USA TODAY International Edition
Rocky fights on with ‘ Creed’
The Italian Stallion gears up for last hurrah — and it packs a punch
Italian Stallion gears up for last hurrah.
Rocky Balboa was busy riding off into the sunset. And then Creed showed up. It took director Ryan Coogler years to persuade Sylvester Stallone to bring the Italian Stallion out of retirement for Creed ( in theaters Wednesday), a Rocky spinoff focused on a young fighter, Adonis Johnson ( Michael B. Jordan), Apollo Creed’s illegitimate son, who is on his own gritty quest for glory.
To say Stallone was skeptical is an understatement.
“This movie is such a big experiment for me,” says Stallone, 69, who wonders, “Will the kind of sentimentality, that underdog aspect of Rocky I, be valid today in the form of Creed’s son?”
Coogler is betting on it. He last directed Jordan in the lauded indie Fruitvale Station, and he concocted Creed’s story based on his relationship with his ailing father, a Rocky fanatic. “I have a relationship with the
Rocky movies that’s probably similar to a lot of people’s,” says Coogler, who was born after
Rocky IV came out. Then his father got sick with a neuromuscular disease. “His skeletal muscles were atrophying, so he literally was becoming weaker,” Coogler says. “He was losing the things that he associated with his masculinity and independence.”
A new take on Rocky’s post-fighting years emerged in the director’s mind. “That was when I came up with this story of this hero kind of dealing with his own mortality,” he says.
Problem was, Stallone had put the franchise he created, wrote and mostly directed to bed in 2006 with Rocky Balboa. The sixth film had been a victory lap, a solid sendoff after a disappointing return on 1990’ s Rocky V.
“It was very nerve- racking in the beginning; that’s why it took a little while to commit to it,” Stallone says. “I knew Michael’s sincerity, Ryan’s sincerity, but no one starts out ( and) sits around a table with a screenplay and the director goes, ‘ I’ve got a great idea — let’s make a real bomb!’ ”
Creed, Coogler’s second feature, begins its story in Los Angeles, introducing Adonis, who never met his heavyweight champion father. Raised in foster homes in California, he’s tough and hot- tempered. No one will train him. So Adonis sets off for Philadelphia seeking out the one man who has access to his legacy.
“He’s going through pretty much what Rocky went through in a different way,” Stallone says. “Rocky had given up on life. ( Adonis) hasn’t given up on life. He’s on a voyage. He’s seeking. But in the end, he’s looking for validation, and Rocky was, too.”
Creed is finding a Thanksgiving feast of validation from critics. But taking over a bedrock franchise is no small feat. It helped, Jordan says, that Stallone and Coogler kept reminding him
Creed isn’t Rocky VII. “Sly ( and) Ryan took the pressure off of me,” says Jordan, 28, who piled on muscle to convincingly play a fighter whose name spurs heavyweight champion “Pretty” Ricky Conlan ( former Amateur Boxing Association of England heavyweight champ Tony Bellew) to dangle a big- ticket fight. “That was the biggest relief ever. I got the guy who created the character ( in my corner).”
And as for Stallone’s transition to the coach standing outside the ring, no longer the focal point of the cameras, a bystander of his own making? Stallone cocks an eyebrow. “Should I say it was liberating and slightly horrible?”