Creed II

Fol­low­ing on from no few­er than six Rocky films, 2015’s Creed was the best pos­si­ble exam­ple of how to revi­talise a long-run­ning fran­chise. Approach­ing a famil­iar sto­ry through a new lens, the strug­gles and tri­umphs of Ado­nis Creed (Michael D Jor­dan) were bol­stered by Ryan Coogler’s tech­ni­cal pre­ci­sion and touch­ing speci­fici­ty when it came to the film’s snap­shots of black cul­ture. Despite Stallone’s pres­ence as a co-lead, and the events of the past loom­ing large over Ado­nis, Creed man­aged to pay homage to its pre­de­ces­sor while forg­ing its own path.

Sad­ly, Creed II fails to strike that same bal­ance, lean­ing a lit­tle too hard into Rocky lore. Ivan Dra­go (Dolph Lund­gren), the man who killed Ado­nis’ father, Apol­lo, has returned with his son Vik­tor (Flo­ri­an Munteanu) in tow. They’re deter­mined to restore hon­our to the Dra­go name, the script imply­ing that Russ­ian box­ing turned its back on Ivan fol­low­ing the events of Rocky IV. After Ado­nis final­ly becomes a champ in his own right, the main plot is set in motion by a mys­te­ri­ous, super­flu­ous pro­mot­er named Bud­dy Mar­celle (Rus­sell Horns­by), who seems to exist sole­ly to pro­voke Creed and push the two sets of char­ac­ters towards an inevitable grudge match.

Con­sid­er­ing that the first film focused on Ado­nis set­ting out on his own jour­ney while rec­on­cil­ing his father’s lega­cy, Creed II, with direc­tor Steven Caple Jr tak­ing the reins from Coogler, shows a sur­pris­ing lack of trust that the char­ac­ter might stand on his own. There’s a lot more Rocky this time around, per­haps a side effect of Stal­lone hav­ing a co-writer cred­it. But regard­less, it’s frus­trat­ing that Ado­nis and his pop star girl­friend Bian­ca (Tes­sa Thomp­son) feel like they’ve been shuf­fled off to the side for a rehash of Rocky IV.

Thomp­son is great as ever, but dis­ap­point­ing­ly her character’s devel­op­ing hear­ing loss is sub­sti­tut­ed for a sub­plot about her prepar­ing for moth­er­hood. What should be big changes bear lit­tle weight: Ado­nis and Bian­ca become par­ents like it’s noth­ing, with lit­tle time spent on their fears and lack of prepa­ra­tion. Their rela­tion­ship lacks the inti­ma­cy of the first film too – there’s noth­ing here like the moment in which they talk while he braids her hair, which felt both spe­cial and specific.

Per­haps most com­mend­able thing about Creed II is its han­dling of Ivan Dra­go as Rocky’s polar oppo­site. He’s a man who can’t let go of his tox­ic pride, liv­ing vic­ar­i­ous­ly through his son, where­as Rocky encour­ages Ado­nis to be his own man – for­get vengeance. When Dra­go speaks to Vik­tor he almost exclu­sive­ly uses the plur­al pro­noun ​‘we’, as though his past fail­ure to beat Rocky is on his son’s head too. The rela­tion­ship between the two is the most inter­est­ing aspect of the film, so it’s a shame their shared screen­time is restrict­ed to a hand­ful of scenes.

As for the fights them­selves, Caple Jr’s stag­ing feels a lot more con­ven­tion­al, cut­ting back to the crowd for reac­tions rather than keep­ing us immersed in the action inside the ring. We nev­er tru­ly get to occu­py any character’s head­space, minus a few POV shots of Creed get­ting punched in the face. It’s made clear that the rea­son Ado­nis wants to fight Vik­tor is pride, but the film feels too ashamed to say it out loud, instead hav­ing Creed vague­ly remem­ber­ing ​“why he climbed those steps”, talk which feels cheap giv­en his arc here. The film can’t decide whether it’s bet­ter to let go of mas­cu­line pride or indulge it, ad unsuc­cess­ful­ly tries to have it both ways.