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Adonis Johnson's dad died before he was born, and his mom died shortly after. And he's been sent from place to place without a family due to his violent behavior. Finally, the true wife of his father who had an affair reveals the truth: her husband, and his father was boxing legend Apollo Creed. As an adult, he quits his job to fight full time, and seeks out Creed's greatest rival and good friend: Rocky Balboa, who's reluctant to train him at first, but soon decides to become the new Rocky's Mick.
KEYSER CORLEONE'S ROCKY WEEK!
Creed
(2015) - Directed by Ryan Coogler
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Boxing / Drama
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Creed
(2015) - Directed by Ryan Coogler
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Boxing / Drama
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"A great fighter once said, 'It ain't about how hard you can hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.'"
I've been pretty excited about watching this for a while. Diving into the next era of the Rocky saga, I expected the movie to live up to the ratings and bring us something really great, if not making that rare chance of surpassing the original. Considering that I found ways to prove upon the original, it was likely. 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, 7.6 on Imdb, what could go wrong?
Adonis Johnson's dad died before he was born, and his mom died shortly after. And he's been sent from place to place without a family due to his violent behavior. Finally, the true wife of his father who had an affair reveals the truth: her husband, and his father was boxing legend Apollo Creed. As an adult, he quits his job to fight full time, and seeks out Creed's greatest rival and good friend: Rocky Balboa, who's reluctant to train him at first, but soon decides to become the new Rocky's Mick.
I have very specific standards for comparing any Rocky sequel to the first. These standards were decided on the second time I had watched Rthe first Rocky, having done it specifically for this week. And since then, I have given every sequel less positive reviews than the first for good reasons. Let's see how this movie stacks up against the standards of the first movie.
First: Protagonist's interactions and growth with others, or Rocky's interactions. We get the latter here, as Donnie's doing most of the growing while Stallone gets into character yet again.
Second: Rival as interesting and likable as Creed. We do NOT get that. Conlan is about to go to prison and he wants his last fight to be memorable. Big whoop, he hardly has any screen time.
Third: Adrian. Since Adrian ain't here, we have Tessa Thompson's Bianca. But despite being a likable character with a head on her shoulders, she didn't really wow me. So the Adrian factor is not recreated or justified.
Fourth: The training philosophy. We had a little bit of that in the first movie, but the third movie really built it up with Mick's scenes. We get A LOT OF IT here in Creed, and I am more than happy about that. But Rocky isn't just being Mick, he's Rocky delivering his own way of passing Mick's lessons on. Stallone outdid himself, and fixed the wasted opportunity of failing to capture this subplot properly in Rocky V. So this is the best thing about the movie.
Fifth: Are all the subplots lived up to? This has been a problem for multiple Rocky movies. The first movie flat-out abandoned the loan shark thing with no real resolution, Paulie's abusive behavior in 3 never got resolved, and 6 barely did much with the father-son relationship except continue the subplot of 5. But there wasn't much of that forgotten resolution here, largely becuase the movie plays out how you expect the movie to go. The movie is complete, but predictable. I'll even add that this justifies the extra length, being the longest Rocky film so far.
Sixth: THE MATCH AT THE CLIMAX. How well does it fit into the plot, and how exciting is it? It had its excitement level, and it was very well directed. However, it played out how I imagined it would play out.
Creed is the best possible step for the Rocky franchise to continue, as the legend of Rocky and Creed needs to go on for those die-hard sports movie lovers. But Creed confirms something that the sequels excused with their lower quality: Rocky is much more about spirit than story, so even Creed falls victim to this occasionally. But because there's a but more character to this movie than 2, 4 and 5, it stands out as one of the best in the series, specifically the best sequel for improving on the strengths of III. So I won't give this as high of a rating as I was hopingf to give (between 80-90), but it's still a good movie, especially if you're a Rocky fan.
= 77/100
Ryan Coogler needs 1 more for average score
First: Protagonist's interactions and growth with others, or Rocky's interactions. We get the latter here, as Donnie's doing most of the growing while Stallone gets into character yet again.
Second: Rival as interesting and likable as Creed. We do NOT get that. Conlan is about to go to prison and he wants his last fight to be memorable. Big whoop, he hardly has any screen time.
Third: Adrian. Since Adrian ain't here, we have Tessa Thompson's Bianca. But despite being a likable character with a head on her shoulders, she didn't really wow me. So the Adrian factor is not recreated or justified.
Fourth: The training philosophy. We had a little bit of that in the first movie, but the third movie really built it up with Mick's scenes. We get A LOT OF IT here in Creed, and I am more than happy about that. But Rocky isn't just being Mick, he's Rocky delivering his own way of passing Mick's lessons on. Stallone outdid himself, and fixed the wasted opportunity of failing to capture this subplot properly in Rocky V. So this is the best thing about the movie.
Fifth: Are all the subplots lived up to? This has been a problem for multiple Rocky movies. The first movie flat-out abandoned the loan shark thing with no real resolution, Paulie's abusive behavior in 3 never got resolved, and 6 barely did much with the father-son relationship except continue the subplot of 5. But there wasn't much of that forgotten resolution here, largely becuase the movie plays out how you expect the movie to go. The movie is complete, but predictable. I'll even add that this justifies the extra length, being the longest Rocky film so far.
Sixth: THE MATCH AT THE CLIMAX. How well does it fit into the plot, and how exciting is it? It had its excitement level, and it was very well directed. However, it played out how I imagined it would play out.
Creed is the best possible step for the Rocky franchise to continue, as the legend of Rocky and Creed needs to go on for those die-hard sports movie lovers. But Creed confirms something that the sequels excused with their lower quality: Rocky is much more about spirit than story, so even Creed falls victim to this occasionally. But because there's a but more character to this movie than 2, 4 and 5, it stands out as one of the best in the series, specifically the best sequel for improving on the strengths of III. So I won't give this as high of a rating as I was hopingf to give (between 80-90), but it's still a good movie, especially if you're a Rocky fan.
= 77/100
Ryan Coogler needs 1 more for average score