, and hence the conventional climax of “The Fighter,” with Micky confronting an Irishman named Shae Neary (Anthony Molinari), who appears to be hewn from basalt.
Nor does he fill his story with phony, “Rocky”-like uplift.
The primal thrill of great boxing movies - Body and Soul and The Set-Up, Rocky and Raging Bull, Million Dollar Baby and Somebody Up There Likes Me - cannot be denied.
(The anti-Rocky, Raging Bull garnered precious few kudos back in 1980; great filmmaking aside, theres nothing feel-good about Martin Scorseses portrait of Jake LaMotta.)
, whose career, as managed by his scabrous mom Alice ( Melissa Leo ) and cokehead trainer and older half brother Dicky Eklund (Bale), is rocky (and "Rocky") at best.
So in that sense, Rocky, The Wrestler, Fat City, Cinderella Man, Requiem for a Heavyweight, and even a Mike Tyson documentary are all more or less the same.
As it turns out, Real Steel, directed by Night at the Museum’s Shawn Levy, borrows so much from other films that it might better be titled Reel Steal: not only from The Champ, but from Rocky, the Transformers movies and even some Star Wars.
The story -- which draws inspiration from "Rocky," "Over the Top," "Pokémon" and Fred Savage's "The Wizard" -- is set about 15 years from now.
The match between the two machines, billed as the biggest thing in boxing since the Rumble in the Jungle, is the climax of Real Steel, a futuristic Rocky set in the world of robot wrestling.
The filmmakers owe a lot to the "Rocky" movies - the big final fight borrows strategy liberally from Balboa/Lang II - but at least they steal from the good ones.
There's really no excuse for Real Steel, a Frankenstein contraption made up of spare parts from middle-American fairytales like Field of Dreams and underdog sports intrigues starting with Rocky , I guess, and building all the way through to junk like The Rookie and any number of films just like it that appear with what seems like annual reliability.
Long time comedy director Shawn Levy (“Date Night,” “Big Fat Liar,” “Night(s) at the Museum”) takes on sci-fi and boxing with his robotic homage to “Rocky.”
The Smashing Machine (2025)
Directed by Benny Safdie
influenced by Rocky (1976)
Themes Plot Characters
Rocky and Creed are great, but they do glorify boxing as something heroic and/or intrinsically American.
The Smashing Machine’s anti-biopic approach plays more like a modern, realist update of “Rocky” and less like a revisionist take on the “Rocky” sequels.
…and like Rocky, it finds failure meaningful…
Where other sports films, from Rocky to The Iron Claw, get up close and personal with the characters, essentially getting in the ring with them, Safdie and team unwisely maintain a degree of separation.
Even in the case of something like Rocky, it doesn’t even matter that he loses to Apollo Creed, as merely holding his own feels like a triumph.
…a similar, world-weary vulnerability that Sylvester Stallone showed in ROCKY…
A ripoff of The Karate Kid, director Jeff Wadlow’s Never Back Down differs in one crucial respect: instead of karate, the top activity at high schools these days seems to be beating the shit out of each other.
Those with a craving for the story would be better off re-watching The Karate Kid than enduring this lackluster re-telling.
A sort of teenage Fight Club, complete with daddy issues, Never Back Down is a slight refinement of the sort of picture that was ascendant in the '80s (think The Karate Kid).
Compare that philosophy with the advice mixed-martial-arts trainer Jean Roqua (Djimon Hounsou) metes out in Never Back Down, a 21st-century version of The Karate Kid that swaps out karate for Ultimate Fighting-style brawls.
Tyler does not live on planet Earth, but planet Hollywood formula, where the storm clouds of Fight Club hang over the once charming but now seedy landscape of The Karate Kid.
The mixed martial arts flick Never Back Down borrows from other movies almost shamelessly â it's The Karate Kid meets Fight Club by way of Abercrombie & Fitch.
Coach Carter (2005)
Directed by Thomas Carter
influenced by Lean On Me (1989)
Themes Plot Characters
Based on a real life coach, also named Ken Carter (who's been hitting talk shows with Jackson to promote the film), Carter takes an approach that's part Lean on Me meets Hoosiers, part Stand and Deliver meets Friday Night Lights, and okay, maybe a little White Shadow, too.
You've seen "Coach Carter" before in the guise of such films as "Hoosiers," "Remember the Titans" and "Lean on Me," or the less notable "The Replacements" or "Drumline."
As if timed to counteract these days of "basketbrawl" and snipes at Hollywood morality, along comes "Coach Carter," a true story, feel-good parable and a respectable, uplifting descendent of "To Sir, With Love" and "Lean On Me."
Based on the story of an actual Richmond, Calif., high school basketball coach who benched his undefeated team until some of its members got their grades up, "Coach Carter" falls squarely in the group-Pygmalion tradition established by Sidney Poitier in "To Sir, With Love" and faithfully carried on by Morgan Freeman in "Lean on Me," Michelle Pfeiffer in "Dangerous Minds," as well as countless others, in which a lone-educator-who-cares rides into the mean streets of town to battle complacent parents, craven bureaucrats, low expectations and moribund systems, and single-handedly save the school day.
We also hear loud echoes from 1989's Lean on Me (school principal Joe Clark hanging tough against hoods).
This one seems cobbled together from the most enjoyable parts of Lean on Me, Hoosiers, and Remember the Titans -- with a generous drop of Dead Poets Society thrown in towards the end.
The Karate Kid (2010)
Directed by Harald Zwart
influenced by Rocky (1976), The Karate Kid (1984)
Plot
The latest in Hollywood's never-ending infatuation with remakes (and opening the same weekend as The A-Team no less) The Karate Kid is a new version of the beloved 1984 film.
Will Smith isn’t in “The Karate Kid” remake but this is a vanity project nonetheless.
As with the 1984 film, the real sport of "The Karate Kid" lies not in Dre's increasingly violent clashes with his pip-voiced tormentors but in the unhurried rhythms of his relationship with his mentor, Mr. Han.
The Karate Kid will probably surprise many Jackie Chan fans.
It’s the same simple “Rocky” knock-off, with a couple of extra subplots thrown in – and the pre-teen equivalent of violence-porn.
The simplistic but undeniably effective 1984 film The Karate Kid massaged the classic David-and-Goliath underdog theme with the outcast wish-fulfillment of any kid who's ever wanted to best a bully; not by coincidence was it directed by the Rocky-meister, John G. Avildsen.
From Raging Bull to Rocky to Creed, we’ve seen it all.
Most boxing films aspire to feature some blend of the raw pathos of “Rocky” with the gritty viscerality of “Raging Bull,” and the most successful tend to find another angle to attack the rise-and-fall narrative from.
Sydney Sweeney plays Christy, a basketball player turned boxer who moves like a slugger with no technique but endless heart. She’s scrappy and volatile. Does that sound familiar? This has all the makings of a Rocky film. There is even a similar coach/boxer dynamic at the beginning as well.
…a cliche-ridden script consistently has her on the ropes, fighting to hold your interest as the “Rocky” meets “Million Dollar Baby” wannabe…
Many viewers love an underdog story, with other boxing pictures like “Rocky” (1976) showcasing just how attractive this storyline is.
He does gives us the clichés—those training montages—but what we’re watching is less “Rocky” than a film about cruelty, in the hands of a sadist husband (Ben Foster, an expert in sleazeball).
In this case, it’s Cameron Diaz as Elizabeth Halsey, a middle-school teacher who doesn’t bother to learn her kids names and spends class time showing them movies about teachers (“Stand and Deliver,” “Lean on Me”) and guzzling from airline-size bottles of liquor she keeps hidden in a false bottom of a desk drawer.
Speaking of movie teachers, Liz gladly cedes her job to a string of them, starting with Edward James Olmos (“Stand and Deliver”) and Morgan Freeman (“Lean on Me”).
As for actually teaching students, it’s enough to pop “Stand and Deliver” or “Lean on Me” into the DVD player before she succumbs to the crippling hangover she habitually wakes up with.
Class with her consists of playing DVDs of goodish Hollywood movies like “Stand and Deliver,’’ “Lean on Me,’’ and “Dangerous Minds,’’ movies about brown kids fighting to subsist in bad situations, while she texts or drinks or sleeps.
“Lean on Me”? “Dangerous Minds”?
“Dangerous Minds,” “Stand and Deliver,” “Lean on Me” — movies about heroic teachers changing students’ lives, and all movies shown in Miss Elizabeth Halsey’s seventh grade English class at John Adams Middle School.
Marty Supreme (2025)
Directed by Josh Safdie
influenced by Rocky (1976), The Karate Kid (1984)
Themes Plot
Unlike films like “Rocky” and “Invincible,” Marty’s passion doesn’t lift others up but often brings them down.
…people will watch a Rocky-esque movie like theirs…
This is ultimately satisfying like how The Karate Kid or Rocky is satisfying, just in a deeper way.
Like the original Rocky, Mauser doesn’t quite get what he hopes for, but gets to go out in a blaze of glory…
…he's crafted a grand, upturned fairy tale that feels like funhouse reflection inverse of Rocky. Where Rocky's defeat was a spiritual victory, Marty's victory feels like a spiritual defeat…
Safdie has basically taken the broader Rocky/Karate Kid formula of “someone fighting against the odds and their own personal demons to give their best, scrappy shot at their given sport”…
In many ways it’s a turn that reminds of Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront and Sylvester Stallone in Rocky , that blue collar performance where a humbling charm covers a raging beast within, Hardy’s quiet intensity deployed to startling effect alongside a warmth that makes his Bob a character to like, as well as to be fearful of.
Hardy, the hunky Englishman who was the masked villain Bane in “The Dark Knight Rises,” is a revelation in a meek meat-head role that recalls Sylvester Stallone in the original “Rocky.”
And Nadia (Noomi Rapace) is a timid Rocky-like local girl, who warily welcomes Bob into her life after he finds a mewling pit-bull puppy in her trash can.
Dennis Lehane’s short story, “Animal Rescue,” has a touch of “Rocky” about it on the big screen, a big galoot softened by a pet and the woman who seems to come with that pet.
Just as "Rocky" was a love letter to an urban neighborhood trapped in a sports cliche, Roskam crafts a crime story that soars in its attention to local detail.
Part “Rocky,” part “On the Waterfront,” and part image boost for the pit-bull breed, the film is directed by Michael R. Roskam, who made “Bullhead,” the Belgian stunner set in the illegal beef-hormone market.
The film’s genius is in its subtleties, which combine to make it more than just a “Rocky”-style underdog drama.
Public interest begins with the do-or-die of the mans very participation, a last chance at redemption not unrelated to the ancillary vibes of what Rocky meant for its writer and star.
Gritty, blue-collar US sports films were a genre unto themselves in the 1970s, from John Huston's 1972 boxing melodrama Fat City to Sylvester Stallone's 1976 breakthrough role in Rocky and the vastly underrated hockey flick Slap Shot with Paul Newman in 1977.
Screenwriter Robert D. Siegel’s script — which touches lightly but significantly on "Rocky" and "The Passion of the Christ" — is unvarnished, conversational and free of clumsy exposition.
If you've never seen, for starters, the "Rocky" movies or "Requiem for a Heavyweight" or "Somebody Up There Likes Me" or "Raging Bull," you might be forgiven in thinking "The Wrestler" was an original.
In its own tough-love way, the movie is as sentimental as "The Champ" or "Rocky."
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
influenced by Rocky (1976)
Themes Plot Characters
Eastwood has crafted a boxing movie that holds more akin to the 1956 Paul Newman starrer, “Somebody Up There Likes Me,” or “Requiem For A Heavyweight” than the “Rocky” franchise, to which it is most compared.
At least when Burgess Meredith did this stuff in the “Rocky” movies he had the good hammy sense to treat it like the hokum it was.
But she wears him down, and we figure we're in for another "Rocky."
The characters and dialogue bob and weave between Fat City authenticity, Rocky blue-collar romanticism and movie-of-the-week contrivance as the film pokes at the underbelly of society.
There is even a Villain, in the person of dirty-fighting former prostitute Billie "The Blue Bear" (Lucia Rijker), this movie's Mr. T to Maggie's Rocky.
Contrary to how the trailers make it appear, "Million Dollar Baby" is no mere distaff "Rocky."
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2013)
Directed by Harald Zwart
influenced by The Karate Kid (1984)
Director Harald Zwart (2010's " The Karate Kid ") and first-time screenwriter Jessica Postigo go on for what seem like days trying to explain the story and what is going on, and yet viewers who have not read the book will still walk away no more clear about the reasons Valentine wants this holy cup, why it is important, and what he hopes to achieve.
Her mum ( Game of Thrones star Lena Headey) has done a tidy job of concealing the truth about Clary's bloodline, right up until the moment - early on in the film - when those biker dudes come crashing into their apartment and leave her dead, dying, dormant or trapped in another dimension - director Harald Zwart (The Karate Kid) isn't big on the details.
Instead of frontloading City of Bones with one of those expositional voice-overs that explains the movie’s universe to the audience, director Harold Zwart (The Karate Kid remake) and screenwriter Jessica Postigo allow us to gradually discover it through Clary’s eyes.
Which we have with Harald ("The Karate Kid") Zwart's version of the first book, "City of Bones."
First time screenwriter Jessica Postigo has crammed a huge cast of characters and tons of mythology into her adaptation of Cassandra Clare's series starter (the second is already in production), and director Harald Zwart's (2010's "The Karate Kid") thrown it all on screen with some impressive visual effects and teen swoony romance, but at 130 minutes running time, the film felt like it would never end.
There's simply so much to explore, or at least introduce, that even though director Harald Zwart ("The Karate Kid" remake) and screenwriter Jessica Postigo Paquette ("Tarzan 3D") fail to bring much imagination to the table, they keep the action flowing at a steady pace.
Think " Rocky " with rapping.
Sports movies, movies like "Remember the Titans" , "Any Given Sunday" , "Rocky", etc., conform to a strict formula in which the 1st half of the 1st act will tell you exactly how it will end, namely, your team will win, your player will overcome insurmountable odds and/or personal demons, competitors will be defeated.
Though in reality (and ironically) Eminem did not win his last battle, his story would seem like fine Hollywood fodder (comparisons to "Saturday Night Fever" and "Rocky" are anything but coincidental).
Extremely enjoyable film, with a winning performance from Eminem - essentially this is the Hip-Hop version of Rocky.
The "Rocky" clone script, by Scott Silver, immerses the action within Detroit's 8 Mile loop as white boy Bunny Rabbit, a fast minded and fast-talking rap star wannabe, goes against the local favorites at the weekly battle of the rappers hosted by Future (Phifer).
In the end, though, Rabbit is all alone – not just on stage, where he revs audience expectations for a Rocky-style triumph, but also in a surprisingly and satisfyingly ambiguous final scene.
The same explanation, however, doesn't hold true for the rest of the lameness on display, from the plethora of unimaginative pratfalls and wasted opportunities to, finally, the incessant '80s nostalgia (references to Footloose and The Karate Kid, music from the band Europe) that Samberg and his buddies don't seem to realize became played out sometime shortly after 1998's The Wedding Singer.
A lot of the comedy in "Hot Rod" will be meaningless, campy fun for teen viewers but in-jokes for Xers, who'll test their powers of recall and cringe with recognition when they hear songs and watch scene reenactments from "The Karate Kid," "Flashdance" and "Footloose," the most notable being an outrageously drawn-out sequence that has Kimble back-lighted and dancing wildly in a forest, then pommel horsing on a log, then falling -- endlessly -- down a wooded slope.
The incredibly quirky supporting cast - which, in addition to McShane, boasts appearances by Isla Fisher, Sissy Spacek, and Will Arnett - is as effective as it is impressive, while director Akiva Schaffer's passion for '80s movies such as Footloose and The Karate Kid adds a layer of homage that proves irresistible.
The Rocky movies come to mind immediately when watching Lightning train for the big race against Storm, and if you’re a fan of that series (particularly Rocky IV and Creed), you’ll likely connect with Cars 3 in a similar way.
Cars 3 sets up the expectation, then, that it is a latter-day Rocky story, a comeback journey for an aging competitor who’s still got life left in him.
It's thematically closest to one of the many mid-life crisis "Rocky" movies in which Stallone's iconic boxer attempts the difficult transition from inside the ring to real life.
Old-school training montages right out of the “Rocky” playbook ensue, as McQueen works on precision (to be “smarter, not faster”) steering through a field of hundreds of mooing tractors instead of maneuvering on car treadmills and racing simulators like the young’uns.
"Cars 3" owes as much of a debt to the "Rocky" sequels as its own previous editions, built as it is around an aging fighter training for one last shot at a championship.
Rather than taking the road traveled by some of the early Rocky sequels (number 3, 4, and 5 in particular) and having the aging protagonist return one last time to compete against a bigger, better opponent, Cars 3 moves more in the Rocky Balboa direction.
This is basically the dirty old man version of "The Karate Kid".
Director Victor Salva combines the Zen story of finding ones’ soul with the master/student sentiment of “The Karate Kid.”
One of the most flat-out strange items to come along the pike in a while, “Peaceful Warrior” desperately tries to tell an inspirational story of spiritual awakening but winds up coming off like an overtly homoerotic riff on “The Karate Kid” coated with a gooey glaze of holistic hooey that make the gibberish spouted in “What the #$^@ Do We Know?” seem sound and rational by comparison.
Peaceful Warrior is The Karate Kid set in the world of gymnastics.
This might please the director's psychologist (or parole officer) but it won't sit well with anyone with absolutely no interest in revisiting American Anthem or The Karate Kid all over again, only this time pumped with laughable horror-film pretenses.
There is something humanizing about a first name, especially for an action hero (think of how many of them are referred to primarily by their last names), and the direct break with the manner in which the films have been titled—it follows The Bourne Identity (2002), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), the titles of which derived from the Robert Ludlum novels on which they were more and more loosely based—signals a shift in narrative focus in the same manner that Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa (2006) sought to bring its Philly pugilist back to earth after five increasingly cartoonish Rocky films.