Creed III

A strong entry into Rocky franchise that encapsulates the boxing world both in and outside of the ring.

Adonis Creed is a retired boxer working as a promoter. Creed III explores his new life, post retirement and what it means for him and his family. An old 'brother like' friend from Creed's past, Damian Anderson played by Jonathon Majors, comes back into his life which sets off a series of events. We get to witness Creed's post boxing story whilst also witnessing Damien's much delayed boxing story.

The film was built up really well especially in the first half where it takes its time to introduce us to the characters, plot and theme of the movie. Despite being two hours long, it's clear that a lot of the movie got chopped as the second half was rushed which is a shame as the film could have given us so much more prior to the Main Event.

Johnathan Majors was fantastic. His character had menace, pain and emotion. What's great is that the relationship between Creed and Anderson was morally grey so you could empathise with both sides of the story which make the movie more heartfelt. Michael B Jordon was solid in his role as Creed as per usual and the supporting casts of actors and boxing personalities both new and old were a lot of fun.

The choreography which was influenced by MBJ's love of anime, was good despite some of the usual big screen over exaggeration and the soundtrack was fire opening up with The Watcher from from Dr Dre's 2001! Those hoping to see Rocky on screen shouldn't hold their breathe.

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.

Up to this day Rocky V was considered teh worse movies in the Rocky-verse. Actually i also enjoyed Rocky V. It didnt finish in a ring but the characterization of Don King and a real life Pro-champ boxer Tommy Morrison gave a nice nuance.

Anyway now it is Creed 3. I like the first one a lot, Creed 2 was one of the best movies in Rocky-verse for me. But this one is the worse Rocky-verse movie. In fact there is no single Rocky movie soul in it. And you miss Rocky heavily in each scene. And it is not because of the nostalgia but because of the utter-mess. I mean why they kicked Sly out of a very brilliant on-going business i dont know.

I feel like too much corporation greed destroyed creed and Rocky soul.

Direction and writing was so blunt, no emotion of characterization. It is one of the you-already-saw it movies.

Acting Michael B Jordan sometimes hits and sometimes miss. I liked his performance at Black Panther 2 but here he was just without any specific direction.

Drama is exactly the copy cat of Creed I and II. Nothing new. I dont even know why they made this movie. After the hype will be over people will see the true product and give different credits.

This is a real departure from other movies in the Rocky-verse. The absence of Stallone's input (ignore the 'produced by' credit to Stallone - he wasn't involved) is felt throughout the films style, writing, direction and lack of any sentimentality.

It simply doesn't feel like a Rocky/Creed movie, it's darker, more angry, more miserable and a lot less fun. But worst of all you just don't care about any of the characters...and that means no hairs on the back of your neck as you approach fight night.

On the fight, the way it was shot is very stylistic with heavy CGI and feels further removed from reality than the other movies (and hey - they weren't realistic!).

If you forget it's Creed or part of the Rocky-verse, on its own it's an 'ok' film. Stack it up against what's been before and after what was a really entertaining first and second Creed instalment/s - it's a bad movie.

Hopefully that's it now, unless Stallone gets back involved...then maybe.

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.