By Gustavo Buenrostro
‘‘Creed’’ is a film that a lot of ‘‘Rocky’’ fans will enjoy, but you don’t have to be a Rocky fan to enjoy this film.
Creed is a spin-off of the ‘‘Rocky’’ films starring Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Creed and Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa.
In the film, Adonis seeks out Rocky to train him to live up to the Creed family name after his father Apollo died in the boxing ring.
While there are a lot of references to the previous Rocky films, they don’t go overboard with references to those films.
The film does a good job to explaining to those who may not know what the film is talking about.
A big plus to the film are definitely the boxing matches.
While the boxing matches were fine in the “Rocky” movies, they never felt real.
The punches never felt like they had weight but not with “Creed”.
In every fight Adonis had with someone, the punches felt like they had weight, especially in the final fight of the film.
The camera work in the fights was also well done. In the opening shot of the movie, Adonis is in a fight.
The camera does a full continuous shot of the fight with no cuts to an other camera giving it a sense of realism and urgency that the “Rocky” films just did not have.
The performances of the cast were also good, with Jordan and Stallone being exceptional.
The chemistry between the two actors mostly definitely there.
In the scene where Adonis starts living with Rocky, they start talking about Rocky’s past and his family.
Stallone is there with one of his best performances since “Rocky Balboa”. Rocky’s character is usually more upbeat and optimistic and while it is still there it’s dormant Rocky’s character is a bit more somber, giving the character more layers.
Jordan plays a stubborn kid who wants to fight, but as soon as he meets Rocky that stubbornness turns to determination to not live in the shadow of his father, but to also live up to the name of Creed.
A scene where Adonis is meeting his girlfriend Bianca at one of her shows has someone calls him “baby
Creed ”. This does not sit well with Adonis and he starts to lash out.
Even with Rocky shows up, he lashes out because he is angry.
But the anger does not come from the name but from something else. This is known because of Jordan’s performance.
Creed was the film’s formula. The formula is the fighter wants to fight, he gets trained by an older man who used to box, the fighter wins his first match, he gets noticed by
A more popular fighter, While “Creed” has some minor changes to this formula, it does presents a remake of the orignal Rocky. The only difference is the older man is now Rocky. It gives Rocky a new layer, but they are virtually the same movie beat by beat.
What Creed has going for is tough the film is better shot and better directed.
This may not be a bad thing since many fans would enjoy it from this perspective way and expect this from a spinoff of the Rocky films
The point of the original film, was to win, where the point here is to live up to a name.
The music is well done here as well. While the formula is the same the music is most certainly not.
There is a part in the film where Adonis is running and“Flying High Now” from the Rocky films starts to play, but it is very subtle and if you do not recognize the song you probably wouldn’t notice it.
The music is inspirational and reminiscent of the original “Rocky,” but has a different tone to that of “Rocky”
Overall, the film was well made, well acted, and nails it, in terms of a spin off.
“Creed” keeps the heart and soul of the original “Rocky” films and can stand on its own as a film.
Even if the “Rocky” films did not exist, this would still be a great film. “Creed” most definitely lived up to its name.