'Creed'

Rocky In Retirement

Maybe the most apt description is Nietzsche's "eternal return". At points in the past a Rocky sequel only elicited groans as Sylvester Stallone trotted out one of his trademark roles. Over in the USA of course, Rocky movies are a cult thing so it's not surprising that while Stallone lives, there's always another bite at the same cherry. It's a mixed blessing that this film is being cast as a 'spin off' from the Rocky movies.

The big difference this time is the Rocky isn't going in the ring to fight any more; he's handed that part of the mantle to the next generation where the illegitimate son of Apollo Creed goes in to fight. It's pretty much the same story arc as the original Rocky, much like 'The Force Awakens' is a beat-by-beat retread of the original 1977 Star Wars. I guess the world needed another Rocky movie just like it needed more Star Wars. It's just hard to believe that there is so much mileage in this franchise.

If you need a spoiler alert, you haven't been paying attention to Rocky movies or this blog.


What's Good About It

For once, it's not all on Rocky, and so it's not all on Sylvester Stallone to carry the film. The film has cast him as the elderly trainer, and so Rocky Balboa is there to pass on Mick's expertise. The slurred speech and the tired diction suits Rocky-as-old-geezer and lends credence to the notion that he probably took a hundred too many punches to the head.

Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Creed is the real revelation. He carries the film and does it with great ease. There's something cheesy about the whole movie, but then that whiff cheese goes all the way back to the original 'Rocky' movie so you just go along with it. The film is relatively short on fighting scenes that go on interminably. Instead we spend time exploring the life of Adonis outside the ring quite a bit.

What's Bad About It

'Rocky' movies aren't exactly works of penetrating realism. This film blithely follows in the tradition of a formulaic and relatively haphazard rationale for a big fight to happen in the third act.

Also, I did some maths. The events of 'Rocky IV' where Apollo Creed dies take place 1985. Which means, at youngest Adonis is 30. I know Rocky Balboa kept winning but 30 is a bit old for this story. The film glosses over it but if this Adonis character is indeed 30, he's behaving more like a 22year old than a 30 year old. As good as Michael B. Jordan is in the role, he's not exactly Mr. Believable thanks to the tenuous set up whereby he is Apollo Creed's illegitimate son, conceived just before Creed's death.

The film might have been better had the main character not been related to Apollo Creed at all, but is a fraud claiming to be the son of Apollo Creed just to get Rocky to help him.  It would have had better gags and a decent (pardon the pun) punchline when Rocky finds out and Adonis says "man, can't you do the maths?"

What's Interesting About It

This is tough. More than any other franchise other than 'Rambo', these Rocky movies might be the least surprising, biggest crowd-pleasing movies going. As Stallone famously said "they call it show business, not show art". Naturally it follows that one really ought not to expect any surprises but that abandoning of hope also promises that these films are not terribly interesting or insightful.

There is nothing in this film that we didn't know already about the character of Rocky Balboa or the universe in which he inhabits, or for that matter boxing itself. The film offers nothing new or intriguing about character or obsession or repression or fixation or race relations or the joys of getting drunk when celebrating or crying when something bad happens. There is absolutely nothing of interest or note. One wonders just for whom exactly this film was made.

Instead of trying to find what's not there, I might offer this up: The Rocky movies as a whole, including this spin off, gives us a boxer character with remarkably bad instincts about people and things, and an intuition that is best described as blunt rather than sharp. Astoundingly, the character survives all these dramatic moments in the boxing ring, in spite of his tremendously bad instincts and blunt intuition. Then, in his old age, he runs into a youngish boxer with equally bad instincts and blunt intuition, who he then takes under his wing to take on a champion - and just as it happened with him, the youngish boxer doesn't win.

There is that soaring moment just as they go into the final round where we hear the theme from 'Rocky' soar, one last time. It wasn't exactly an interesting moment, but it was for a brief moment, an emotional moment.