Michael B. Jordan’s directorial debut gives new energy to old sports-movie formulas.
Nobody in Creed III has much to say about Rocky Balboa. For the first two films in the series, the aged mentor (played by Sylvester Stallone) of the boxing star Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) is an important figure in the narrative, a folksy sage passing down the lessons of an entire movie franchise. In Creed III, he’s nowhere to be seen and basically forgotten. That’s partly because of off-camera disputes Stallone had about the creative direction, but his character’s absence also feels like a necessary, liberating step, allowing III to shake off the tricky label of “spin-off” and become something more robust. (Stallone is still credited as a producer on the movie.)
Adonis’s connection to the Rocky films is that he’s the son of Apollo Creed, Carl Weathers’s champion-boxer character, who goes from Rocky’s heated rival to his close friend over the course of the original series. By Creed III, Adonis has stopped living in his father’s shadow: He’s solidified his own boxing career and fought the son of the boxer who killed his father in the ring. This new entry is Jordan’s directorial debut, and he has quite the incisive authorial voice, turning what could have been a phoned-in threequel into a close look at the challenges of remaining “authentic” while being famous. Along the way, he offers some new visual language for on-screen boxing, just as the first Creed movie did.
For a franchise that seemed possibly moribund after Creed II, the rebound is exciting. Whereas the first Creed used well-known sports-movie hallmarks to its advantage (underdog kid makes good on the mean streets of the big city), Creed II felt like it was grasping to tie off loose ends from Stallone’s long-dormant saga.
