In a weird way, the Rocky and Creed films fulfill the same need as Star Wars. Although the latter has far more spinoffs, both franchises began around the same period and offer the same essential promise: that through the confines of sports and space opera, respectively, the audience can experience something familiar or reliably cathartic. Ryan Coogler gave the first Creed film a jolt of energy, redirecting away from the Italian Stallion in favor of a young, Black up-and-comer who still had something to prove. Now in its third iteration, Creed III is in a place where it can toy with our expectations, surprising and confounding them in equal measure. Michael B. Jordan serves double duty here, as the star and director of the film, and while his deviations can be clever – even involving – he does not leave enough red meat for Rocky diehards.
A series of flashbacks (i.e. not montages) confirm that Adonis Creed (Jordan) retired in 2017 as the heavyweight champion. Since then, he has used his gym to nurture up-and-coming fighters, while also living as a family man. His wife, Bianca (Tessa Thompson), and daughter, Amara (Mila Davis-Kent), are a source of constant delight, yet the script by Keenan Coogler and Zach Baylin suggests Adonis has gone soft in retirement. The idyll of his mini-kingdom is thrown into disarray with the introduction of Damian Anderson (Jonathan Majors), an ex-con who served 18 years for a crime that involved Adonis at a young age. Eager to make up for lost time, Damian ingratiates himself into Adonis’ circle, only to reveal a more sinister purpose.
Unlike many previous Rocky films, Damian’s nature is what makes him such a formidable opponent. There is real tension to the early scenes between Adonis and Damian: they are uneasy around each other, with Majors’ squinty performance suggesting reserves of deep resentment and pain. Adonis feels he owes Damian a favor, to the chagrin of Adonis’ trainer (Wood Harris) and his mother (Phylicia Rashad), so Creed III unfolds like a drama of manners. If Damian says something off-color or makes someone uncomfortable, when should Adonis intervene? What, exactly, does he owe his old friend? That second question grows increasingly complicated as Jordan cuts back to Adonis and Damian as kids, a period where they both had hair-trigger tempers and emotional baggage they could barely understand.
But around these two different men, Creed III includes obligatory subplots that do not have the same level of energy. As a successful Black man on the cusp of middle age, Adonis must consider his identity through all his relationships or responsibilities, a dramatically fertile idea that nonetheless devolves into familiar territory because Bianca and the others do not share the same dramatic depth as Damian. This film is almost entirely from Adonis’ perspective, to the point that Rocky only gets a passing mention in a single line of dialogue. That may anger longtime Rocky fans who are expecting more from Jordan, and yet the deviation from the formula may rankle in other ways.
It takes a long, long time before Adonis and Damian to agree to a match. There is a lot of plotting and build-up, so with a crisp runtime just under two hours, there is less opportunity for Jordan to get to the good stuff: the training montages and the fight itself. The former is almost perfunctory, with Jordan expressing a marked disinterest in how Damian and Adonis differ in how they bulk up (Rocky IV, with Stallone versus Lundgren, was an obvious highlight). Then there is the actual fight, which includes some clever flourishes and others that are less successful. Jordan and cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau use sly camera movements to suggest that boxing is a mental sport, on top of being violent, although there also are some smash cuts that heighten the artifice of the whole endeavor. Apparently, Jordan says he was inspired by anime and wanted to emulate Dragon Ball Z in the fight, a daring conceit that leaves much to be desired in execution.
Since Majors burst onto the scene with The Last Black Man in San Francisco, he has proved to be a versatile, intense actor. His performance is arguably the best of any opponent character in the franchise, which leads to a conundrum. As a plausible villain, how do Jordan and his screenwriters find a satisfying payoff? It is not in the fight, as it concludes with punches so fast that you might blink and miss them. Instead, it is out of the ring, in a quiet moment where, finally, Adonis and Damian can speak as equals. This reconciliation is probably what both men need: they are both wounded and still reeling from abuse they each faced as children. But given the forcefulness of Damian’s threats and anger, Jordan could have found room for healing alongside a blood-and-guts pummeling he makes us crave.
Photo courtesy of United Artists Releasing
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