Creed II Review: it's an even better version of rocky iv

it tends to stay lost, even if its custodians pass the reins to a bright, hungry, capable director with a vision for its future. (See: Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi, which couldn't erase the sins of the other Star Wars prequels.)

Then there’s Creed II, a mediocre Creed movie but a solid Rocky movie. More importantly, it's arguably a better version of Rocky IV, 1985’s addition to the tale of Rocky Balboa and his erstwhile rival turned best buddy, Apollo Creed.

The Rocky movies start out strong. Rocky, that ode to grit and determination, is one of the greats in film history; Rocky II follows up respectably. Things drop off after Rocky II, with the melodramatic Rocky IV falling a little short of its predecessors.

The upside is that Rocky IV sets up the tale of Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan), protagonist of Ryan Coogler’s 2015 spin-off film. Adonis, “Donnie,” is the child of Apollo, who thirty years prior to Creed died in the ring going toe-to-toe with Ivan Drago (Men's Health cover guy Dolph Lundgren), a Russian boxer who’s less a man, more a behemoth; the anguish of Donnie’s life is that he never knew his dad, though he’s a living piece of Apollo’s legacy. In Creed, Donnie reclaims that legacy and proves, to the world and to himself, that he’s not a mistake: He’s meant to be alive, and he’s meant to fight. In Creed II, he rectifies history, but only after reckoning with it.

ece-auto-gen

Taking over directing from Coogler, Steven Caple Jr. looks to Rocky IV to figure out how to repurpose its parts-and make them better. Frankly, the film’s an exercise in inevitability: Marrying Donnie’s story of black American struggle and his search for identity with an all-timer of American movie franchises meant that one way or another, he’d eventually have to face the man who killed his father.

It’d be straightforwardly absurd for Donnie to take on Ivan. Creed is a story of black personhood, but it’s also about a kid grown into a man with a chasm left in his soul by Apollo’s death. Coogler wrote Creed (along with Aaron Covington) as a portrait of fatherhood in absentia. Caple, working off Coogler's blueprint, aided by Stallone’s screenplay, and buttressed by Sascha Penn’s and Cheo Hodari Coker’s story, treats Creed II as a mosaic of aggrieved fathers.

Rocky’s never met his own grandson. Ivan, after losing to Rocky at the end of Rocky IV, lost his reputation, too, and spends his life training his son, Viktor (Men's Health cover guy Florian Munteau), to box, hoping to win that reputation back in a title match between Viktor and Donnie. Even Tony Evers (Wood Harris), child of Apollo’s trainer, Duke Evers (the late Tony Burton), has something to prove to his sire. And there’s Donnie, engaged to his multitalented musician girlfriend, Bianca (Tessa Thompson), and on the cusp of fatherhood himself. They’re expecting. He has everything to lose from fighting Viktor. Viktor has everything to gain. In Rocky’s mind, that makes him dangerous. The fear of Rocky IV carries over into Creed II, and of course it would. Put a Drago in the ring with a Creed, someone might die.

ece-auto-gen

Structurally, Creed II mirrors Rocky IV more so than it does Creed. Just like Apollo in Rocky IV, Donnie, stepping into the ring against Viktor, finds his style outclassed by his opponent’s titanic strength. Just like in Rocky IV, there’s a climactic comeback preceded by contrasting training montages, one where Viktor trains in a conventional space with conventional techniques, and one where Donnie heads to the middle of nowhere, Rocky at his side, to use nature as his punching bag, pushing his body past its limits to inure himself against Viktor’s the unrelenting. Just like Rocky IV, Donnie is joined in Russia by his love, cheering him on from the sidelines. (She sings him all the way down to the ring, too, his hype woman building him up for the crowd.) Topping it all off: A bloody white towel falling to the mat, not quite in exaggerated slow motion, but close enough.

But Creed II doesn't remake Rocky IV. Instead, Creed II amends Rocky IV's errors and adds new bursts of vitality to an already revitalized franchise, tuning out the self-serious operatics in favor of masculine vulnerability and better fight choreography.

We can see where Creed II picks and chooses what material to borrow from its source; each choice is deliberate, an attempt to show us what Rocky IVshould have been, whether it’s Donnie dragging heavy equipment across the desert or Drago repeatedly commanding Viktor to “break him.” Each choice feels like an admission that maybe Rocky IV wasn't perfect, but not for lack of imagination-more for lack of execution. “Here,” Caple’s movie proclaims. “We fixed it. It’s Rocky IV Part II. We cleaned up the bugs for your enjoyment.”

Coogler’s commitment to Black Panther is Creed II’s ultimate downfall; working on the former prevented him from working on the latter, and so the film ends up more a Rocky movie than a Creed movie. But that’s appropriate. For Creed II to address Rocky IV, it needsto be a Rocky movie, one where Donnie remains the central figure but veiled in the shadow of his father’s death and Rocky’s failure. Maybe in Creed III, it really will be Donnie’s time, as Rocky assures him in Creed II’s climax.

Until then, take the movie for what it is: a better Creed sequel than you'd expect, and an improvement on the Rocky sequel that could use some work.