CHICAGO — The first time Michael B. Jordan visited Chicago on a promotional tour, the movie was “Fruitvale Station,” written and directed by Ryan Coogler.
Back then Jordan and Coogler were basically each other’s entourage. Not yet a well-known actor, let alone a well-known star, Jordan toured with the first-time feature writer-director in support of Coogler’s tight, propulsive breakthrough movie. That was 10 years ago, meaning: two years before Jordan and Coogler reteamed for the terrific “Creed” (2015). And five years before the billion-dollar phenomenon of “Black Panther” (2018).
It’s different now. Two weeks ago, Jordan came back through town, this time with “Creed III,” and now as superstar and director. The third “Creed” outing, the ninth in the overall, nearly 50-year-old franchise begun with Sylvester Stallone and “Rocky,” marks Jordan’s feature directorial debut.
This time Jordan traveled with his co-star Jonathan Majors, who plays Kang the Conqueror in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.” He is very hot right now, and has been a critical favorite since he made full emotional sense of the arch and fascinating world of “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” (2019). A year later Majors starred in HBO’s “Lovecraft Country.”
Anecdotal evidence from the day of my talk with Jordan and Majors suggests that this time, Jordan’s entourage was an entourage, numbering somewhere between eight and a dozen. Quiet men in suits lined the hallway on the 31st floor of the Ritz-Carlton, outside the penthouse suite.
“Creed III” pits the recently retired heavyweight champ Adonis Creed — son of Apollo, adversary and then comrade of Rocky Balboa — against an old childhood friend turned vengeful adversary: Damian Anderson, played by Majors.
They talked about boxing movies; the “Creed” sequel’s Japanese anime inspiration and the niceties of filming a match using a busy, “terrifying” (Majors’ word) programmable robotic camera that, if the performer didn’t hit his mark properly, could “clean your clock” (Jordan’s phrase). The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: OK, so the “high-speed cinebot” camera you used is called ... ?
Jordan: The Bolt. It’s a bolt-arm camera, like you find in auto assembly lines. You can program in specific camera moves and locations for the shot you want. This thing’ll hit every spot you program it for, systematically. It’s super dangerous, and you gotta hit your mark because it’s damn well gonna hit its mark! It’ll clean your clock if you don’t.
Phillips: The anime pop to some of the sequences is the biggest visual stroke you make here, wouldn’t you say?
Jordan: Right. With so many looks, styles and iterations of boxing films, I had to think outside the box, outside what we’ve seen before in the ring. My love of anime, I mean, I watch it every day. It’s in my thought process, all the time, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to bring the look of anime to live-action so it works. There hasn’t yet been a live-action (version) of anime that works, in my opinion. And I felt like boxing was a perfect storytelling medium for it. In some close-ups, especially when Adonis and Damian are in the ring for the third fight, we wanted to really dive into the inner thought processes of boxers in a way I thought was interesting.
Q: And the second fight?
Jordan: Violent, brutal. That’s when Dame and Felix Chavez (José Benavidez Jr.) have their title match. We had to show injuries we hadn’t shown before. We’ve done the swollen eye, we’ve done the broken nose, the broken ribs, but we’d never shown someone’s tooth getting knocked out. I’d never seen someone (onscreen) try to strategically “dead” someone’s arm, but I’d seen it happen in real fights, and it fit Damian’s character so well because that would be his style of boxing. Is it cheating? No. Is it stretching and bending the rules? Yes.
Q: Jonathan, with a different actor and maybe a different director, it’s easy to imagine Damian as a one-dimensional villain. That’s not the case here.
Majors: This guy, Damian Anderson … first of all, the name Anderson is the (character) name Michael and I agreed on (at Majors’ suggestion). It’s the name of the paternal side of my family. So that gives you some sense of how far in I wanted to put myself with this character. I wanted to be implicated. I kept finding ways to, you know, stay on the hook. Every time Anderson’s up there onscreen, in those fights, I could see my own granddaddy’s name up there, too. So even when my arms felt like they were on fire, I just kept punching.
With every character, I try to see who they really are, who they represent in society. I try to figure out what I can share with other folks. In life, we only meet one person at a time. In the cinema, millions of people a day can meet someone, you know? I have a huge investment in what it means to be a young Black man, and what this idea of incarceration means. My stepfather, who raised me, was incarcerated for 15 years before we met. I saw how he was treated. I saw the drive he had. I watched how he dealt with the ankle monitor, all of that. So Damian’s story is important to me.
Q: Where did you two meet for the first time?
Majors: Los Angeles. About two months after I said I was going to do the movie.
Jordan: Yep. And before that, there was a moment at an industry party, you know, in passing. Just a shake of the hands. But the important meeting was when I talked to him for a good hour or more, pitching him the film.
Majors: This was about three years ago, right during awards season.
Jordan: I reached out to his team, asked if it was OK to get his number —
Majors: Which was wild, because I was, like, “Excuse me? Who wants to call me?” Let’s tag-team this story. So he called me about 25 minutes later, by FaceTime …
Jordan: I was in New York, watching the Nets game. I gave him the spiel about the movie, the character, why I thought he was fantastic and amazing and perfect for it. I knew he had a lot of big things going on, so in my mind, I’m, like, “How do I convince this guy to do this movie with me?” To take a chance on a first-time actor-director? That was the internal thought I had going on.
So, I’m working on my pitch with my barber — he was sitting on the couch — and I said “I’m gonna tell him this, and hopefully he’ll come back with that.” You know, trying to figure out the things that give me the confidence to do someone’s movie. So then I’m FaceTiming (with Majors) and we talk for about an hour and a half. And then you called back 30 minutes later. The game was still on! (laughs)
Majors: That’s right. I called him and said yeah, let’s do it.
Jordan: He checked all the boxes. The work I’d seen him do, it was exciting to just see him go there. Such layered performances. He has the vulnerability we needed. A heart you can see, and you can feel. Plus the physique. I knew we could transform that, knowing what the training process with a “Creed” movie requires, and knowing what we’d be going through, learning the fights. I told him I knew I wouldn’t have to worry about anything with him.
Q: What was the first boxing movie that really meant something to you when you were kids?
Majors: That was probably “The Hurricane” (director Norman Jewison’s film 1999 about Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, played by Denzel Washington). As cliche as it sounds, it looked like my dad up there. To watch that story, when that came out, that meant a lot to me. It’s still one of my favorite Denzel movies. People don’t talk enough about “The Hurricane”!
Jordan: Love that movie. For me —
Majors: You can say “Rocky.” I mean, you are Creed. (laughs)
Jordan: Probably “Raging Bull” (from Martin Scorsese in 1980, Robert De Niro as Jake LaMotta). I just learned so much from that film. To see what Scorsese does with lighting, with sound. Amazing.
Q: Last topic, since I see the handlers in the room are getting antsy. (Antsy smiles from the handlers.) The last decade for both of you, in different ways, has been so fruitful and gratifying to watch. A great range of projects. I can’t help but think about if it had been a decade or two earlier, how would it have played out for you? The industry’s still one step forward, two sideways, one back. And that’s the way the whole culture works, still.
Jordan: Yes! Yes. It makes me feel like I’m walking in my truth because we’re right on time. You know? I have the appetite, the ambition and the drive to go forward with the acknowledgment of the generations before me. I can’t let their hard work and their frustrations go to waste. We’ve still got a long way to go. But right now is the most opportunity we’ve had, the most platforms, the most outlets. It’s encouragement for the next generation to know that things are possible. And it’s encouragement to get rid of the stigma that they can’t do this or that.
You can be as optimistic as you want to be right now. We’re encouraging these kids coming up to dream bigger. Because we see examples of what can happen when you do.
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“Creed III” premieres in theaters Friday.
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