Tonight the highly anticipated movie “Creed” opens up, starring Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Creed, who is -- you guessed it -- the son of Apollo Creed, Rocky’s arch nemesis in the first two installments of the franchise.
Before yawning and wondering if the world needs “another” Rocky movie, there are major differences from the first six. No. 1 is essential -- Rocky will not be fighting. This time around Rocky is training/inspiring Adonis toward his goals. No. 2, Sylvester Stallone (Rocky ... please don’t admit it if you didn’t know that), didn’t write “Creed.” That’s important because Sly’s style in these films has always lent itself to sentimentality that toes the line of being outright cheese.
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“The reason I didn’t want to write it is because it’s a whole new generation. Forty years has passed, and what worked in my generation doesn’t exactly work in this generation. Everything’s just changed,” Stallone said. Applaud the man for recognizing this.
No. 3 is just pure speculation, but expect the fight scenes to be a hell of a lot more realistic than they’ve been in the past. Early Rocky movies are fine drama, but the fighting is atrocious. Rocky looked like he’d never been taught a defensive movement in his life, so buying him as the heavyweight champ was always a tough sell. Boxing movies these days are more realistic -- and harrowing -- so expect “Creed’s” intensity to be through the roof.
How are critics receiving it? Reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes has it rated at 97 percent, which is an extremely favorable rating.
Jocelyn Novack of the Associated Press warns there’s still some “corn” in “Creed,” but “it earns our trust: It's gonna go right to the edge with the heartstring-tugging, but it won't go over.”
Josh Lasser of IGN wants to see as many “Creeds” as we’ve seen of the previous franchise. “We can all only hope that we'll get to see Adonis on screen for just as long as we've seen Rocky.”
One stick in the mud was Rick Bentley of The Fresno Bee, who wrote, “Creed is a reboot of the franchise and follows a very similar structure to the original movie. To that end, the movie repeatedly falls short.”
Twitter is certainly abuzz.
Bam! @aoscott says "Creed" might be the best boxing movie since the original "Rocky" way back in 1976. https://t.co/fCg2WoQkm3
— Peter Lattman (@peterlattman) November 24, 2015
Creed passes on the Rocky torch, and recaptures the original's spirit https://t.co/ofaTfnN6wa pic.twitter.com/zrhSUpD4xf — The Verge (@verge) November 24, 2015
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