9 Creators Who Regretted Killing Off Movie Characters
2. Sylvester Stallone Said It Was "Foolish" To Kill Apollo Creed - Rocky IV
Without a doubt the most iconic death scene in the Rocky franchise is Apollo Creed's (Carl Weathers) in-ring demise at the hands of Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) in Rocky IV.
While promoting the recently-released director's cut Rocky IV: Rocky Vs Drago, writer-director Sylvester Stallone bluntly stated that he regretted killing Apollo and now had a more emotionally compelling idea for his fate:
"It was foolish. I thought I needed that kind of springboard to project the drama on this really great powerful velocity forward... [If Apollo had survived] we would have seen a different side of Apollo. He could have opened up to all these other things that we didn't even know about, because he's now in a wheelchair. And he would have kind of been a father figure, mentor, brother. It would have been really great... It would have changed the entire trajectory of all the Rockys. Rocky V would have never happened, and Rocky [Balboa] maybe never would have happened."
On one hand it's easy to appreciate the appeal of Creed surviving the fight, but at the same time we may never have gotten the Creed movies either without his death.
Given that Adonis' (Michael B. Jordan) journey is informed by the near-literally spectral presence of his father's legacy, it ultimately seems for the best that Apollo died at Drago's hand, melodramatic though it might be.