No, Creed III Didn’t Need Rocky At The Helm… But Did It Really Need Adonis Creed?

Michael B. Jordan’s directorial debut squanders an opportunity to tell a fascinating and important story.

*Spoilers for Creed III*

Boxing movies have never really been for me.

Don’t ask me why. Despite my love of good action movies, my obsession with battle shonen manga, and the countless hours I’ve spent on YouTube searching “JACKIE CHAN BEST FIGHT”; there’s just something about two people in a ring pummelling each other in the head that repels me.

I’ll take a rubber boy punching a man-leopard half to death over Hilary Swank getting KO’d by a misplaced wooden stool any day.

However, despite my prejudices, I *adore* the Rocky franchise.

Maybe it’s the slightly goofy earnestness of the films (the same reason I still believe the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies remain unsurpassed), the classic underdog nature of the titular character, or the fact that the fights are less grounded in the brutal reality of being punched in the head a lot; but I have a huge soft spot for the Rocky films, especially Rocky as a character.

To me, Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa is an incredibly rare character, he’s a humble, tenacious goofball who refuses to be defined by the many things he doesn’t have (money, skill, literacy, an education, a conventional upbringing) and is instead defined by his optimism and his determination to do right by himself, the people he cares for, and his ability to pick himself and others back up despite the fact that life (and much larger men) keeps beating him down.

Dare I say it, there’s something aaaawfully shonen about Rocky… but we’ll get to that later.

It’s also important to establish that I thoroughly enjoyed the first two Creed films. In an industry that is obsessed with spin-offs, sequels, reboots, and IP, the Creed films probably stand at the top end of attempts at re-awakening dormant franchises.

So what’s my issue here? What does the title of this review mean?

Weeeell the issue is that while I enjoy the Creed movies, I do not enjoy Adonis Creed.

For those of you who don’t know, Adonis “Donnie” Creed is the “illegitimate” child of boxing GOAT Apollo Creed, a character who many would argue was the driving force of the majority of the Rocky movies.

Apollo was the undefeated heavyweight champion of the Rocky world until, due to no one being available to face him in the ring, he conjured up a publicity stunt where he would give one amateur boxer a chance to fight for his belt. In one of those movie coincidences that I absolutely love because it feels more like destiny than contrivance, Apollo picks mediocre boxer and bumbling mob goon with a heart of gold, Rocky Balboa purely because he likes the sound of his nickname: “The Italian Stallion”.

Apollo’s pride and complacency (oh look, a theme) become his downfall, as the spirited and tenacious Rocky stuns the world, losing by split decision but, crucially, becoming the first fighter to go the distance with the great Apollo Creed. This fact becomes a mark of shame and obsession for Apollo, pushing him to demand a rematch with Rocky in the next film where he loses his title to the Italian Stallion in a dramatic knockout.

In Rocky 3, when Rocky’s pride and complacency cause him to lose his title to Clubber Lang, a man who, allegedly, pities the fool, it’s Apollo who takes it upon himself to train Rocky, turning him into the legendary boxer we know him to be today, and helping to restore his pride as both a fighter and a man.

Then we come to Rocky IV, arguably the prequel to the Creed series, where Apollo’s pride and …love of America? I guess? causes him to put on an exhibition match with the Soviet boxing equivalent of every “This dude slaps your girl’s ass, wyd?” meme, Ivan Drago. Apollo is brutalized in an incredibly hard-to-watch fight, and after making Rocky promise not to throw in the towel — something that haunts Rocky for the rest of his life — Apollo is killed in the ring.

Now, why have I spent this time recapping the story of Apollo Creed, a man who spent most of his time as an antagonist, then a side character who acted mainly as motivation for the main character?

Well, the reason for this is simple: the Rocky franchise is also the story of Apollo Creed and would be much poorer without him.

Rocky would be nothing without Apollo, and it’s no coincidence that the first Rocky movie without Creed, Rocky V, is kinda sh*t.

It’s only 20 years later, with the release of Rocky Balboa, where a 60-year-old Rocky decides to have one last fight, that the franchise figures out how to thrive without Apollo. However, in my opinion, this is because Stallone’s genius decision to make the film a slow, melancholic character piece focusing on what Rocky has lost and what he still has to fight for, means that Rocky has a much simpler, more grounded story that he can carry alone (along with Jess from Gilmore Girls, who deserved better than Rory and Stars Hollow).

So with all of this groundwork done, we can get to the crux of my problem with Creed III:

Michael B. Jordan & Adonis Creed.

Simply put: I don’t think Donnie is an interesting enough character to carry this movie by himself, I don’t think Michael B. Jordan is a good enough actor to carry this movie by himself, and Jordan’s directing, while aesthetically brilliant for a first-timer, was self-indulgent and merely highlighted the deficiencies in the story.

Let me essplain.

Considering how similar Adonis’ journey is to Rocky’s, you’d think the two characters would be similarly effective right?

Well… nah.

The two start similarly, with both characters being born into disadvantaged situations, but unlike Rocky, Adonis is rescued from a life of struggle. Adonis spends his adolescence in either group homes or juvie, but he is rescued from this life at a young age by Mary-Anne Creed, the wealthy widow of his father.

Now don’t get me wrong, it is almost always refreshing to see Black characters who aren’t defined by “the struggle” and who have more character to them than a chip on their shoulder and an in-depth knowledge of “the streets”.

But the problem with Donnie is that there isn’t much more to him at all. And whenever drama needs to be inserted into his story, it usually stems from the chip on his shoulder, his fatherless upbringing, or his time in jail. So while he’s a character who isn’t *entirely* defined by the struggle, he isn’t really defined by much else either.

What makes Adonis truly work as a character in the first two films is his relationship with Rocky.

While Adonis is an active protagonist who drives the plot forward, Rocky serves as the heart and backbone of the first two films.

Adonis’ life by itself is not interesting to me, his own underdog story is undercut by the fact that he already has a fairly decent life and is massively aided in achieving his goals by his privilege and his name.

His relationship with Tessa Thompson’s Bianca is not even a tiny bit interesting to me either, I don’t really care about either of them as individuals and I certainly don’t care about them together. Their relationship lacks charm, there’s nothing about the two characters that really makes me think they’re perfect for each other and both aren’t the best actors. (Rooting for all Black people, but to understand how watching Tessa Thompson act makes me feel, try saying the phrase “He’s got that dawg in him” in a stately English accent, that’s the best way I can verbalize it.)

When Adonis manages to go the distance in his first film, I don’t really feel anything close to what I felt when Rocky went the distance against Apollo in his first film. Rocky’s life truly feels desperate, like he’s a hidden gem crushed deep into the dirt and just needs someone to look at him and appreciate the value he always had the potential to bring.

Adonis… ain’t that.

Much of Donnie’s struggle is glossed over in a brief flashback, and the first time we see adult Adonis he’s just gotten a promotion at a nice job, driving a nice car, and living in a nice house. It’s all very… nice, and not a good way to introduce an underdog.

Donnie’s life as a boxer has so few stakes, that the sequel even relegates his rise to the summit of boxing to the opening scene, and his ultimate revenge/victory over Маленький Drago is overshadowed by the absolutely heart-rending emotional climax of Маленький Drago’s relationship with Большой Drago.

Adonis’ stories in his first two films only really work for me because of how they motivate Rocky and act as narrative and thematic tools to tell us more about his regrets, his loneliness, and his lack of direction now that almost every character we saw him grow to love is long gone.

The scene in which Rocky decides not to fight his cancer is the most heartbreaking in the film, Stallone perfectly sells the sheer weight of the losses, beatdowns, and isolation that have caused the character to lose his trademark optimism and will to fight. Donnie’s character is able to shine here because we’re given a young Black man openly expressing his love and need for another man, and his desire for that connection, love, and guidance is the perfect motivation to inspire Rocky and show him that there is still something and someone to love and fight for.

Rocky’s story in the spin-off wouldn’t be enough to carry its own film, but it’s the perfect story to act as the heart of Adonis’ story, they complement each other perfectly as characters.

Now… with all that being said, I’m very glad that Rocky Balboa was not in Creed III.

Surprise! If you didn’t read the title of whatever this is.

With Hollywood’s obsession with intellectual property, more and more iconic characters have been ripped out of the happy endings of their original films and pasted into a lacklustre modern reboot/sequel of their story.

And, I can’t stress this enough, I hate that their lives almost always f*cking suck.

An example of this that I always use is Star Wars. George Lucas’ original trilogy ends with Luke, Leia, and Han victorious, Darth Vader redeemed, and the Galaxy finally at peace. “We-ssa free!” cry the people. Fast forward years later, and by the end of Disney’s sequel Star Wars trilogy, all three of our heroes from the original trilogy are dead, having lived largely miserable lives separated from each other with some of them being indirectly responsible for the peace they initially struggled for being wiped away and the rise of an even worse (but significantly less competent) version of the evil Empire.

This is a huge oversimplification, but my issues with the sequel trilogy, and ESPECIALLY how they waste John Boyega will probably be delved into at another time.

My point is, I loved Rocky’s ending in Creed II.

Allowing Rocky, a character who we’ve seen struggle and suffer so much, to end his story in the loving embrace of his son, Jess Mariano, and his grandson who genuinely does look like Adrien in the first Rocky movie (props to the casting director), is a gift to fans of the character everywhere. Not only is his ending happy, but it’s exactly what the character needed and deserved.

While I would be happy to see a quick cameo with Rocky appearing to relay just how happy he is and share some sage advice, I also can’t shake the feeling that any more involvement on the character’s part would end the same way that the involvement of Adonis’ adoptive mother, Phylicia Rashid’s Mary-Anne Creed, ends: pathetically killed off for the sake of adding to Donnie and Bianca’s angst.

(Mary-Anne’s weird deathly monologue where she begins talking to Apollo and telling Adonis everything he needs to hear hurts to watch, but not in the way they would have wanted it to.)

Now, you may be thinking:

“So you don’t want Rocky back, but you also don’t want this to be Donnie’s film? So what do you want? Aren’t you just hating?”

Well, the answer to this is simple: Creed III should have followed through and made Damien Anderson the deuteragonist.

Also, it’s been well-established that I am somewhat of a hater, keep up.

I’ll skip past the part where I lavish praise on Jonathan Major’s performance for playing Dame with enough menace and child-like unpredictability to make him terrifying, but enough depth and charm to make him sympathetic.

See? Skipped it.

Dame’s story has the potential to be a powerful one, a gifted, young Black boxer whose dreams of reaching the summit are crushed when Adonis’ adolescent impulsiveness lands Dame in prison for almost two decades.

Dame is the true underdog of this story, this should have been his hero’s journey. He leaves prison desperate to pick up the pieces of his broken dreams, but upon interacting with the outside world, is constantly confronted with seeing Adonis have everything he ever wanted, and so, driven by… something, Dame pushes himself to go for that heavyweight title, despite being even older than Donnie, who we’re repeatedly told is old for a boxer.

Now when I lay it all out like that, doesn’t it seem kind of insane that Dane’s life simply isn’t explored, and most of the screen time he gets serves largely to disrupt Donnie’s retirement and family drama?

By far the most interesting parts of the film come from Dame’s desperation to achieve his dream, whether it’s hiring his boy to attack and injure Маленький Drago (confirming once and for all that Rocky and Apollo’s generation was simply built different, can you IMAGINE some punk injuring Ivan Drago with a stick?), using dirty tactics to win the title from Adonis’ golden boy Felix, or his descent into bitterness and decadence when he achieves his dream without gaining the emotional closure that he needed.

Dame is a decent character with a great backstory, elevated by an excellent performance, something that Adonis simply is not.

Imagine if the story had instead centered on Dame’s attempts to rise to the top, accompanied by Adonis’ desire to keep his desperate and unbalanced friend from going off the rails and the chaos it causes for the latter’s legacy and personal life.

Perhaps the writers were a bit worried about potential Rocky V comparisons but I promise, if done well, no one would care.

Instead what we get is an almost arbitrary look at Apollo’s retired life. We’re told about Dame’s prison time but we’re not shown it, or how awful the experience was for him. Dame’s release is shown through Adonis’ eyes and the conflict comes from the behaviour and secrecy that Dame’s presence brings out in Adonis and his family, something that I am far less interested in. Dame’s underhanded behaviour is treated more as acts of villainy (adding a kinda iffy “jail dudes can’t be trusted” vibe in the film, yh there’s a bit of a class issue in Creed III) as opposed to the desperation of a man who feels like he’s running out of time to accomplish his dream and has nothing left.

When Adonis and Dame finally clash in the ring, they exchange blows that have almost no weight behind them because I don’t really know what winning would mean to either of the two characters, the fight exists to stop Dame more than it exists to save him. But… like… stop him from doing what? Keeping the title? If the implication is that Dame’s newfound status is going to his head and leading him into a self-destructive cacoon of his own vices then maybe do a bit more with that?! This was an amazing opportunity to use the classic anime “men connect with their fists” trope and really delve into the relationship, history, and insecurities shared between two Black men.

Compare this with Donnie’s fight with Маленький Drago, where victory for Donnie would mean finally overcoming his father’s legacy, avenging his previous humiliation at the hands of his opponent, and providing some level of closure and catharsis for Rocky, while victory for Маленький Drago will mean finally making his father happy and gaining the approval of the country and mother that abandoned them.

Ivan Drago throwing in the towel to end the fight and protect his son is an emotional climax 30 years in the making and delivers multiple layers of resolution to the arcs of multiple characters.

When Donnie defeats Damien and celebrates his victory, I almost see him as a villain, taking back the title he’d already won and willingly given up, basking in the adulation of fans he already has, and reveling in the victory that none of us doubted he would get because what edge does Dame have over him? Not age. Not money. Not equipment. Not the son of the greatest trainer who ever lived. There’s almost an underlying blindspot to class dynamics as Adonis uses the numerous resources that he gained through both hard work but also nepotism to defeat his former friend whose main flaws seem to deride from his proximity to the “hood” and “thug behaviour”.

Seriously, was the shot of Donnie standing atop the HOLLYWOOD sign and screaming supposed to make me root for him? It looks amazing, but it just serves as a reminder of who the real underdog is here and who has truly suffered from the circumstances they were born into.

They didn’t even go the Rocky III route of having Dame be cartoonishly evil but also setting him up to be a real threat to Donnie by exposing the weaknesses in his mindset, his complacency, and the deficiencies in his boxing ability.

The fight itself completely lacks stakes, and this issue is in no way helped by Michael B Jordan’s anime-inspired direction of the fight.

I think MBJ’s direction in Creed III is great to look at, the cinematography in some sections is electrifying with brilliant set pieces like Felix’s entrance and the fight choreography being incredibly fun for me. This generation of filmmakers and animators have been inspired by the anime that inspired me and we absolutely love to see it.

The anime influences are clear for all to see in Donnie’s fight with Dame, the latter takes a page out of the iconic boxing anime Hajime no Ippo to employ the titular character’s famous Dempsey Roll, and the visuals of the fight heavily mirror the heart-breakingly brutal Kakashi-Obito fight from Naruto.

The issue is that Jordan tries to utilize anime visuals but misunderstands what makes those visuals so effective within their stories. The Kakashi-Obito fight doesn’t hit hard purely because of the tight choreography and the way in which mangaka Masashi Kishimoto visually isolates the characters while throwing in flashbacks for good measure. Kakashi and Obito’s duel is the masterful culmination of dozens of chapters of characterization, foreshadowing, set-up, and pay-off.

WARNING: The next two paragraphs contain anime analysis.

From Kakashi’s introduction, we know him to be a man who values loyalty to his friends over the success of any mission (he’s a ninja, ninjas do missions, stay with me if you haven’t seen Naruto), this principle is so important he scuppers the dreams of any potential shinobi who fail to understand this in his famous bell test (it’s a whole thing, again, stay with me). We see glimpses of the hole that Obito’s death left in Kakashi’s life through the latter’s constant lateness, always taking the time to visit his “fallen” friend’s grave to vent his feelings; we see Kakashi’s loneliness when he sits Sasuke’s angsty ass down with the revelation that everyone he loves is dead; and after all of this subtle character work, we finally get the full story of Kakashi’s tragic childhood, his friendship with Rin and Obito, and Obito’s ultimate sacrifice which leads to Kakashi receiving his iconic Sharingan and a lifetime full of regret in Kakashi Gaiden, a short story that was specifically chosen to be the prelude to Naruto Shippuden where Obito is revealed to be one of the (numerous) final villains.

In Obito, we have the other side of that coin, a dark reflection of the series protagonist, Naruto Uzumaki. Obito’s optimism and refusal to give up on his friends changes the previously cold and rigid Kakashi, and the former’s desire to prove himself an equal to the latter mirrors the rivalry between Naruto and the love of his life, Sasuke, creating yet another layer in their fight. The fight between Obito and Kakashi is a fight for Obito’s soul, which has become bitter and corrupted after numerous tragedies, and when it ends with Kakashi’s victory, he doesn’t celebrate, he merely laments how far his friend has fallen.

Now, I’m not suggesting that Donnie and Creed’s fight should have the same level of writing and depth as a 700-chapter manga, my point is that by using such over-the-top visual call-backs to evoke the spirit of a much more layered fight, Jordan simply highlights the narrative hollowness in his own, and risks leaving viewers confused and overstimulated. When those prison bars appear in the ring, this is clearly supposed to be a powerful, iconic moment, but… meh. The meaning behind those bars is completely lost because we didn’t see Dame in prison or see what prison did to him, his flaws don’t reflect the effect that prison had on his mental state, they simply come from this gross idea that he was Donnie’s hood friend.

(There’s also the more minor issue of the fight having very little stakes because Donnie’s boxing prowess is kind of vague. We’re often told he’s one of the best ever and has surpassed his father, but we’re not shown it. Rocky’s fights had stakes because we knew his limitations and shortcomings so when the tide of the fight changes, it doesn’t just feel like a standard back-and-forth dictated by the plot. Anime fights like Naruto and Sasuke’s have added stakes because we know what the two characters are capable of and how they counter each other’s abilities… until they become giant technicoloured monsters.)

In short-changing the bond between Donnie and Dame, Creed III ends up feeling like a missed opportunity to showcase two Black men navigating the complications of their relationship. We’re told that the two still love each other, but we’re not shown this nearly enough for the downfall of their relationship to feel like anything more than another protagonist vs antagonist story, and that’s a real shame. It’s ironic that in a film that’s meant to shed the shadow of Rocky, the writer’s ending up leaning on the Rocky formula while completely misunderstanding what made it great.

Shonen anime is full of emotionally bombastic characters who put everything into their dreams, cry for each other, express love for each other through deep internal or external monologues and gestures, and endure unimaginable heartbreak and pain with a fierce sense of optimism, Dame and Donnie don’t really do this for each other enough, but do you know who did? Apollo Creed and Rocky Balboa.

Now that was some real anime shit.

Originally published at http://jjwi13.wordpress.com on March 12, 2023.