I confess, I have never seen a Rocky film, but I am aware of
the references that have seeped into public consciousness – Rocky running up the
steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (which are now publically just referred
to as “the Rocky Steps”), “Gonna Fly Now”
by Bill Conti (just referred to as “Rocky’s Theme”). I reckon that if you were to stop 100 random
people on the street, and asked them to tell you something – anything - about Rocky, the majority would be able to
tell you something about those films, such is its cultural impact. So it was with this vague notion that I watched
Creed (2015), the half spin-off, half sequel which is to the Rocky franchise what The Force Awakens is to Star Wars.
Set in present day Philadephia, Adonis (“Donnie”) Johnson is
the illegitimate son of Apollo Creed, and is creating havoc in foster homes and
LA youth detention facilities before he is taken in by Creed’s widow, Mary Anne
(played fiercely and beautifully by Phylicia Rashad, a woman who doesn’t appear
to have aged since she played Clair Huxtable) who tells him of his father, and
that she won’t stand to watch him pursue his ambition of being a professional
boxer. Undeterred, Donnie traipses off
to find Rocky, his father’s long-time adversary/friend and ask him to become his
trainer. Along the way he meets Bianca,
a singer-songwriter with progressive hearing loss, and the two begin a
relationship where the thing they have in common is their goals which will only
ever be short term, but that they feel compelled to follow anyway because it is
the thing that “makes [them] feel alive”.
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| Donnie and Bianca, the new Rocky and Adrian? |
Notably, all the main characters make very active choices –
Donnie chooses boxing rather than the financial career he seems to be excelling
in, Mary Anne chooses to parent the one living symbol of her husband’s
infidelity, Rocky chooses to return to training, Bianca chooses to pursue her musical
goals despite knowing that there’s every possibility that they won’t be long
lasting. Things do not just happen to
these characters – life deals them some bad hands, and they choose to play them
anyways rather than fold and bow out of the game. There’s unspoken strength which isn’t just
about how hard you can hit something.
This plays out in the film’s final act where those characters again make
active and redemptive choices which are counterintuitive to them but ultimately
lead to their success – Donnie chooses to acknowledge that he is his father’s
son and takes his father’s name in the boxing ring and wins public affection, Mary
Anne chooses to accept Donnie’s boxing and they are reconciled, Rocky chooses
to live and accept treatment for the cancer that would otherwise kill him.
But alongside this, it is also a film of ghosts. Adrian is long dead, immortalised by being
the name of the Italian restaurant that Rocky now owns and spends his days in. The walls are lined with the photos and
articles of the glory days – when Rocky and Apollo reigned supreme. Paulie is dead and Rocky frequents both
graves on a regular basis in order to talk and read them the newspapers. Apollo is dead but his legacy looms large in the
film footage that Donnie watches, and in Donnie himself. The cornermen who train Donnie in the Front
Street Gym (trainer Mickey Goldmill is also dead but his silhouette is
plastered all over the walls and the kit) are the longtime friends of Rocky who
train him well, but constantly remind him of the person his father was. Mary Anne rejects Donnie’s plans of
professional boxing because of the ghost of Apollo who was killed in the
ring. Rocky’s Theme still plays, but it
is slow piano, rather than the boisterous fanfare of almost 40 years ago. Rocky still climbs the steps of the Philadelphia
Museum, but is slower, older and frailer.
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| Rocky's training regime of rock, paper, scissors left a lot to be desired |
It is a tremendous film in which a lot is implied, but not
directly said. I think that if that is
what I perceive from one viewing, I assume there is an even richer story for those
who know the Rocky films well. The fights are well choreographed, visceral and genuinely exciting to watch. There are strong, nuanced performances
throughout and while I was initially delighted this year that Mark Rylance won the
Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (Bridge
of Spies), I would now go out on a limb and say I think that Sylvester Stallone
was more deserving of the accolade (he was previously nominated for Best Actor
in the original Rocky film, but lost
out to Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver). That said, he did receive six other awards
for his part in this film, so it’s not as if his awards shelves remain empty. Michael B. Jordan, Tessa Thompson and
Phylicia Rashad (and to a lesser extent, Anthony Bellew) all turn in excellent
performances, but even as a supporting character it is Stallone that is the
prizefighter.
I’m off to run up some stairs.
Creed is currently available on Netflix.
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