An old friend of Creed’s is released from jail, Dame, and he returns to the old boxing gym, to find that it has now been renovated, and he is now in a completely different world than the one he was used to from 18 years ago. Creed comes out of the gym to find Dame leaning on his car, and they go out and have lunch, and Creed offers Dame a chance to train in his gym. Felix Chavez is training to fight Drago for the Heavy Weight belt, since Creed has retired, but no one in the gym wants to spar with Chavez, because he is too good. So Dame gets put into the ring, but he has unconventional boxing technique and this gets Chavez’s camp bent out of shape. Dame was an incredible boxer before the lock up, and he was on the track for stardom, and he still wants his chance to make it at the top, despite being on the older end of the age bracket.
At one of Bianca’s, Creed’s wife, parties, Chavez and Drago show up, and a tussle breaks out, and Drago gets his wrist broken. This puts Creed in a bad spot, he has a major slot to fill, and there are no names big enough to fill those shoes. Dame has been begging him for a chance for the title, and now Creed submits. Dame and Chavez face off, and Dame sticks to his unconventional fighting ways, some of which are illegal, but either way, he gets a clean knock out, and he takes the belt. Then the only thing on Dame’s mind is getting Creed back into the ring, so that he can remind Creed of who the real champ was, and to punish Creed for forgetting about him while he was locked away.
I know just two weeks ago, when Quantummania came out, I talked about how Johnathon Majors was by far the best actor in the movie, and in Creed III, he absolutely steals the show again, but thankfully he was surrounded by great talent in this one like Tessa Thompson and Michael B. Jordan. Majors plays Dame, who starts out as somewhat of a sympathetic character. He had been in jail for 18 years, and as the story goes, we find out that it was partially Creed’s fault, because Creed got in a fight, and Dame whipped out a gun, and the police came, and Dame got caught, and Creed got away.
In his first scenes, Majors seems to be taking everything in, and his dialogue is very thought out. He has a plan, and he needs Creed to fall into it. Then once Dame’s true colors start to show, particularly after he wins the belt, his charisma just jumps off the screen, but also the pent up emotion he has from being left behind in jail can be felt through his performance as well. Leading up to the fight between him and Creed I was seriously contemplating who I was rooting for in the fight. Majors is so good at playing bad, that it almost makes you root for him, plus he has the troubled past, and you want him to rise above it, but once the fight started, I was surprised to be completely cheering for Creed, but I think that emotion mainly came from Creed having a family, and specifically a daughter, who looked up to him so much.
This was Michael B. Jordan’s directing debut, and it was incredibly well done for a first. For me, this was the best of the three movies, but it was also the only one that I had seen in theaters, and that probably makes me biased towards it. The theater experience for this was awesome, and it would have been even better, if my theater had a few more people. During the fight scenes, I could hear the people squirming in their seats and going ooohh. There were also people in the final fight clapping and cheering Creed on, and if you were lucky enough to be in a packed theater, it would really feel like watching a boxing match.
Jordan said he took a large amount of fighting inspiration from anime. I do not watch too much anime, but the fights in this were incredible. If the filming is good enough to make people squirm, then it is definitely well done. The part that made me cringe the most came from when Dame took a shot to the face, and then when he went back into his corner, and he was trying to take his mouth guard out, and when he finally got it out, one of his teeth was stuck in it, and when he spit another came out. Then in the final fight, I was so locked in, and in part of the fight, when the round started, they took all of the crowd out of the background, and made it look like they were fighting in an abandoned ball park with incredible moonlight illuminating the ring, and then when Creed gets his back to the ropes, it turns into a cage. This part, although it looked incredible, took me out of the fight a little, but once it went back to the normal fighting, I was immediately locked back into it. It is impossible not to be in your chair cheering to some extent while this is going on the screen.
Another big point in Michael B. Jordan’s side is that he did this movie without even a mention of Rocky. The initial franchise was obviously based totally on Rocky, but even the first two Creed movies used Rocky as a centerpiece, and as a piece that made Creed successful. So it was surprising when the new movie did not even mention him. A main part of this comes from the fact that Silvester Stallone was in an argument with the production company, that he should have total control over all of the Rocky rights, but either way Jordan was able to overcome this and still make a very enjoyable movie.
There was one thing that I felt was missing that was in the first two movies besides Rocky, and that was Max Kellerman and HBO. In the first two movies, Kellerman was the one calling the fights, and he has been a voice on ESPN in recent years, and he has always been associated with boxing, so I missed his voice during the fights. Part of this could be due to them choosing Showtime as their presenter for the fight, and this also meant Bruce Buffer was not the announcer to start the fight, and he has the most iconic voice in the fight business. Those are small things, but they were missed. Another small knock against this movie is due to it being so formulaic. All three movies follow the same two act structure. There is a build up to an initial big fight, and then there is the lead up to the bigger fight in the second act, and there is a larger focus on training montages, which were great in all of them, and they really build the hype going into the finale.
The biggest theme to the movie is funny considering the content. It is all about men finding a way to talk about their feelings instead of fighting and yelling. Creed is constantly being prodded by his wife to talk to her, because she can tell that there is something deeply bothering him, but he continues to refuse to talk. He just lets it stew inside of him. Also he refuses to really apologize to Dame for what happened or even really try to talk to him about it, and Dame will not talk to him about it either, and his internalized anger is even more dangerous than Creed’s. Eventually Creed opens up to Bianca, and she agrees that he needs to fight Dame, which again is funny, because him learning to talk about his feelings leads to a fight, and then after the fight, him and Dame learn how to talk to eachother.
As far as trilogies go, Creed is impressive. It creates a nice story arc around Adonis, and none of the films are weak. Part of this is due to their formulaic nature, but either way Jordan showed out in his directorial debut. They also seem to be setting up a future franchise based around Creed’s daughter, and she was amazing in this movie, so it would be story line to follow, but it would have to be many years before she gets a chance to star, because she is so young. This movie is definitely worth seeing in the theater, and even more so than others, this is awesome with a lot of people in the theater. I give it 3.5 Stars, and as much as it kills me to do this, I am putting it at the top of 2023 so far, and it is replacing my beloved Infinity Pool.
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