CREED III (2023)
Tagline: There's no enemy like the past.
(Drama, Sport, Achievement) [PG-13]
In this one, Adonis won his last big fight and has been retired for 3 years when a friend Damian from his youth gets out of jail after 18 years and wants a shot at the title. To accomplish this, Damian exploits an old incident between the two that leads to the darker corners of Adonis’s past. As a result, Adonis and Damian are on a collision course for the ages.
If there is one thing I can’t stand it's trailers that have scenes that are not in the film. This one certainly does that. So don’t expect all of the previews to be in the movie. I know you can sue a studio over an actor or actress not appearing in the movie, but I am not sure if you can sue for parts of the previews not showing up in the movie. Anyway – aside from that this movie also had some production issues involving Sylvester Stallone and Irwin Winkler, but I did notice that Sylvester Stallone was listed as a producer in the credits which is odd because he basically disowned the movie over “rights” issues. He doesn’t seem to have an issue with Michael B. Jordan or the film’s director. They just seem to have wanted the storyline to go in different directions. Outside of having Adonis fight Clubber Lang’s son, I don’t really know what direction hasn’t been tried, but this idea of having Adonis fight a childhood friend that has a beef was pretty close to perfect.
Getting to the film, Michael B. Jordan double-crushes it in this film. Not only is his performance as Adonis the best in the series, his directorial decisions all knocking it out of the park. There is one decision in the final fight that I thought was pretty much a masterstroke filmmaking. As much as I love Stallone this is now fully Creed’s series for the first time. It will be interesting to see if we ever get another one because of a plot point that I don’t want to give away. I think over time if you watch these films it’s very difficult to not fall in love with these characters. Emotionally this was a tour de force for me, so I ended up getting a lot more into it than I thought I would.
Acting wise having Jonathan Majors (ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA) in your movie is NEVER a bad idea. The guy can seemingly play any role thrown at him and he kills this role as Damian. Aside from Michael B. Jordan who I mentioned earlier we also have Tessa Thompson (THOR: RAGNAROK) who is great as usual in the role of Bianca. I love that they gave both her and Michael B. Jordan a chance to really show some range in this. Wood Harris (ANT-MAN) is solid in his return to the series as Tony “Little Duke” Burton. It was also great to see Phylicia Rashad reprise her role as Mary-Anne Creed. The casting and storyline are top-notch, even if I am not sure the circumstances in this movie would ever happen in real life. Then again, I don’t go to movies to see real life. I thought this was the best of the 3 CREED films so far.
If I have any complaints is one part of the script towards the end which they try to hint at visually, but I am not sure it all connects like they had hoped. I also thought the soundtrack was lackluster. Rap is fine, but it didn’t stand out as iconic. Outside of that though, there is so much depth to this film that it’s hard to really even point out a negative.
Overall this thing gets a 6 out of 7 for me. I do think it was more original than CREED II.
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