This eventually leads to an offer to fight Liverpudlian boxing champ Pretty Ricky Conlan ( Tony Bellew). 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. “ I already had my time,” he tells Donnie. 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. 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. Rocky’s lack of interest remains even after Donnie reveals that he is Apollo Creed’s son. But Rocky is simply not interested in becoming a mentor to the up and coming boxer who affectionately calls him “Unc”. Donnie hears her, but the clarion call of the ring carries him off to Philly to seek out his Dad’s former rival and best friend, Rocky Balboa.ĭonnie hopes that Rocky will train him, and sets out to convince the reluctant ex-boxer to do so. Mary Anne points this out in an excellent speech where she details the more unsavory aspects of living with a boxer whose body took so much punishment that he could barely perform simple tasks like walking up stairs or cleaning himself. It’s the opposite of Rocky’s blue-collar existence, and it reminded me of a line in the boxing documentary “ Champs,” where an interview subject states that “ nobody rich ever took up boxing.” Donnie has clearly benefited from the spoils of Apollo’s legacy, yet a childhood filled with scrapes with the law and constant fisticuffs leads him to quit his successful job for one where the odds for success are far more limited. That Donnie has a white-collar job is interesting. “Creed” shows Donnie fighting in Mexico before returning to his office job in Los Angeles 12 hours later. Yet he secretly engages in his father’s sport. 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. 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”. “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).
We’re moving forward, but the ghosts of the past are still coming with us. 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. 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. Their talk is framed with Stallone and Jordan standing in front of a picture of Rocky and Adonis’ late father, Apollo Creed. Coogler perfectly captures his intentions in an early conversation between Rocky and Donnie (as Adonis calls himself). 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.Ĭoogler’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.
This is a crowd-pleaser that takes its time building its character-driven universe. 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. Armed with these elements, “Creed” then tweaks them, playing on our expectations before occasionally surprising us. There is also the famous boxer who gives our hero the boxing match chance of a lifetime. There’s the humble boxer, his mentor and the woman who becomes his significant other and rock of support. Coogler’s story, co-written with Aaron Covington, unabashedly mirrors the arc of the original “Rocky”.
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