Over the course of eight movies, the larger Rocky franchise, including the last two Creed films, have built certain expectations among the audience. We expect great character drama and impressive fighter choreography, but we also need a solid montage sequence where we get to watch our hero and his antagonist train for their big fight. Michael B. Jordan, like Sylvester Stallone before him, has now been on both sides of the camera filming these scenes, so he’s learned a thing or two.
Creed III will be Michael B. Jordan’s third film playing Adonis Creed, but it will be Jordan's first film ever as director. Speaking recently with Collider, Jordan said that now that he’s directed the famous training montage, he learned that the secret is to just get every shot you can and to make sure you show that all that training has led to results. Jordan says…
Get any and everything you can – every push up and every speed bag moment. No. With the montage, it’s about, what are the stakes? Has your character left the montage better than he was, when he first started? I think that’s a good one to stick to.
Training is a huge part of any sports movie. It’s the thing that any athlete should really be spending most of their time doing if the point of the story is to see them compete at the end. Of course, just watching them train over and over again doesn’t necessarily make for great cinema.
Enter the training montage. A succession of shots, showing days, weeks, or months of training, compressed into a few minutes. Add a catchy theme song, and you’ve got a recipe for what can end up being one of the more exciting parts of the move.
The Rocky franchise has given us some epic training montages over the years. In fact the montages became one of the most popular parts of the film, as they were the primary place where the Rocky theme “Gonna Fly Now” was used. Just hearing that music
The Creed movies have done a lot to stand on their own and become their own entity, but that doesn’t mean the new films have decided to forego the montage sequence. It will be interesting to see how Michael B. Jordan as a director, but one who knows this franchise better than anybody, handles the montage sequence. The Creed III trailer gives us several shots that might be part of the montage. While we will certainly get one in Creed III, maybe Jordan will bring something new and fresh to it. We’ll find out next year.
