It’s Thanksgiving 1976. America had just elected Jimmy Carter president. The mild-mannered Georgia governor promised a new era for a country whose psyche had been ravaged by the toxic twins Vietnam and Watergate. But people were soured beyond the point of being stirred to life by a political figure.

The economy was shaky. Some experts said that the planet was dying. Other experts told us the Soviets were winning the Cold War. The remaining experts said, “Just give up. It’s over.”

What a way to celebrate America’s bicentennial. It’s no surprise that people were in a catatonic state, and our culture reflected it. Popular music got dreary, fashion got sad, movies got depressing. Disco was spawned.

We desperately needed something to believe in. Someone we could cheer for.

Along came this movie about a club fighter from Philadelphia who, thanks to divine intervention and clever boxing promoters, gets a shot at the heavyweight title. Rocky, which opened during the Thanksgiving holiday, was exactly what we were looking for to make us feel good again.

Rocky was an underdog story that is as old as the country itself. It spoke directly to America’s collective love for the little guy, the scrapper with a dream, the million-to-one shot. After all, that’s the story of America, ain’t it? By the time Rocky Balboa came along, though, a lot of people were thinking our best days were behind us, that the American Dream was over and everyone had woken up.

The American Dream figures large in Rocky. When Balboa is offered a chance to fight Apollo Creed, the Muhammad Ali-esque heavyweight champion of the world, fight promoter George Jergens asks him if he believes that America is the land of opportunity. Rocky says yes, but you can tell by the way he says it that he doesn’t really believe it.

Rocky ekes out a living trolling the docks as a “leg breaker for a two-bit loan shark” as the crusty boxing trainer Mickey puts it. He lives alone in a water-stained, flea infested tenement, and his social circle consists of Paulie the drunk, Paulie’s cripplingly shy sister Adrian, and two turtles, Cuff and Link. If there is opportunity in America, it has passed Rocky by.

Rocky may be punchy, but he’s not an idiot. He accepts the fight even though he and everyone else figures he’ll get his face kicked in. He gets Mickey to train him, wins over Adrian, and shakes the hell out of the champion of the whole wide world. Sorry if you didn’t already know this, but this movie has been around for decades, and it is a certified cinema classic. Spoiler alerts don’t apply.

And shame on you if you haven’t seen the original Rocky already.

Despite its age, Rocky is a timeless film. Its message is rooted in the American experience, yet it speaks to everyone around the world. Rocky Balboa is a metaphor for never giving up, for having the courage to go the distance. The character and the story are tangible and real. Part of that has to do with how closely Rocky reflected the life of its creator.

In the 1970s, Sylvester Stallone was a too-bit actor slugging it out in Hollywood’s trenches, and he was losing the fight. He went so far as appearing in a porn movie and selling his dog to make ends meet. Then one night, he caught a boxing match between heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali and a paluka named Chuck Wepner. The outcome was pre-ordained. Wepner’s nickname was “The Bayonne Bleeder,” for Pete’s sake.

Much to everyone’s surprise, Wepner nearly went the distance, taking everything Ali could throw at him and even knocking the champ down in the ninth round. This inspired Stallone to bang out a script about a club fighter who gets a shot at the heavyweight title.

Stallone could have taken the quick money and the fabulous prizes that came with selling the script outright, but he held out. He wanted to play the title character. Producers were not keen. They had visions of Burt Reynolds, Ryan O’Neil, Robert Redford, not an unknown who’d only played thugs. Stallone risked having the whole project kicked to the curb, but he got his shot. He inhabited the character so thoroughly, that some people thought he really was a punch-drunk lug.

Turns out Stallone was an astute filmmaker who knew how to tell a story and how to sell it to audiences. Rocky was a huge box office hit and was nominated for 10 Academy Awards. It won Best Picture in a crowded field that included some of the decade’s greatest movies all in one year. Stallone was nominated for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay. The lean days were over.

Even though Stallone got rich and famous, he never forgot the character that made it all possible. He has been revisiting Rocky Balboa regularly ever since. Like all movie franchises, there are some entries we’d rather forget (Talking to you, Rocky V), but audiences keep coming back.

Nowadays, Stallone may be physically fit beyond what is medically feasible for a man over 70, but Rocky is definitely too brittle to be taking on all comers. That hasn’t stopped the saga from adapting to modern times. Rocky is now the mentor and corner man of Adonis Creed, son of the late, great Apollo Creed.

2015’s Creed brought the Rocky story to a new generation and given us a new hero to root for. Adonis, the bastard son of Apollo (Sounds almost like a Greek myth, doesn’t it?), never knew his father. He grows up tough on the streets, but when he is rescued from a nasty, short, and brutish life by Apollo’s widow, he gets a taste of the good life.

Adonis yearns for more, though. He is his father’s son and he wants to stake his claim in the world. So, he tracks down Rocky, convinces him to train him for a one-in-a-million shot at the title, and high drama with some great training and fight scenes ensue. The movie was a big success, and the strong reception of the inevitable sequel Creed II proved that the franchise is alive and well. That’s great news.

Creed, like Rocky, is about the American Dream. It’s also about finding your place in the world, being your own person, making your own way. It’s hard to be an individual these days. Groupthink pervades our institutions, perverts our discourse, and thrashes people who dare to swim against the tide.

Mythic characters like Rocky Balboa remind us that we can own our destiny, that we can grab a piece of the American Dream if we’re willing to fight for it. And that good guys can still win.