Review On Sports Genre: A Comprehensive Discussion About Rocky

This assignment is your opportunity to demonstrate understanding of one selected genre. To do that, you will watch a full feature-length film from that genre.

you should reflect on and revise this assignment based on the instructor’s feedback before you incorporate it into any future writing assignment.

In your paper,

• Explain genre theory and, , describe the conventions and attributes of the genre you have selected.
• Identify a feature-length film that fits your selected genre and briefly summarize the movie. As you develop this summary, remember the differences between a film’s story and a film’s plot and be sure to highlight specific genre elements.
• Interpret at least two genre conventions exhibited in your chosen feature-length film that help classify it in the selected genre. Be sure to provide a specific example of each convention (e.g., a particular scene or plot component).
• Provide an example of a third convention from your chosen feature-length film and explain how this convention expands the boundaries of the specified genre.

Understanding Genre in Film Industry: Sports Genre

The purpose of this assignment is to review the basics of "Genre" which has been discussed in Chapter 3. This assignment provides an opportunity to conduct a comprehensive discussion about “sports” as a genre, which depicts the story of the lead character as an athlete or other games of the competition. In the sports genre, I have selected “Rocky". All the information related to the genre and its film will be discussed in the assignment.

This research paper claims about the genre and its category sports genre so that the audience can perceive the basics as well kind of genre a film industry has.

Genre refers to any kind of categorization or classification of a particular thing based on birth, family, genre and social-economic status. In the film industry, they are regarded as a particular category where the films are divided according to their genre so they can be easily recognized (Dibeltulo & Barrett, 2018).  This categorization has been done to accumulate the films with the familiar storyline, direction, protagonists so that the audience can make a particular idea about the film before watching it.   For the majority of the viewers, the genre is considered a first interaction with the films, which stimulates them to watch the movie, or not. In the film industry, there are endless classifications of films like comedy, western comedies, western drama, romance, horror, musical, mystery/ thrillers, and sports. It is important to understand that, genres can be visually understood, though they are various plot conventions, which are used to depict the topic, and events in the movie (Rutherford, 2011). Likewise, the genre has a prominent part in the industry, its labeling is equally important.  This states that how producers classify the films they produce and how audiences m perceive and categorize the movie they want to see. However, with the labeling of the genre, it becomes difficult to attract the mass audience because with that they can easily analyze the plot of the film.  Through the medium of the genre, various filmmakers are making a move to produce films that address critical issues related to society and through that, they are providing a beautiful message to society. While categorizing the genre, it can be observed that they are various sub-genre in the film due to which one film can be classified into more than a genre. For example, one movie indicates Adventure as well as a family drama,  it can be categorized in more than “One” genre. The genre I have selected is “Sports” as a genre.

Sports Genre: A Unique Classification

The sports genre is referred to as a sports-based movie, which is produced to depict or to promote its significance through movies (Poulton & Roderick, 2018).  In such films, the emphasis has been placed on sport, sports events, biographies of the athlete and their sport, where the plot of the movie portrays motivation, inspiration, aggression, fame, determination or downfall of a well-renowned sports star.  A sports film does not always attract a mass audience. The audience of such kind of movies is generally the people who take interested sports and for the people who are a hard-core fan of sports movies.

The sports genre film that I have chosen is ‘Rocky”. Rocky is one of the most popular American boxing sports drama movie directed by Jhon G Avildsen. The protagonist of the movie was the fictional character Rocky Balboa that was played by the versatile and acclaimed actor of Hollywood “Sylvester Stallone”. This film has earned fame and praise from his 8 franchise which was begun from 1976 and in July 2019, it is a lead actor has declared, that another sequel of Rocky is under production( Avildsen, 2019).  On the global level, the gross profit earned by  Rocky is approximately $1.7 billion. On IMDB it has 4,81,820 people votes with an excellent rating of about 8.1/10. Along with such positive reviews, it's first, third, as well as the seventh franchise, has acknowledged and received  Academy Awards nominations. Its original film has won a series of awards like Best Picture, Best Director and Best Film Editing. For his powerful performance and outstanding performance, Sylvester Stallone has received academy nominations. The story of the movie indicates the struggling and poverty-stricken life of Rocky who was the small-time boxer who during the day the time work as a collector for the loan shark and flights in B-grade and local club to earn a livelihood.  The original plot of Rocky is full of struggle, poverty, and self-respect.  He was told that he is not worthy as he has nothing but a “But”. The story begins in 1975 when the heavyweight boxing Champaign Apollo Creed has declared to hold the title for the upcoming competition, however, he was informed that his competitor and opponent got injured. After that to win the title, he selects Rocky Balboa who was a small club fighter, got ready to fight $150,000. This point of the movie depicts that, Rocky was out of money and was struggling to earn a decent life. Therefore, he agreed to fight for money as he knew that boxing will bring all the wealth and fame he desires (Potapov Douze, Revaud, Harchaoui  & Schmid, 2015).

Overview of Rocky: An American Boxing Drama

As the story goes, various plots and conventions like romance and jealousy, inspiration and fame can be visualized when Rocky after his hard work and brilliant performance became a famous and well-known fighter. Then the D-day arrives when Creed makes an intense entry at the ring, however, his overconfidence got shaken when Rocky knockdown which has never happened before. This is a third convention, which was being witnessed by the audience that in the competition one side will be more confident than another person, however when overconfidence makes you fall then, there might be chances that you need to get up and fight yourselves from the beginning (Teaching Trailer Secondary, 2013).  In the story, Creed had never expected that in this sports, he will be ever knocked down, however, his overconfidence becomes the reason for his downfall. As the plot of the story goes on it had become the fight for self-respect and ego which was stretched to 15 rounds. Both fighters were mercilessly hitting each other and end of the match both the fighters decided that they were no rematch. This line signifies that no ego is never above one's life and in front of life ego always fails.  Whereas on the Rocky part, the audience can easily interpret that with determination, hard work and willingness to improve day by day can help to achieve your dreams while keeping head high. At the end of the movie, after the longest fight of that time, Adrian and Rocky confessed their love for each without caring about the result and he was declared as a winner (Ward, 2017).

Conclusion

It can be inferred that Genre is a method of classifying similar kinds of movies so that it can be easily analyzed by the audience. There are different kinds of genre available that is comedy horror, advent fantasy, drama, and ours.  From the entire genre, I have selected Sports genre in which reviews have been provided over Rocky which is an American Boxing drama sports film.

References

Avildsen, J., G., (2019) Rocky (1976 Film) Background, retrieved from: https://www.gradesaver.com/rocky-1976-film

Dibeltulo, S., & Barrett, C. (Eds.). (2018). Rethinking Genre in Contemporary Global Cinema. Springer.

IMDB (2019) Rocky Plot, retrieved from: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075148/plotsummary

Potapov, D., Douze, M., Revaud, J., Harchaoui, Z., & Schmid, C. (2015). Beat-event detection in action movie franchises. 

 Poulton, E., & Roderick, M. (Eds.). (2018). Sport in films. Routledge.

Rutherford, A. (2011). What Makes a Film Tick?: Cinematic Affect, Materiality and Mimetic Innervation.

Teaching Trailer Secondary (2013) Conventions retrieved from:,https://www.filmeducation.org/teachingtrailers/secondary/conventions.html

Ward, T. (2017) The Amazing Story Of The Making Of 'Rocky' retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomward/2017/08/29/the-amazing-story-of-the-making-of-rocky/#404be820560b