“I don’t understand Stallone, I have the impression that he only does it for money”

That phrase from Clint Eastwood is not current, but belongs to 2003, to a profile that Lillian Ross wrote about Eastwood for ‘The New Yorker’. Curiously, after that Stallone returned to Rocky, but he did so with a film that was a huge critical and public success. And Eastwood did not return to any of his previous films. That is, a quarter of a century later, the quote is nuanced but it essentially means the same thing.

What is it coming for? That “I don’t understand Sylvester Stallone. I have the impression that he only does it for money” was said within Eastwood’s broader reflection on his own career: he was talking about Harry Callahan, about the risk of stagnating artistically, about the need to grow instead of going backwards. At that time, it was not known whether ‘Rocky Balboa’ would end up being a worthy film or a nostalgic wreck. In 2003, filming hadn’t even started.

It was cool. Three years later, Stallone wrote, directed and starred in that sixth installment. The critical reaction far exceeded that of its two predecessors: Rotten Tomatoes Today it scores 78% out of 180 reviews, well above the reception that ‘Rocky V’ had in 1990. In commercial terms, ‘Rocky Balboa’ grossed 155.9 million dollars with a budget of 24 million. The installment that recovered Rocky was a very worthy tribute to a classic character.

Everyone sins. Eastwood was also not free from the impulse to resurrect characters. He played Harry Callahan five times between 1971 and 1988, until ‘The Blacklist’, the last installment of the saga. When a sixth Callahan was finally ruled out, Warner Bros. did not close the door: in 2004 it considered relaunching the franchise with Dwayne Johnson as a thirty-something detective. The plan died due to Johnson’s own box office failures.

Without consequences (relatively). However, Eastwood has remained true to his words: in 2003 he had already abandoned Callahan’s films many years ago and was fully immersed in a career as a complete auteur accepted by Hollywood. Words are always relative, yes, because at the end of the day… what are films like ‘Unforgiven’ if not late sequels to his successes as a protagonist for directors like Leone, where the director wonders what happens when the icons reach an advanced age and all the treasures obtained by clean shooting have come to nothing?

What remains The really valuable thing about this statement, which we must remember that the current nonagenarian Eastwood has not uttered, is that it is infinitely nuanced: Rocky returned to one of his classic franchises (and would do so again with ‘John Rambo’, another critical – to a lesser extent, yes – and public success), but it was a more than worthy return. And Eastwood would stay true to his words, but four Dirty Harry sequels are there to remind him that there is no one with a completely irreproachable career.

In Xataka | “They were not used to silence”: when Clint Eastwood set foot in Spain for the first time in 1964, he was marked forever