The real reason for Sylvester Stallone’s bizarre ‘Rocky IV’ robot
It’s by no means the best Rocky movie, but the fourth instalment may well be the most popular, and it’s comfortably the highest-grossing.
Deciding that the best way to ease tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union is to have a pair of musclebound behemoths repeatedly punch each other in the face, Sylvester Stallone’s ‘Italian Stallion’ and Dolph Lundgren’s chemically-enhanced Ivan Drago proceed to beat the ever-loving shit out of each other in the name of democracy.
Driven in part by the death of friend and mentor Apollo Creed, Rocky puts every ounce of himself into guaranteeing America’s place at the top of the geopolitical food chain. Rocky IV isn’t great in the strictest sense of what elevates movies towards excellence, but it remains a wondrously cheesy delight.
The soundtrack, the showmanship, and of course the montages are all pulled right out of the Reagan era, even if Stallone ended up suffering a little too much for his art when he instructed that Lundgren punch him as hard as he possibly could. Once his heart bounced off his skeleton and he woke up surrounded by a concerned cabal of nuns, the star and director realised it wasn’t such a bright idea.
Not everyone was thrilled with Rocky IV, though, which dropped the street-level sincerity of earlier chapters in favour of blockbuster bombast. One of the most polarising additions was Paulie’s robot Sico, which was included for reasons that hit very close to home for Stallone.
His second-born son Seargeoh was diagnosed with autism at an early age, and Stallone spotted International Robotics founder Robert Doornick on TV to promote both his creation and the work he’d done with autistic children. From there, the A-lister reached out, and Rocky IV‘s mechanical marvel was signed up for the picture.
“We got a call from the Stallone family,” he recalled via Trivia Happy. “They were very interested in how the robot could work with his son. One thing led to another and Stallone completely became enamoured with Sico, that particular character.”
However, the relationship soured eventually, with Stallone opting to remove all of Sico’s scenes from his Rocky IV director’s cut, telling the world, “The robot is going to the junkyard forever“. Needless to say, Doornick was affronted, and put it down to a financially-motivated decision to rob him of compensation.
“I know why he’s doing it, because I know he loves the robot,” he insisted. “By causing turmoil among the fans of Sico, it generates more publicity. And by removing the robot from the movie, it saves money in royalty fees.” The robot may have gone, but its creator didn’t think Stallone exiled it out of cruelty and malice, which makes sense when it was a personal connection that caused him to draft it into Rocky IV in the first place.
