FAVOURITE

MOVIE:
CREED
• Coogler’s story, co-written with Aaron Covington,
unabashedly mirrors the arc of the original
“Rocky”. There’s the humble boxer, his mentor
and the woman who becomes his significant
other and rock of support. There is also the
famous boxer who gives our hero the boxing
match chance of a lifetime. Armed with these
elements, “Creed” then tweaks them, playing on
our expectations before occasionally surprising
us. It may be easy to predict where the film
takes us, but that doesn’t reduce the power and
enormity of the emotional responses it gets
from the audience. This is a crowd-pleaser that
takes its time building its character-driven
universe. There are as many quietly effective
moments as there are stand-up-and-cheer
moments, and they’re all handled with skill and
dexterity on both sides of the camera.
• Coogler’s direction leaves little doubt that “Creed” is writing a love letter to “Rocky” lore while also establishing an
original narrative about its own creation, Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan). Coogler perfectly captures his
intentions in an early conversation between Rocky and Donnie (as Adonis calls himself). Their talk is framed
with Stallone and Jordan standing in front of a picture of Rocky and Adonis’ late father, Apollo Creed. Coogler
fits his actors in the shot so that the background image serves as a flashback and a flash-forward; the screen
contains Rocky’s past and Apollo’s future. Additionally, Stallone’s run-down physicality as the older version of
Rocky stands in striking contrast to the boxer posing behind him, frozen in time. We’re moving forward, but the
ghosts of the past are still coming with us.
• “Creed” begins with Donnie’s past, where young, orphaned Adonis Johnson is visited in juvenile
hall by Apollo Creed’s widow, Mary Anne (a fiercely maternal Phylicia Rashad). Mary Anne
adopts the young man, a product of an affair Apollo had before he was killed in the ring by
Drago in “Rocky IV”. Though Mary Anne raises him as her own, Donnie’s resentment about
being in the shadow of a famous man he never knew nor met grows as he ages. Yet he secretly
engages in his father’s sport. “Creed” shows Donnie fighting in Mexico before returning to his
office job in Los Angeles 12 hours later.
• Donnie hopes that Rocky will train him, and sets out to convince the reluctant ex-boxer to do so. But Rocky is
simply not interested in becoming a mentor to the up and coming boxer who affectionately calls him “Unc”.
Rocky’s lack of interest remains even after Donnie reveals that he is Apollo Creed’s son. To bring new viewers up
to speed, Rocky talks about the fight that cost Apollo his life, and how Rocky was in Apollo’s corner at the time.
To return to the corner, even with a different boxer, is not on his list of things to do, partially out of guilt for
Apollo, but mostly out of a general sense of exhaustion. “I already had my time,” he tells Donnie. Of course,
Donnie wears him down and, despite some jealousy from a coach at Rocky’s late trainer Mickey’s old gym (who
had hoped Rocky would train his son), Rocky takes on Donnie’s mentorship. This eventually leads to an offer to
fight Liverpudlian boxing champ Pretty Ricky Conlan
• In parallel, Donnie also pitches woo to his
downstairs neighbor Bianca (Tessa
Thompson), a hearing-impaired singer
and composer whose loud music keeps
Donnie from getting the required sleep
he needs for his training. Like Rocky’s
beloved Adrian, Bianca is a fully fleshed
out character whose agency is not
undermined by her eventual devotion to
our hero. Thompson, so good in “Dear
White People”, is even better here,
singing her own songs and verbally
sparring with Jordan as quickly as the
real-life boxers he faces throw punches
at him. Coogler relishes his love story as
much as his action sequences, basking in
the glow of their romance. At one point,
he employs an upside down shot of the
duo, laying side by side and engaging in
a quick kiss that’s chaste yet sweetly
romantic. A later romantic scene is far
more passionate, and feels well-earned
thanks to the prior one.
• “Creed” reminds us that, even at its most absurd, the “Rocky” series has always been about loss.
Specifically, how these losses affect the characters and how they grow from them. This is
expressed in Bianca’s desire to make as much music as possible before her hearing loss becomes
total and permanent, but it’s also reflected in the character of Rocky himself. The genesis of this
film stems from the most absurd of the Rocky movies, yet “Creed” stitches “Rocky IV” and all
the other Rocky films into its narrative with surefooted grace.
• The method to this madness is explained in a haunting, beautiful speech delivered by Stallone,
who points out the consequences of his losses, both personal and professional, how alone he is
due to the deaths of everyone he has loved, and how he no longer has the will to fight.
Beforehand, we see Rocky visiting the graves of Adrian and Paulie (on the latter’s tombstone,
he places some booze), and the specter of Apollo’s death hangs over “Creed”. Rocky also tells
Donnie that his son has little to do with him.