By Geno McGahee
When I was a child, my favorite film was ROCKY III. Every Thanksgiving, I watch all of the ROCKY films in order and still enjoy them all very much, even ROCKY V, which gets a bad rap. In 2006, the ROCKY series would come to an end with ROCKY BALBOA, a fitting conclusion to one of the best film series ever made, but an unexpected spinoff was on the horizon.
In 2015, CREED was released and I wasn’t sure what to think, but it turned out to be such a great film. It was able to capture the Rocky spirit and feel but still have its own feel to it. What a great way to re-invent the series and when CREED II was being made and it was confirmed that Ivan Drago was returning, I was super excited. Seeing Rocky and Drago renew their feud sounded too good to be true. There is no way that they could screw this movie up considering how good the first film was and how they brought in Dolph Lundgren…but I was in for a surprise.
Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) has gone 6-0 since his last film and has earned a world heavyweight title shot against Danny “Stuntman” Wheeler (Andre Ward), the guy that knocked him out in the gym in the beginning of the first CREED. Well, Creed has improved and wins the title, but there is a big challenge looming. Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu) is working his way up the heavyweight division and was spotted by promoter, Buddy Marcelle (Russell Hornsby). He brings him to the states and lays down the challenge to the new heavyweight kingpin, Creed. So far, so good.
Seeing Dolph Lundgren back again was awesome and he does incredibly well as the beaten Ivan Drago, who is desperately trying to regain his honor. He comes to visit Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) at his restaurant and demands the fight. Drago, after 30 years, has not let it go. When he lost to Rocky, it ruined his life, and he is probably more upset with himself. He was well ahead on the cards going into that 15th round and his corner demanded that he fight hard and get rid of Rocky. Had he jabbed and moved and held, he would have won.
Creed, on top of having a fight with Drago’s son on his mind, also wants to propose to his girlfriend, Bianca (Tessa Thompson) and she initially closes the door in his face. She opens it and then sort of makes him beg, which he does, and then he cries when she says yes. I’m all for showing emotion, but this movie went overboard showing the sensitive side of Adonis Creed and made it a point to show Bianca as a strong woman. At no point did she ever need the help of Adonis, outside of watching their new daughter. I get it. Some people are married to complete useless shit, but Creed could be OK if he wasn’t crying all the time.
Rocky refuses to train Creed to take on Viktor. So, he goes after the son of Duke, Tony “Little Duke” Burton (Wood Harris), and he takes him on and the fight is a done deal and it happens very early in the film. I was surprised to see just how fast it happened. Viktor destroys Creed, but hits him when he’s down and gets disqualified, meaning that the title does not change hands. Viktor sent a message though and becomes a major star in Russia and makes his dad happy. Ivan just wants to be happy. They should have focused on his emotions instead of Creed’s never-ending crybaby moments.
So, we suffer through more and more of Creed feeling sorry for himself and more of Bianca rambling on and on about her man suffering. This film really became painful. I’m not sure if they tried to make a film that would appeal to women looking for something sappy and men looking for something with violence, but it didn’t work, at all.
After Creed had his ass handed to him, Rocky goes to visit him and he’s still feeling sorry for himself. He kicks poor Rocky out of the hospital, but Rocky has no other friends. He has to save this friendship even if it means getting punched in the balls every time he sees him. Apollo wasn’t a pussy like this. Apollo, had he survived Drago, would have told Rocky “come in here you stupid mother fucker and give me a big hug!” It would have been water under the bridge.
Viktor is starting to feel like Creed. He’s expressing his sadness in anger, but give him time. If we get a spinoff called DRAGO, I’m sure it will be about how sad Viktor is and how he wants to kill himself on a regular basis because he had a bad daddy. Maybe they can just have Creed and Viktor hug it out for 90 minutes.
As Viktor gets more popular, Ivan is really enjoying the attention again. He was worse than horse shit when he lost to Rocky in 1985, but they started loving him again and damn, did it feel good. I don’t know why the entire nation cut and run after that loss. I guess it’s sort of based on when Max Schmeling lost to Joe Louis in the rematch and Hitler wanted nothing to do with him anymore. But Drago could have rebounded from that loss and got a rematch where he wasn’t pressured to go for broke in the final round. I have a serious issue with Russia for doing that to Drago.
To stop feeling sorry for himself, screaming at random times for who knows what reason and to make things right, Creed decides that he will take a rematch with Drago, but this time it would be in Russia. Rocky agrees to train him and takes him to a shit hole place that is just supposed to toughen him up, I guess. It was sort of like when Rocky did zero sparring for the Drago fight and elected to just lift up carriages with his wife in it and run to the top of mountains and scream “Drago!” At least Rocky’s scream made sense. He was desperately hoping for Ivan to hear him and knew he lived around there somewhere. It’s called mental warfare.
The rematch happens and Bianca sings her man to the ring. It’s his moment, but she is going to stand in the front and take it from him. Hey, he married her. Unlike every other ROCKY movie, I was not excited for this match. It was pretty obvious what was going to happen and it did. The bout ended and the movie that I was most excited about turned out to be total crap.
CREED II focused way too much on showing the soft side of man. They were obsessed with it. There were too many side characters taking up time and Michael B. Jordan was unable to carry the film. I know he wasn’t given a lot to work with, but there just wasn’t there this time. Stallone was barely in this film. Most of the time, it was about the relationship with Creed, his girlfriend and his mother. The ROCKY films were able to find the balance where they showed where Rocky was coming from, what he felt, but he was also a badass that took care of business. This film was determined to say that being a man meant crying all the time.
A note that I would like to bring up to is what the fuck happened with Rocky and his son Robert (Milo Ventimiglia) and his dad since ROCKY BALBOA? They buried the hatchet and were “home team” again. We learn in this one that Rocky hasn’t seen Robert in years and that he has a grandson that he’s never seen. I guess they needed to make Rocky sad in this one too. They could have given him a reason though why they fell out. Hell, they could have said that Robert never forgave him for giving Tommy “Machine” Gunn his room. I would have been cool with that.
In the end, I’m VERY disappointed by this crap. It’s not a ROCKY film and it ruined any momentum the original CREED had. I know that it did well at the box office, but I won’t be going to see CREED III no matter how much he plans to cry and whine about life. If I want that I will go to more of my family reunions. To sum up my opinion of this film: Apollo Creed is spinning in his grave.
