Films celebrating their over achieving male protagonist are par for the course come fall movie season each year as Oscar competition heats up. But Steve Jobs and Adonis Creed both got trailers in the same 24 hours or so and I couldn't resist conjoining them since they both also star actors named "Michael". They make both an odd couple and perfect pair: Mind and Body. Michael Fassbender plays real life computer genius Steve Jobs for Oscar winner Danny Boyle; And Michael B Jordan, reuniting with his Fruitvale director Ryan Coogler, plays fictional Adonis Creed, the son of dead boxer Adonis, in an attempt to reboot the stalled Rocky series.
Yes No Maybe So on both trailers after the jump...
CREED
TRIVIA FUN: Rocky Balboa himself Sylvester Stallone is the old mentor so he's come full circle - Sly is Burgess Meredith now: He's the exact same age (69) that Burgess Meredith was when Burgess played his trainer in Rocky (1976). Isn't that crazy?
Yes - While Fruitvale Station might have been overpraised despite occasional novice clunkiness, it was still a strong debut and we want to see if Ryan Coogler will emerge from it as a potent confident director and Michael B Jordan is about the best muse he could hope from today's young actor landscape.
No - Seriously how many boxing movies can Hollywood make? It's by far their favorite sport. There are new boxing movies every year and this arrives just a few months after Southpaw. And how many Rocky Balboa films does one planet need?
Maybe So - Let's talk Oscar. The Rocky series, which hits film number seven with Creed, has received 11 nominations and 3 statues. Unfortunately for Creed all but one of those honors comes from the kick-off film, the original Best Picture winner Rocky (1976). Still... if anything can convince the Academy to take a curious look it'll be the combo of good box office and good reviews (if it gets both) and a major renovation job via completely fresh blood via its young director/actor duo.
STEVE JOBS
Yes - Michael Fassbender's casting never made sense to me until now. He looks great in a black turtleneck, he's never had trouble projecting a vivid mental interior, and even his voice sounds different. It's also frankly a relief to see the film looking so visual since movies that promise to be very dialogue driven often feel less fully realized in this way. (The cinematographer is Alwin H. Küchler who did wonderful and very dramatic work on Sunshine and Hanna previously). Seth Rogen and Jeff Daniels are excessively familiar faces at this point (seriously casting directors only ever seem to consider about 100 actors for all the roles in the universe and it might've been fun to see some underused character actors really popping up) but at least they appear to be sinking their teeth into their roles if these two minutes are any indication. It's a well cut trailer lending just the right amount of pompous drama before ending with a killer bit of mundanity -- a typed title rather than the overkill that a big title would've been after all that build-up.
I'm begging you to manage expectations!
Oh and Kate Winslet. Yay!
Maybe So - This will obviously be excessively compared to The Social Network whether or not that's fair and Boyle, who is often good at granting a film energy, does lacks the cool precision of a David Fincher. Case in point: Doesn't that pouring rain behind jobs remind you of lightning striking outside during a scary moment in an old horror movie? Laying it on with a trowel are we?!?
No - Remember how everyone turned on screenwriter Aaron Sorkin during The Newsroom and the sexist comments he made in that period? When he's not careful critics cry "insufferable." Hopefully this returns him to Social Network level poetry.
I think I'm in on both movies. You?