Creed III
"Creed" is one of my favourite movies, in one of the most beloved franchises of all time (the "Rocky" saga), so imagine my disappointment when "Creed II" turned out to be just alright. Well set your fears aside because "Creed III" is excellent.
Jonathan Majors is absolutely one of the hottest actors in the industry right now. It feels like he's appearing in nearly everything. And with his "Kang" character, he's going to be in many, many Marvel projects. That being said, I felt a bit of Jonathan Majors fatigue after watching "Ant-Man". But all of that is wiped clean by his performance in "Creed III". Majors' character, "Damian", is easily the best villain of the "Rocky" franchise since the original's Apollo Creed.
The first half of the film is near perfect. The fight scenes are about as good as I could imagine a choreographed boxing match could look. And not only does "Creed III" spend the first half building up the relationship between Adonis and Damian in a smartly intertwined way, but it reintroduces characters from the previous films that make this feel like a real boxing community of pros.
Some of Adonis' past foes are now sparring partners. Some have made it back to the level of contender. It's just a great detail to make this seem like a living, breathing world, whereas in the previous films, Rocky would dispatch a foe and they'd never be mentioned again aside from reminiscent dialogue about Rocky beating their ass, or in flashbacks. This small but easy change makes the world of "Creed" feel like authentic. They're real boxers competing out in the world, trying to make it to the top and they don't disappear off the face of the Earth with a loss.
The second half of the film is still very, very good, it just happens to pass by way too fast. From the time the film makes it clear Adonis is going to fight Damian to the end of the film is something like 40 minutes. And probably half of that is the actual fight (which will polarize some fans with the direction they took, but I happened to love it). I'm interested to see if they end up with any extended cuts on the Blu-ray release.
There are still some questions left unanswered by the end of the film, but that's fine in my mind given what they've done with the franchise in terms of continuity and world building. We're going to see more "Creed" for sure, and I can't wait. I hope the momentum from this film is carried forward into another home run instalment.
I will spoil one thing for you, though: there is absolutely no Rocky in this film. So be prepared.
8.5/10
