Creed III

The 'Creed' boxing actioner melodrama series has none of the magic of the early 'Rocky' films that it span off from - with "Creed III" a typical example. Titular champ Michael B Jordan (charismaless - also on his directorial debut here) retires to a dream LA home with pop star wife Tessa Thompson, but then moody childhood pal Jonathan Majors (good - but no Mr T) re-emerges after 18yrs in jail. Via Keenan Coogler & Zach Baylin's hole-filled, cartoonish, short-cutting writing Majors becomes Jordan's nemesis, for whom he must return to the ring, to fight in a showdown finale. As lamely cheesie as it sounds it still has some Hollywood polish, but 'Creed' is definitely no 'Rocky'.

Yes, exactly. Without Rocky, without Sylvester Stallone, it tastes like a burger without meat. Wiping out Rocky means wiping out all the past, and all the experiences that viewers lived. There was always a balance between strength and weakness in Rocky movies. They carried it very well in Creed and Creed II. But this movie lacks balance I think.

Michael B. Jordan announced that he wants to shoot a lot of Creed movies and wants to turn them into a cinematic universe. But how do you think you can do it without Rocky in it? I mean Sylvester Stallone was the backbone of that series. People went to watch Creed because of this was the continuation of Rocky films. They were seen by viewers like Rocky 7 and Rocky 8.

Yeah, it tastes like a vegan burger. But still eatable if you are hungry.

After watching Creed 3, it became clear to me that the makers of this film recycled WAY too much Rocky material without actually involving Rocky at all and simultaneously claiming to stand on its own.

The retired protagonist takes a new-comer under his wing and ends up having to fight him in the finale. Seems familiar, right? That's entirely Rocky 5.

At one point, Adonis says "it ain't about how hard you hit..."... Yup, Rocky 6 (Rocky Balboa)

Adonis training for the fight by running up the hill and yelling Damien's name as he reaches the top. Yup, Rocky did that in Russia in Rocky 4.

Adonis' former rival (Drago's son) is now helping to train him for his next fight. Yup, that's Rocky 3.

A loved one of the protagonist (Adonis' mom) has to die in order to build emotional weight to the character's journey... Yup, that's Rocky 3, 4, & Rocky Balboa.

I can forgive a minimal amount of rehashing to a certain extent because after all, Creed is a spin-off franchise of Rocky. But they weren't very original with this 3rd installment.

Okay, maybe guts aren't an organ, but there are things missing in this movie. Those things and Sylvester Stallone. He's missing, and his absence is felt, when often this movie is trying so hard to make you do just that, feel.

With no heart and no guts, it's hard to do that.

The boxing scenes here feel like a video game and the non-boxing scenes feel like a Lifetime movie.

The only reason this movie is a seven and not a six, is because of the screen presence and charisma of both Michael B. Jordan and Jonathan Majors. They are incredible.

But there is no grit. No toughness. It's too glossy.

It's nice to have a running time of under two hours. It is. But this story is unbelievable with the sudden ascent of the antagonist.

With the time given, a nice Rocky montage with cheesy rock music or even rap music would've been an effective shoutout.

The movie also takes way too long to get to the root cause of the legal incident that pulled these two guys apart as young men as well.

This is the weakest Creed film by far.

In the Rockyverse it's right at the bottom there with Rocky V.

In fighting terms this portion of the Creed trilogy is remarkably underweight at weigh-in.

The performances of this movie is what saves it from being a complete flop. The Creed franchise suffers from trying to live up to what Stallone accomplished with rocky 1-4. And this is the problem with films today. The first two creeds had that same grit feel of the rocky franchise and this movie did not have that. The scenes were anticlimactic and generic. The story seemed to suffer from not having enough source material and first time director Michael B Jordan made the mistake of thinking this script was good enough without even mentioning rocky. Ok they mentioned him once. Yeah that's it, once. Which is ironic because the whole story is based on what got him here to this point. I also didn't like that they went thr MCU route, CGI should not exist in this world. Sorry had to say it.