Webster reviews new movie “Creed II”

Creed II is the sequel to the Creed movie and the 8th movie in the Rocky Balboa movie series. It came out on November 21st and was directed by Steven Caple Jr. Creed II has Michael B. Jordan reprising his role as Adonis Creed, along with Sylvester Stallone as an aging Rocky and most surprisingly Dolph Lundgren comes back as an older, beaten down Ukrainian boxer Ivan Drago. Drago now lives vicariously through his son, who has knocked out any and everyone who has stepped in the ring with him.

This movie starts with Adonis a few years after the first Creed movie. He wins a string of fights leading up to the world heavyweight championship. After winning the fight, he learns of a man in Ukraine named Victor Drago, the son of the man who killed his father in the ring. On top of dealing with his father’s past, Adonis is going to be a father with his girlfriend Bianca, played by Tessa Thompson. As he prepares for the fight, he thinks about how Bianca could end up like his mother who was a widowed when Apollo died in the ring with Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. Adonis never knew his parents and was in and out of homes until Apollo’s wife, Mary Anne, played by Phylicia Rashad, found him. Rocky also has doubts about Adonis accepting this fight. He thinks back to when Ivan fought Apollo, a fight that Rocky didn’t take. In the end, Apollo died in his arms. He wishes he would have been able to go back and throw the towel so Adonis would have a father. He doesn’t want Adonis to die the same way Apollo died, and to the same family no less.

The beauty of this movie is it also paints an empathy for a villian that in other instances would be considered the pure enemy. In Rocky IV it was the Russian Machine vs the American Dream. While that is still the case for Creed II, it carries a deeper meaning as you learn what happened to Ivan Drago after his loss to Rocky. It is revealed he was hated back in the Soviet Union and then Ukraine. It eventually led to his wife leaving him and his son for a richer man. Knowing that he lost everything, Drago puts all his energy into training his son who he hopes will regain the honor that was taken from him.

This movie connects themes of love, sacrifice and perseverance through obstacles, including the past. The movie was filmed better, had a better soundtrack and a more interesting story than the first. What really stood above everything in the movie was the simple exercise montages with beautiful cuts and quick snaps of action. Although there is exercising and training in all seven previous movies, it has beautiful parallels to the fourth Rocky movie. For Example, Rocky trains in snow by unconventional means in Rocky IV, and Adonis trains in the middle of the desert with training that is out of the ordinary. The soundtrack that accompanies Michael B. Jordan’s acting makes his performance in these scenes spectacular. This is a movie that is great  for fans of the franchise or newcomers looking for a good movie.