A close second is Creed, where Michael B. The anthem, John Cafferty's Hearts On Fire, further informs Stallone's grieving-friend-meets-rugged-caveman aura. My personal favourite is the montage from Rocky IV, where Balboa invokes his inner Wolverine and trains in the snowy Soviet wilderness like a Russian while his murderous Russian opponent Ivan Drago trains indoors like an American. The tempo of his growing power is such that the viewer is compelled to feel the surge of victory even before the first round. And the images, a time-lapse pattern for the ages: bleak dawn, grey tracksuit, industrial routes, All-Star shoes (!), the meat-punching, the chicken-chasing, the heavy jogging, the one-handed push-ups, the rope-skipping, and then that final burst – where the camera strains to keep up with Sylvester Stallone's windy gallop – culminating in the 72-step sprint leading up to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In each of the first four films – as well as in Rocky Balboa (2007) – the score becomes a sensory emotion. At times, I wonder if sport even existed before Bill Conti's Gonna Fly Now, otherwise known as "the Rocky theme," was composed. The Rocky franchise is the founding father of the training montage. So I'm going to do the honourable thing here by clubbing them together. If I were to treat each Rocky movie differently, they'd take up four individual spots on a list that deserves versatility.
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