Are You Ready

Rocky is almost entirely a good movie. Most of the sequels are mostly good, while some of them are almost not bad. Creed—the seventh movie in the Rocky franchise—is more like the original Rocky than its sequels because it's mostly good, but also because it's almost entirely the same movie as Rocky.

Creed centers on Adonis Johnson Creed, the son of Rocky's enemy-turned-friend Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), who died in the ring in Rocky IV. That was the one where Rocky has a pet robot and defeats communism by flipping over tractor tires. Adonis was born of an affair that Apollo had and kept secret. He ends up a Faceless Man bouncing between foster homes and juvie, where he fights a lot because this movie posits that boxing is genetic.

It starts to feel a lot like Rocky when the reigning champ's match gets scrapped at the last moment and he goes looking for a young challenger In America who he can easily beat. He picks Adonis Creed, who asks a grizzled Rocky Balboa, "Can You Take Me Higher?" Rocky reluctantly agrees to train Creed from Human Clay into the chiseled marble of a real fighter. Creed falls in love with a girl during training, runs through the streets of Philadelphia, asks "Who's Got My Back?" and then puts up a Good Fight against the champ. As his girl runs to the ring With Arms Wide Open, we've come Full Circle in this uplifting story about the champion who lives Inside Us All.

Normally it would annoy me to see a movie that is such a blatant copy, but in this case, Creed feels more like an apology for the mediocre Rocky movies we've endured. It's more like a series reboot than a sequel, featuring a stronger young actor in Michael B Jordan (the kid in The Wire, who really should've stayed at his grandma's house). And it does all this while still paying respect to its predecessors, even the bad ones. Sylvester Stallone's aging Rocky holds his own, returning the character to his charming, steak-faced mumblecore roots that went missing for a couple of decades.

Here's the real problem, though: The world is different now. Boxing's popularity has continued to decline, ranking behind hockey in America. How can a sport be less popular than Canadian ice polo? And the decline seems justified. It's a sport from a different era, with a referee in a bow tie, a blood bucket and a guy whose entire job is to cut open the swollen eyes of competitors.

And yet, this is the second boxing blockbuster of the year, after Southpaw. Both wrapped in HBO Boxing promotion, they're long advertisements for a sport that's at least gross and at most too immoral to support. When Creed's trainers help him subvert required safety measures, it's designed to show his dedication, but it mainly shows wilful disregard for the lives of participants. Then, the classic outdated sportscasting makes a joke of Creed's concussion symptoms: "He doesn't even know which corner to go to! Ha-ha." Ha-ha, brain damage!

Maybe in the '70s, when Rocky first came out, a boxing movie ignoring chronic traumatic encephalopathy was fine. But we know too much now. Creed succeeds in restoring the former glory of a sport with a blood bucket, but maybe it shouldn't have.

CREED
Violet Crown, Regal,
PG-13,
132 min.

Santa Fe Reporter