Adonis Creed is the heavyweight champion and he made it for himself, not his dad. And while he’s enjoying first-world problems in an apartment in the middle of Philly and thinking about moving within sight of Hollywood, Viktor Drago is eating cold proteins among the Kyiv apartment blocks under the watchful eye of a sullen Ivan in a four-stripe tracksuit (because the more stripes, the more Adidas). They both have tired but suitably hungry looks. Both hope to find an escape from involuntary exile between the ropes. We are talking about the Creed II movie.
Ladies and gentlemen… what I just outlined is a near-perfect setup for a twenty-minute spinoff that would be just about Drago Sr. and Junior. It would take place at a table in a battered kitchen and among rusty, raped prefabs. It would be a triumphant return to the slaughterhouse and industrial settings of the first Rocky. There would be no need to speak in it at all. And it would end with Drago Sr.’s trip to Philly, where Lundgren would chat with Rocky over a plate of spaghetti at his restaurant and it would be all about scars. On body and soul.
Creed II: PHOTO GALLERY
Unfortunately, Creed 2 is an absolutely monstrous 130 minutes. At least forty minutes more than he really deserved. New director Steven Caple Jr. made him a character blues, but we also have to point the finger at screenwriter and showrunner Luke Cage. That’s right, the theme is from none other than Cheo Hodari Coker. And as easy as it is to connect the length of the Marvel “TV series” with the fact that the second Creed is incredibly bogged down in superficial clichés, there is no need to give him a technical KO in the first round.
Adonis carries his burden from the surprising first film into the second. No one expected much from the spin-off, and the presence of Rocky was seen more as a marketing ploy. But our beloved boxer managed to transform himself into a muscular Yoda under the supervision of a talented director, who leads his padawan to success under the impression that he somehow owes it to Apollo. It worked great – Sly’s instant wisdom, Michael B. Jordan’s rudeness, and most importantly, the symbolic return to Philly. But there are detours beyond which a thick line must be drawn and the applause of the audience attributed not only to capable creators, but also to the perfectly used moment of surprise. The number two of Creed is betting all its cards on the return of Ivan Drago, but as a result of this nemesis, it does not give much room. But in doing so, she undermines herself above all.
The less space Dolph Lundgren gets as Ivan Drago, the more elegantly he uses it. Even the hulking Florian Muntenau manages to shine as he doesn’t speak at all and just rolls his eyes ominously. Drago Sr. proves to be a master manipulator, raising his son in spite and trying to make him a patch for his own sins. At the same time, he only repeats the mistakes of the past that led to his own destruction. It’s a fantastic plot arc that works perfectly for two reasons. On the one hand, we project what we want to see in the silent characters, and on the other hand, this terminator’s obstinacy and cold-bloodedness exactly follow Drago’s character in the four. Perhaps only during that confrontation in the restaurant does Lundgren step out of Ivan’s original box a little. And that’s exactly the moment I wished
But director Steven Caple Jr. it just glides along the surface, so that at the best moment it snaps to go explore yet another corner of someone’s soul. Creed junior has a championship belt, but he doesn’t feel like a champion. He wants to propose to Bianca, but he doesn’t really know why or how. After Rocky’s hesitation, he is trained for the match by Duke junior, who himself must come to terms with his dad’s shadow. And then there’s a whole other line, acting as a siding. Yes, he’s trying to cut to the living, but he’s doing it in such a predictable way that it’s maybe poignant, but still just a cliché. It is by perpetrating desecrated situations that Caple Jr. tries. to outline that Adonis is under constant pressure, but due to the superficiality of life’s faces, you just don’t like him and you start rooting not for the impoverished, but still frock-like Creed, but for Drago, who is in a block of flats, in this duel,
Play the trailerFrom the two-hour blues, the film is always awakened for a few seconds by a fight or a very skilfully filmed training montage in the desert, when Caple Jr. maybe he called Coogler on the set, because those five minutes seem like something from a completely different movie. By that I mean a movie that is hungry and bursting with energy. Creed 2 is more of a boxer who has lost his explosiveness and is twenty over weight. Nowhere is this more evident than in the final fight – solid in craftsmanship, but empty in every way. As Apollo enters the ring, Rocky tells him: Now you know what you’re fighting for. However, the viewer has no idea, because there was no development and the shortcut wrapped in a wrapper has absolutely no support in the dramaturgy. In the other corner, the motivation is another hastily baked symbol, whose theatrical gesture, by which the plot is moved to a resolution, is worthy of a three-minute sketch on YouTube. And Rocky throws a pitchfork into it all,
It’s a cruel sobering up. Yes, Creed already indicated with the first part that he would follow different tracks than Rocky, but the number one was after all the dawn of a new generation, a well-oiled athletic machine that gave out inspiration and new points of view. Two is straddling the legacy of the fourth Rocky and the ambitions of a new series that has no idea where to go. And so here we have a two-hour tramp, referencing a ninety-minute film from eighty-five, which is conceptually as black-and-white and straightforward as can be.
As in the ring, two irreconcilable schools of thought meet here. The creators want to solve thirty-year-old grievances for two hours, which have accumulated so much that it is impossible to really delve into them. The fans, on the other hand, want a full-fledged continuation of the fourth Rocky, in which not only juniors but also seniors will sew together from the first minute. The result is a cat-dog and a sea of raised eyebrows and sagging corners. But the most annoying thing is that Creed II, despite all the painstaking efforts, does not advance the character of Adonis Creed anywhere. And if it weren’t for the final scene on the doorstep, maybe even Rocky would have remained just a disappointed retiree. Deep down, I want to believe that those last two minutes were Mr. Balboy’s exit from the scene. But I thought the same thing when John Rambo finally walked towards the family farm in four.
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