Warning: This post contains spoilers for Creed 3.
Nine movies in, Creed 3 completely changes the Rocky and Creed movie franchise in quite stunning ways. Not only is Sylvester Stallone's iconic Rocky Balboa missing, but Michael B Jordan's direction takes the sequel into bold new artistic directions alongside some of the pillar expectations established by Stallone's enduring underdog story. Along the way, Jordan, in his directorial debut, is unafraid of challenging those expectations and breaking some cardinal rules.
On the surface, Creed 3's ending follows all the usual Rocky movie conventions, but it's the specifics that really change, and the final fight will be talked about long after other conversations end. Typically, the final fight would be measured solely in terms of a battle, and what Rocky comes through to win, but Creed 3 changes things up so much with Jordan's artistic choices, that the discussion is on a different plane entirely. At the same time, Jordan gives Rocky fans everything they want (other than Rocky himself), with fights, montages, the triumph over adversity and even an equivalent of the Rocky Steps moment. But it's in the broken rules that Creed 3's legacy is really set...
5 Adrian Was Always Rocky's Infallible Conscience & Advisor
Creed 3 disrespects Tessa Thompson's Bianca Creed by completely ignoring her message halfway through the movie in a way that Rocky movies would never have thought to do. Before Adrian was killed off, she was Rocky's moral rock of conscience, who he turned to for advice and inspiration. Rocky would never have challenged her, without there being a greater good. Adonis ignores Bianca imploring him to accept that violence is not the answer.
Adonis and Bianca's daughter, Amara struggles with her own restraint when facing conflict, and that becomes the heart of Creed 3's focus on Adonis' unspoken internal battle. With his past. With his nature. Bianca asks him not to train Amara and to stop trying to solve his issues with violence, only to then accept that he has to fight Jonathan Majors' Damian Anderson in a hand-waving moment that just has to be accepted without real scrutiny. Bianca is allowed to be Adonis' inspiration, along with Amara, but her counsel is completely ignored, which would be unthinkable in a Rocky movie when Adrian was still alive.
4 Rocky's Boxing Is Beautiful, Creed 3's Is Ugly On Purpose
Michael B Jordan's shooting style completely changes the boxing in Creed 3. In Rocky movies, boxing is a means to tell a story - invariably of triumph, with moments of adversity wrapped in near-misses and knock-downs - but it tends to so without a commitment to hyper-realism. The boxing is balletic, the injuries cartoonish and the blood added more for effect than real stakes. In Creed 3, the boxing is on a whole other level of brutality, far more realistic, and shudderingly scary.
There's less of a sense of boxing as an art-form, particularly when Jordan chooses to reframe the final fight, and the close-up dynamic camera work puts the audience almost in the position of the one taking the punches. The boxers are shown to identify weaknesses in their opponents and exploit them; the injuries threaten to end fights, and in one deeply disturbing moment, Dame spits a tooth out. This boxing leaves far worse of a mark than in the Rocky movies.
3 Rocky's Morality Was Always Black And White
From the very start, Balboa was an unflinchingly wholesome character, which fits with why Stallone's Rocky is not in Creed 3. Stallone saw too much darkness in Adonis Creed's story, but that is precisely the point of Creed 3. Adonis' story is haunted by his past, and his fight is as much about beating those ghosts as it is about beating Damian Anderson. That makes his conflict with Diamond Dame complex and rewarding, but makes Anderson himself unlike any Rocky villain.
Though not quite a villain, Apollo Creed is an arrogant glory hound, Clubber Lang is a monstrous violence machine, and Ivan Drago is one of the most clichéd Cold War allegories ever committed to film. Even Rocky V's Tommy Gunn is something of a pantomime villain. Next to them, Diamond Dame is far more complex: he's a product of his abusive past, his life being robbed from him unfairly, and his prison term. Yes, Dame sins, but the question is whether he is more sinned against than sinning, and Creed 3 overall presents him as a vaguely sympathetic character.
While you're invited to cheer Dame's loss, there is pathos to his reign as world champion ending so quickly, and the suggestion of his isolated future. Rocky would never have become friends with Clubber Lang, Ivan Drago, Thunderlips or Tommy Gunn, but Creed 3 ends with Adonis offering the branch of peace to Dame.
2 You Never Mess With Rocky's Final Fight
No matter how the first 90 minutes to 2 hours of any Rocky movie go, the climax ends the same way: Rocky enters the fight as the underdog (even when he's the champion), and the big fight is a flashy spectacle. It's all about the theater of the fight, the lights, the crowd, the arena of battle, but Creed 3 introduces Michael B Jordan's boldest change to the franchise by completely changing the final fight. Jordan goes Avant Garde, reimagining the battle in the ring in more symbolic terms for an artistic triumph that flips everything on its head.
Jordan strips away the crowd and paints Creed vs Anderson as an almost carnal conflict, animalistic and performative in a very wild way. Immediately, the fight becomes more than just a spectacle, and it's a strong way to underline that there's more at stake than just glory. Jordan also uses the technique to emphasize the bond between the two fighters - a reminder of Dame's belief that Creed effectively stole his life.
Creed 3's final fight is easily the biggest departure, even with Rocky's absence taken into account, and could have been the hardest decision to accept. But Jordan is restrained enough with his big idea to make the fight one of the movie's crowning glories. And considering the sanctity of the best final fights in Rocky movies, that achievement is all the more impressive.
1 Rocky Never Does It Alone, Creed Has To
Despite Rocky's origin story suggesting he is the center of a very small world, Balboa is always enforced as the heart of his story, and indeed the heart of the stories of everyone he knows. Every fight he takes on is for someone else, whether to improve his prospects as a romantic interest for Adrian or to gain revenge for Apollo Creed or to fight for the dying Mickey. He is a symbol of something larger, rightly immortalized as a statue, with the Rocky Steps named after his achievement and aimed at inspiring others.
Creed 3 takes a completely different approach, isolating Adonis Creed and trapping him in the moral dilemma of initially wanting to do right by Damian. His decision to allow Dame to fight Felix Chavez turns out to be a disastrous mistake that he must own, and which ultimately leads to the strain of his relationship with Little Duke and the death of his mother. Against that backdrop, Adonis also wrestles with his own demons, and his quickness to violence and confrontation to add another personal level to his turmoil.
Rocky may have preached perseverance and getting back up no matter how hard you get hit, he drew on the support and inspiration of his friends, Adrian and his fans. Adonis Creed, on the other hand, must prevail alone thanks to his own mistakes in Creed 3 and his own stubborn insistence on not allowing his wife behind his guard. It's only when he overcomes those issues that he's able to get himself into the position to beat Dame, and Creed 3 is very careful to show him initially struggling even through his montage.