Review Corner: Creed and Creed II

Greetings all! First post of my new blog schedule and I am late. It is a sad.

I made plans today to see Creed II with my dad, so I figured I'd better see Creed first and watched it this weekend. I'm not a huge Rocky fan, although I've got the gist of the movies, and I ended up watching Creed on my phone while juggling other errands, but I've got enough to give a pretty fair review.

The movie stars Adonis Eric Killmonger Johnson Creed, whose dad died when he was very young, and that caused him to grow up with a fighty streak. But he was taken in by his aunt, who is the queen of Wakanda and lives in a big mansion with a C on it. Yet young Eric still wants to fight like his dad, who was murdered by the Punisher.

Eric seeks out Rocky Stakar, a retired Guardian of the Galaxy who lives in Philadelphia. Eric wants Rocky to train him but Rocky won't do it because he's still getting over Yondu.

But Eric is persistent and convinces Starhawk to train him. At the same time he meets and falls in love with Valkyrie, a singer who used to kill people for Allfather Odin and has hearing problems.

They get along well except when Eric is a kill-crazy idiot. Eventually the press finds out Eric is the rightful heir to the throne and he gets to challenge a British boxer for the throne. I kind of tuned out at this part but I think the movie ended well, and even though I still wasn't sure where Sabretooth fit into the story I was hyped for Creed II.

Creed II opens with the Punisher training his son, who appears to be jacked up on Venom, as a boxer. Soon after Killmonger takes the heavyweight championship belt of the world from some jobber, and life is good! He's getting married to a cute Asgardian girl, he's got a Guardian of the Galaxy in his corner, he's got a Mercedes...

BUT BANE'S COMING TO BREAK YOU LITTLE KITTY CAT

Florian Munteanu, I cannot believe how easy this pic was to find.

So now that the joke's running thin: I'm not going to spoil Creed II, but it is a very good movie, and it is a Rocky movie. If you've ever seen a Rocky movie you mostly know what to expect as far as the plot, and if you haven't you should at least watch Creed first before you see this one. It's cheap to rent on Amazon.

I would say Creed is a stronger technical movie overall - Ryan Coogler executive produced this one but he didn't direct, and Sylvester Stallone wrote the script this time, so there's more of what I'll call "the goofy Rocky bullshit" in this one.

Not specifically the robot.

There are also some points that try to recreate moments from the older films to the point where you want to laugh - Creed did the same thing to the extent, but I think it handled those more tastefully, for lack of a better word.

But if you put that aside, there are some really strong performances from the whole cast, with Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, and freaking Dolph Lundgren as the standouts. Rocky and Ivan Drago get some great moments, which is surprising (since they're technically supporting cast) and thankfully those don't take away from Adonis's. I teared up at some of this stuff, where I didn't really have that reaction to the first Creed. I do think Bianca deserved a chance to call Adonis out on some of his crap, but it didn't kill the movie for me.

Oh and Hank from Grimm is in the movie as an asshole promoter.

Hi Hank!

Final verdict: well worth watching, and damn well essential viewing if you like Rocky movies! But you do really need to watch Creed first. (And in respect to my usual audience: one sex scene, very blurry, but lots of buff shirtless gents pounding on each other.)

-Lea