Rocky (1976) may not be the best sports film ever made, but for many it is the best loved. As much love story as boxing movie, this feel-good box-office smash launched Sylvester Stallone's career into the stratosphere, inspired countless imitations (some of which were the Rocky sequels), and provided America with a simple blue-collar hero at a time when nonheroes and antiheroes—in movies like One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and Dog Day Afternoon —predominated on American movie screens. As Stallone told the New York Times at the time the film came out, "I've really had it with anti-this and anti-that. Where are all the heroes? I want to be remembered as a man of raging optimism, who believes in the American dream."

Sylvester Stallone and Talia Shire in a scene from the film Rocky.

Much of the film's enjoyment stems from the fact that Rocky Balboa's succeeding-against-all-odds...