Creed III (2023)

Creed III (2023)

 

 

5/10

 

Starring

Michael B. Jordan

Tessa Thompson

Jonathan Majors

Wood Harris

 

Directed by Michael B. Jordan in his directorial debut, the main problem with this movie for me is that it recycles the familiar Rocky formula used from Rocky II to Rocky IV. There is a fighter who is known to be tough, he challenges the lead, he and the lead face each other, and you can guess the rest.

Someone wrote a review saying the movie franchise has finally stepped out of the shadow of Sylvester Stallone, but that’s not the case for me. Since the plot takes from all the Rocky movies before it, nothing about it felt like it stepped out of that shadow. All it did was relocate the characters to L.A.

The acting, for me concerning Jonathan Majors, was not good enough. It was too stereotypical bad guy gangster movie behaviour, where he is frowning all the time and has issues standing still.

This movie is the first in the franchise without Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), and while I think they plan on continuing the franchise, I just wish they wouldn’t.

The movie is about two friends, one of whom goes to jail because the other ran away and left him behind. The one in jail had a boxing career, so when Dame gets out, he starts working behind the scenes to ensure he gets a title shot. He does, and then he starts working on getting Donnie Creed out of retirement to face him. All of this is something you’ve surely seen in more than one movie—the character goes to jail because his friend is a coward, gets out, and believes everything his coward friend has is now his because if he hadn’t been left behind, he’d have everything.

This movie is just like that. It doesn’t try to carve a new path through the movie world; it just recycles all the tired movie ideas and combines them badly.

I’m not surprised that a fourth installment is already in the works, because it seems audiences are movie starved to the point where they love this movie so much. But the reason for the new one isn’t because of the audience—it’s because of the over $200 million it made at the box office. Luckily for the studio, the movie dropped before the Jonathan Majors scandals did.

I can’t recommend anyone see this movie, for me, it doesn't live up to the hype. That said, the movie has that one thing we all want in franchises: it creates a path for the franchise to grow without the main cast, Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone).