Creed III: Not All Underdogs Are Nice Guys in this Emotionally Resonant Rocky Spin-Off
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B
Amid all the dead-horse-beating that typically goes on in movies with Roman numerals in the title, the Creed extension of the Rocky franchise deserves credit for keeping the juices flowing, right up to the current release Creed III.
Yes, it follows the typical Rocky franchise plot template – undeserving brute usurps the heavyweight boxing title (think Ivan Drago or Clubber Lang), and it’s up to our hero to set the universe right from inside the ring.
Michael B. Jordan fights against his past (Jonathan Majors) in Creed III.
But Creed III, in which Michael B. Jordan’s Adonis Creed carries on the legacy of his dad Apollo Creed, actually creates a backstory for the brute in question and even generates sympathy. It also takes the seminal premise, in which a nobody gets a highly-unlikely shot at the heavyweight title, and turns it on its head. Ie.: that “underdog moment” is when the trouble starts.
Creed III, in which Jordan gets his shot at directing himself, is about as deep an emotional dive as the dual franchise has achieved. It touches everything from our own mortality to how we face the sins of our past. It would be nice if the series were to end as a tidy trilogy. But I suspect Creed III will do well enough at the box office to merit a IV and maybe even a V.
The movie opens with what is ostensibly Adonis’s retirement fight, a comeback knockout that punctuates his career, followed by three years of boring retirement, marked by tea parties with his adorable hearing-impaired daughter Amara (Mila Davis-Kent).
In the interim, he’s become a manager of other fighters, including the current champ Felix Chavez (Jose Benavidez).
Suddenly, a face from the past emerges. His best friend from his “wild child” days, Damian Anderson (a terrific Jonathan Majors) has been released from prison after 18 years. In bits and pieces, we learn that a shame-filled Adonis was somehow involved in the events that led to Anderson’s incarceration.
Anderson was a Golden Gloves champ, and though he’s pushing 40 and has never fought professionally, he insists he’s good enough for a title shot.
It’s a ridiculous premise. But when former Creed antagonist Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu) is injured in a suspicious assault, leaving a title shot open against Chavez, Creed stupidly follows his heart. After all, didn’t his dad once give an equally-counterintuitive shot to a pug named Balboa?
It’s a testament to the idealized moral code of boxing that the Rocky/Creed movies follow, that Anderson is considered “bad” because he’s in the ring to do harm. (Hello? Mike Tyson?). His style flirts with rule-breaking and possible disqualification, and his goal – besides grabbing the title belt – is to incapacitate and even hospitalize his opponent. He is a bad man.
But what made him bad? He’s fueled by rage over his imprisonment and lost years, and by his sense that Adonis deserted him. And yet their bond still exists. As a director, Jordan has a few tricks up his sleeve to make the climactic title fight into an emotional journey, turning the ropes into bars, the fighters morphing briefly into their younger selves, etc.
Yes, the fight is still Rocky-esque, with sledgehammer blows that would end most fights instantly. But in the history of the dual franchise, there have not been two combatants (other than maybe Rocky and Apollo) with such an emotional connection.
The supporting characters do their bit as well to support the arc. Phylicia Rashad as Mary-Anne Creed is a mom with a key secret to her son’s past. And Tessa Thompson, as Adonis’s ex-pop-singer-turned-producer wife Bianca spends the entire movie trying to get her husband to talk about his past.
Creed III has the fights, it has a story, and it has a heart. For Jordan, it’s a feature directing debut with punch.
Creed III. Directed by Michael B. Jordan. Starring Michael B. Jordan, Jonathan Majors and Tessa Thompson.