Creed 3 Director And Star Michael B. Jordan On Taking Big New Swings With The Franchise [Exclusive Interview]

This interview contains very light spoilers for "Creed III."

It's been eight years since the underdog boxer Donnie Johnson, aka Adonis Creed (played by Michael B. Jordan), first appeared on cinema screens in "Creed," honoring his father Apollo Creed's name by adopting and eventually embracing that fraught family name. While Donnie trained and fought with Rocky Balboa in his corner, he always had an eye on forging his own legacy, away from both his father and his trainer-cum-uncle.

"Creed III" represents that promise fulfilled both in front of and behind the camera, as Jordan steps into the role of director for the first time in his career. Jordan's elevation to the director's chair is about as far away from an ego trip as one could imagine. Not only does he utilize the film's ensemble cast well (including returning co-star Tessa Thompson as Creed's wife Bianca and new antagonist Jonathan Majors as Damian, an old friend-turned-rival), giving them copious moments to shine, but he pushes the "Creed" series — and, by extension, the "Rocky" series — into a whole new visual dimension, making it one of the most exciting and impressive sequels of recent years.

I had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Jordan on the eve of the release of "Creed III," and the thoughtful filmmaker talked about what it took to make those fights happen (on both sides of the camera), how each one switched up his storytelling style, and how he found new depths to Adonis' character in this third installment that allowed him to further build the legacy of "Creed."

Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Congratulations on the movie. I absolutely adored it, and I'm just blown away by how unique it is. I mean, this is either three films in or nine, depending on how you look at it.

Depending on how you look at it, for sure.

You've given this series an entirely new visual language. Was it hard to present those ideas? Was there a lot of pushback for you, or was it something that people were willing to go with in terms of, "The final fight looks like what?"

No, it was fully supported across the board. I think I've been daydreaming about this movie for a really long time and the things that I wanted to do differently and how I wanted to just elevate, but I wanted to evolve some things, especially within the fights and the look of it.

When I started talking to my DP [Kramer Morgenthau], my producers in the studio, and all that stuff, they fully got behind the vision, even with some things they didn't really understand fully in the beginning. How could they? So when I started talking about voids and anime and how I wanted to shoot stuff, they just kind of ... especially my stunt choreographer as well, Clayton Barber, they all got behind it. You know what I'm saying? It made me feel even more empowered to go out there and take some bigger swings. And that's what we did.

As a first-time director, what was shooting the fight sequences like for you? I myself would go crazy thinking about the logistics of not just the camera choreography, but the physical choreography and what you want to say, because each fight has a distinctive feel and a story to it.

Yeah. I would say pre-production really helped me out a lot to arc out the fights. Each fight, I wanted to feel slightly different in an homage to the boxing culture and the sport of boxing. So I really wanted to get into the smarts and the intelligence of boxing in the first fight to really lock into Adonis, like, "Okay, he's playing chess out there." He's literally, he's laying traps. And just the sweet science of that, I wanted to show that. And a little anime influence in there, just kind of start laying the breadcrumbs to so I can earn that last fight kind of void that we took them to.

The second fight, it was a little bit more brutal, more intense. I wanted to show different injuries that boxers could sustain; the eye we've seen, the nose and all this stuff. We've seen all the broken bones, but I just wanted to show things differently. But then also the brutality and the kind of violence that can come into it, especially through [the Damian] character. And I think that fit very well.

Then the last fight was a mixture of both. It's the most intimate fight, so it had to feel exciting, dynamic, and very emotional. And that was a real nod to my anime love where I put in a lot of those nuggets, especially within those montage rounds of them revisiting the childhood trauma. So I think between that, and once I arced that out, we got those things down.

Learning the choreography is something that comes natural to me at this stage in the game. So just working that through was very freeing. But then also being able to direct while I'm in the ring in real time without having to yell, "Cut!" I can keep things moving. So it saved me a lot of time and I was able to direct as I was boxing. So that was a fun new tool that I never could do before. So I was like, "Oh, wow, I can do this? This is kind of cool! Let's do it again." So that kind of gave us a lot of momentum and we made up a lot of time in doing that as well.

On the acting side, we've seen Donnie, his determination, his heart, his strength, resilience, and all that through the other movies as well, but this one really feels like it delves the deepest into his soul. What was that like for you, finding new things about the character three movies in?

I think that was the only way we could move forward in a real way, to really establish this is Adonis's franchise, [that] it was a "Creed" franchise moving forward, was making it feel like an origin story, a sequel, and a trilogy all in one. We really had to go back to those transformative years of childhood trauma that we all kind of carry with us as adults and see what that looks like. What shaped the guy?

So I think, look, this is the third time I got a chance to play Adonis, and that's the most up of any character that I've had the opportunity to play throughout my whole career. And I've been with Adonis as I've been growing up personally as well. So the beautiful thing about storytelling and acting and taking on different characters is that you hope to find characters that line up somewhat with where you are in life and what you have to give and offer [that's] important to a character. Hopefully you can blur those lines enough where it feels dead-on in some aspects.

So for me, I was working some stuff out through Adonis as well. You know what I mean? And through this film as a whole. So it was an experience. It's hard to articulate, but it was very satisfying.

"Creed III" will be in theaters on March 3, 2023.