Being a white guy in the age of gender politics is weird. We've used and abused every form of privilege human beings can ever hope to have, so it's theoretically impossible for us to be angry at anything or anyone except ourselves, yet anger is the very thing that define us. Loud, undefinable waves of anger. It's a state of mine that all men experience, at least at some point in their lives. Some though are closer to that anger and need release valves to learn to channel it.
I have a long, passionate and irrational story with the movies of Sylvester Stallone, notably the Rocky Balboa series. I can't tell you how much these movies influenced me as a writer and as a person. I would've normally lost my shit over another unwarranted sequel sabotaging some of my purest childhood memories, but I had a good feeling about the seventh installment in the series CREED from watching the trailer. It turned out to be one of the rare occurrence where my gut feeling undersold the actual product. CREED is fucking awesome.
Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) is the bastard son if legendary boxer Apollo Creed, born out of an extra-marital affair. After the death of his mother, young Adonis spend the following couple years in group home and juvenile detention facilities until Apollo's late wife Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad) bails him out and decides to raise him on her own. She gives young Adonis a comfortable home, an education and a future, but it's not what Adonis wants. Struggling with the ghost of his father, Adonis wants to create his own legacy and there's only one way he'll ever break free of his father shadow. Since no one on the West Coast wants to train him, Adonis travels to Philadelphia to seek the mentorship of Apollo's old nemesis.
I'm so excited to tell you about how great this movie is, I don't know where to start. Let's begin with the boxing. Granted that the bar is pretty low, CREED has some of the best boxing technique I've ever seen in a movie. Everyone turn their hips in (a first for boxing movies), keep their feet under their punches, throw with both hands, There even are subtleties that change in Michael B. Jordan's style after Rocky starts training him. He becomes looser and more elusive in how he slips punches. It's not seamless, the camera rarely looks at the action straight and each blow the boxers take is a melodrama of its own, like in the old Rocky movies, but it's a tremendous improvement over the majority of boxing movies.
In case you've been living under a rock for the last 5 years, let me tell you: Michael B. Jordan is a fantastic young actor.
I got emotional several times watching CREED and not always where you would expect. There are several powerful scenes where Sylvester Stallone steals the show, including a quiet but unforgettable graveyard scene that's move everyone who ever visited a departed loved one. The sneaky emotional moments though are the throwbacks to the old Rocky movies. CREED is a great movie no matter what, but it definitely has an extra edge for the fans of the series. For example, there's a jogging scene (a throwback to the original movie), so pompous and dramatic, it was like my childhood and my adult age were coming together on screen. It was cinema telling me that it wasn't dead and that it could find its way to people like me. So yeah, I got a little choked up.
That very scene is why you should see CREED on a big screen though. I don't believe it is something you can recreate at home.
I can hear you from here though: A Rocky movie being that good? How would that even work? Let me tell you: CREED is the project of Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan. It's their baby and they had a lot of convincing to do to get Sylvester Stallone to buy into it. The series is obviously as important to them as it is to me and they bring it a new angle that is not only original to the series, but that is original to cinema and storytelling. CREED is the story of a son in the age of self-congratulatory parenthood fiction. It's the story of the power a successful parent can have over a child, especially if that child has a troublesome relationship to them, like being the bastard son of a dead boxing legend. The real life equivalent to Adonis Johnson's situation would be being the lovechild of Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson. How do you exactly live with that?
Perhaps my favorite aspect of the Rocky movies is that it is fictional, but it carries a message that is both real and universal: your greatest adversary is yourself. He might defeat you once in a while, but it's all good if you keep giving it all you got. CREED carries the message of the Rocky Balboa franchise as well, or if not better than most movies in the series except maybe the first one. We're currently experiencing a mass exodus of audiences towards television series and most Hollywood studios are taking the easy way out by banking on explosions and meaningless wide scale chaos to drag audiences in, so I'm thankful for guys like Ryan Coogler, Michael B. Jordan and yes, Sylvester Stallone, who keep it real and make cinema worth paying 12 bucks and spending an afternoon on. Cinema might be down, but it's not out yet, guys.
BADASS
Perhaps my favorite aspect of the Rocky movies is that it is fictional, but it carries a message that is both real and universal: your greatest adversary is yourself. He might defeat you once in a while, but it's all good if you keep giving it all you got. CREED carries the message of the Rocky Balboa franchise as well, or if not better than most movies in the series except maybe the first one. We're currently experiencing a mass exodus of audiences towards television series and most Hollywood studios are taking the easy way out by banking on explosions and meaningless wide scale chaos to drag audiences in, so I'm thankful for guys like Ryan Coogler, Michael B. Jordan and yes, Sylvester Stallone, who keep it real and make cinema worth paying 12 bucks and spending an afternoon on. Cinema might be down, but it's not out yet, guys.
BADASS
