Yes, “Creed” is built on six films’ worth of back story and the heavyweight presence of Sylvester Stallone. Sylvester Stallone thought that film, Rocky Balboa, would be a fitting coda for the character that brought him such fame and fortune, but young filmmaker Ryan Coogler – a lifelong fan of the films – had another idea.
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For Jordan it’s the kind of role that defines careers – and he owes it all to writer director Ryan Coogler, whose 2013 “Fruitvale Station” was Jordan’s breakthrough. “It’s yours.” There’s still the matter of getting in shape. Given that concept, probably half the people reading this could devise, within five minutes, a scenario very close to that of this film. Almost 10 years later, Rocky is still running the restaurant but his boxing days are behind him. If you haven’t played Real Boxing, it’s time that you download this game and see for yourself how it feels to become a boxing champion trained by the best of the best. “She’s so dedicated to her work, but sometimes her work allows her to shut out the outside world and Adonis comes into her life and literally knocks down a few of those doors because she’s someone that can be kind of guarded”. “You embrace him. You trust him… that’s what makes a star”. And nowhere is that contemporary attitude more apparent than in the character of Bianca, played by Tessa Thompson.
Those final two films felt more like a money grab and turned the Rocky character into caricature.
“I think those women all have lives of their own … so it was important to me and Ryan that Bianca doesn’t just feel like an object but is a subject of the narrative”. I didn’t get it. You’ve got to take care of your parents a little bit more.
Sylvester Stallone’s recent sit-down with Robert Rodriguez for The Director’s Chair made a pretty compelling case that the Rocky movies ought to be taken seriously as Sly’s greatest artistic achievement. He didn’t have all that weight. But Rocky looks frail and has lost interest in the present. “Is he the guy that beat my dad?” They were hiring people with weird technology, which ended up becoming the Steadicam. “He hits it out of the park, and if there’s a vote, I’ll be voting for him”, said Carl Weathers, who played Apollo Creed.
“It’s a refreshing change after things like “Taxi Driver” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” – brilliant pictures, perhaps, but not rooting pictures”, “Rocky” supporting actor nominee Burgess Meredith said at the time. The fact that he didn’t know that much about that history actually lends itself to the character and the role because he’s inquisitive. There’s a ferocity to his physical performance evident in both his intensely sculpted body and unleashed aggression, but Jordan balances that imposing presence with a softness and a fragility revealing the still-uncertain foster child within. I never think about the questions that nobody’s asking me.
Rocky and Rocky II are, to me, about class (or lack thereof). It’s a lifelong fraternity.
I haven’t told anybody this, but the first screenplay that I ever wrote, the first legitimate screenplay, Philadelphia was the original setting…. He volunteered my face on that one. And when the old “Rocky” music starts playing, as it inevitably will at a key moment, we’ll be able to laugh happily, and not scornfully. “This will get you fired up!” I saw it three times when it came out. I want to play all parts.
MBJ: Yeah, I still want to shoot a movie in my hometown, Newark, New Jersey. I’ll have much more to say on this one before the week is out, so I’ll keep this short.
That may be why Warner Bros. didn’t schedule a Los Angeles academy screening for “Creed”, though there is one in NY on Tuesday night. Coogler also did a great job writing bad guys into the script who have as much substance as bluster. This is their livelihood. My friends came with me a lot of the time. More impressively, he holds his own opposite one of the most iconic characters of all time, which is no easy task.
Q: The fight scenes must have been tricky to choreograph. That second fight, that was intense. That was hours and hours spent in the gym, working with our cinematographer, out camera operator, our fight coordinator, make-up – it was very collaborative. But it was hard, and very ambitious. Rocky Balboa, which was meant to be the franchise’s ending chapter, gets consideration outside of the original series in this corner.
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Any day, nature can flip the coin on us and take away our health….
