Sylvester Stallone says he wouldn’t kill off Apollo Creed if he made ‘Rocky IV’ again
“It was foolish,” said Stallone. “I thought I needed that kind of springboard to propel the drama on this really great velocity moving forward. Him in a wheelchair, he would’ve assumed the role of Mickey. And now, his physicality has been diminished, we would’ve seen a different side of Apollo. He could’ve opened up all these other things that we didn’t even know about. He would’ve been kind of a father figure, brother, mentor.”share
However, as Stallone and Herzfeld discuss, both 1990’s Rocky V or 2006’s Rocky Balboa would have been very different if Creed’s character had still been around as a mentor. It’s possible those films wouldn’t have even been made, though Stallone has found ways to revisit the character repeatedly over the past 30-plus years.
Perhaps more importantly, we might have been deprived of 2015’s Creed, a wonderful continuation of both the Apollo Creed and Rocky Balboa characters through the story of Apollo’s son, Adonis (Michael B. Jordan), attempting to follow his father’s legacy. Writer-director Ryan Coogler (Black Panther) paid tribute to one of his favorite movies and characters he loved, arguably providing a more poignant epilogue than Stallone could have done himself. (Stallone’s performance earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.)