In Creed III, Michael B. Jordan and Jonathan Majors Hit Hard Without Stallone

There’s a moment in 2015’s Creed that serves as the lynchpin for its case as perhaps the best legacy sequel/years-later franchise extension of recent memory. During the climactic boxing match pitting underdog challenger Adonis “Donnie” Creed (Michael B. Jordan) against a current champion, Creed confesses his greatest fear to his coach, Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), who you may remember from six previous Rocky films, encompassing a 1976 Best Picture winner, a 1985 Cold War clip-show, and a 2006 old-man-comeback picture, among others. Rocky offers words of encouragement, expresses his love and gratitude, and Creed — the son of Rocky’s late opponent-turned-friend — stands up to fight one last round, with the opening notes of Bill Conti’s instantly recognizable Rocky theme emerging on the soundtrack.
There’s nothing quite like this in Creed III. That may sound like a body blow to the new sequel, but it’s not, both because a rush of emotion that powerful is an unfairly tall order for any sequel, and because Creed III is bravely taking its chances without Rocky or his accompanying emotional baggage (or, no small thing, his theme music). Creed II took a baby step away from its parent franchise, developing Creed’s world while leaving time for a Rocky subplot (and a Stallone co-writing credit that seemed, frankly, like the result of a miscommunication, given that he didn’t write the first one). This time, Rocky is mentioned briefly but unseen, and Creed’s big opponent is a sui-generis figure from his past, not Rocky’s. (Creed II featured Viktor Drago, son of Rocky IV’s supervillain Ivan.) Stallone may grumble, but the spinoff process is complete. The series belongs to Creed now.
Which also means that it fully belongs to Michael B. Jordan — not least because he takes a Stallone-like step into the director’s chair with this third installment. That weird alchemy between autobiography and self-mythologizing that makes the Rocky sequels fascinating even as they fail to live up to the magic of the original is very much active here, as Donnie feels the tension between his traumatic childhood and the luxury he now enjoys as a retired boxing champ. That tension tightens when Damian Anderson (Jonathan Majors), a friend of Donnie’s from his group-home days, emerges from a multi-year prison sentence and asks for some help starting a belated boxing career. The movie retcons that Donnie learned some moves from the older, stronger Damian, who now feels that his life has been stolen from him — especially understandable when the specifics of his arrest are revealed. Donnie, meanwhile, must grapple with his guilt over the friend he left behind, alongside the provocative idea that one story’s scrappy underdog may be another’s well-off villain.