10 Movies Where It Didn't Matter That The Hero Lost
1. Rocky Balboa - Rocky
It's possible that Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) is the ultimate underdog, in that he was only given his fight against Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) specifically because he was a nobody. When Creed's original challenger got injured and couldn't face him, the champ himself suggested a nobody to turn his fight into something of a feel good story.
This was to be the fight of Rocky's life, and he trained like never before. However, in studying the film and analysing his opponent, he accepted long before ever entering the ring that he couldn't win. Instead, all he wanted to do was last all 15 rounds against the champ, like no one had done before.
To start the fight, Creed toyed with Balboa until the Italian Stallion caught him with a haymaker, knocking him down for the first time ever. Even if Rocky would have lost immediately after this, he'd have proved that he wasn't a nobody like he wanted to, and could have walked out with his head held high.
Instead, for 15 long rounds he gave as good as he got, and if he got knocked down, he got straight back up, even when his own coach told him not to. Whether Rocky won or lost against Apollo Creed was so insignificant that the announcement of his defeat by split decision was only vague background noise behind Rock and Adrian (Talia Shire) coming together and embracing after the fight. It just didn't matter.