Between personal obligations and training for his next big fight against an opponent with ties to his family’s past, Adonis Creed is up against the challenge of his life.
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Credits: TheMovieDb.

Film Cast:

• Adonis Creed: Michael B. Jordan
• Robert “Rocky” Balboa Sr.: Sylvester Stallone
• Ivan Drago: Dolph Lundgren
• Viktor Drago: Florian Munteanu
• Bianca Taylor: Tessa Thompson
• Tony “Little Duke” Evers: Wood Harris
• Mary Anne Creed: Phylicia Rashād
• Danny “Stuntman” Wheeler: Andre Ward
• Ludmilla Drago: Brigitte Nielsen
• Robert Balboa, Jr.: Milo Ventimiglia
• Buddy Marcell: Russell Hornsby
• Logan Balboa: Robbie Johns
• Stitch: Jacob ‘Stitch’ Duran
• Padman: Patrice Harris
• Adrian’s Waitress: Ana Gerena
• Dr Percy Ewell: Christopher Mann
• Kyri: Robert Douglas
• Russian Construction Supervisor: Benjamin Vaynshelboym
• Russian Debutante: Angelina Shipilina
• Russian Politician: Pavel Vakunov
• Businessman (Russian): Oleg Ivanov
• Reporter: Pete Postiglione
• Reporter: Billy Vargus
• Photographer: Zack Beyer
• Casino Bartender: Chrisdine King
• Pharmacist: Johanna Tolentino
• Nurse: Eleni Delopoulos
• Obstetrics Nurse: Marcia Myers
• Russian Referee: Ivo Nandi
• Ukranian Referee: Dmitry Torgovitsky
• Himself: Michael Buffer
• Jim Lampley: Jim Lampley
• Max Kellerman: Max Kellerman
• Roy Jones Jr.: Roy Jones Jr.
• Sports Bar Patron: James Collins Jr.
• Stage Manager / Barclays Center: John Jezior
• Nurse (Testing Room): Emily-Grace Murray
• Corner Men: Corey Calliet
• Scott Van Pelt: Scott Van Pelt
• Linda Cohn: Linda Cohn
• Russian Fan in Crowd (uncredited): Rocky Ciarrocchi
• Talkshow Audience Member (uncredited): Toby Kearton
• Adonis Creed Bodyguard (uncredited): Charles W Harris III

Film Crew:

• Casting: Mary Vernieu
• Key Hair Stylist: Daisy Curbeon
• Set Decoration: Heather Loeffler
• Fight Choreographer: Daniel Bernhardt
• Producer: Irwin Winkler
• Set Decoration: Barbara Munch
• Sound Editor: Ezra Dweck
• Characters: Sylvester Stallone
• Producer: William Chartoff
• Producer: Kevin King Templeton
• Producer: Charles Winkler
• Additional Editor: Sean Albertson
• Location Casting: Diane Heery
• Production Design: Franco-Giacomo Carbone
• Art Direction: Jesse Rosenthal
• Foley Artist: Goro Koyama
• Foley Artist: Andy Malcolm
• Director of Photography: Kramer Morgenthau
• Executive Producer: Guy Riedel
• Editor: Dana E. Glauberman
• Producer: Ian Sharples
• Casting Associate: Jack McCafferty
• Story: Cheo Hodari Coker
• ADR Mixer: Greg Crawford
• Storyboard Artist: Brick Mason
• Camera Operator: Kyle Rudolph
• Executive Producer: Michael B. Jordan
• Location Casting: Jason Loftus
• Producer: David Winkler
• ADR Voice Casting: Barbara Harris
• Makeup Artist: Pamela Peitzman
• Electrician: Michael M. Silver
• Original Music Composer: Ludwig Göransson
• Costume Design: Lizz Wolf
• Casting: Lindsay Graham
• Executive Producer: Ryan Coogler
• Music Editor: Ronald J. Webb
• Special Effects Makeup Artist: Gino Crognale
• Assistant Property Master: Kia Steave-Dickerson
• Location Manager: Alex Gianopoulos
• Gaffer: Dante Cardone
• Steadicam Operator: Michael Heathcote
• First Assistant “B” Camera: Yana Stoyanova
• Costume Supervisor: Kimberly Guenther Durkin
• Key Makeup Artist: Phyllis Temple
• Property Master: Kevin Ladson
• Property Master: David D. Baumann
• Costumer: Alexyz Danine Kemp
• Editor: Paul Harb
• Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Tom Ozanich
• Property Master: Sean Mannion
• Additional Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Christopher S. Aud
• Dialogue Editor: Robert Jackson
• Costume Illustrator: Geo Pavlov
• Script Supervisor: Dawn Gilliam
• Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Aaron Glascock
• Still Photographer: Barry Wetcher
• Visual Effects Production Manager: Jack Lilburn
• Drone Pilot: Michael-Ryan Fletchall
• Makeup Department Head: Fionagh Cush
• Visual Effects Producer: Brian Drewes
• Visual Effects Supervisor: Don Libby
• Music Editor: David Metzner
• Fight Choreographer: Jon Valera
• Visual Effects Producer: Crystal Dowd
• Hair Department Head: Diane Dixon
• Costumer: Honah Lee Milne
• First Assistant Editor: Debra L. Tennant
• Makeup Artist: Gabriel De Cunto
• Gaffer: Andy Day
• First Assistant Sound Editor: Linda Yeaney
• ADR Supervisor: Katy Wood
• Assistant Set Decoration: Alison Froling
• Sound Mix Technician: Sean Madsen
• Digital Compositor: Anthony D’Agostino
• VFX Artist: Marco Lee
• Underwater Camera: Robert Settlemire
• Art Department Production Assistant: Mallory Holloway
• Prosthetic Designer: Stephen Prouty
• First Assistant “B” Camera: Michael Leonard
• Visual Effects Compositor: Joseph Grossberg
• Production Coordinator: Tamara Allen
• Camera Operator: Ivan Vatsov
• First Assistant “C” Camera: Kaloyan Nedelchev
• Key Costumer: Rita Squitiere
• Sound Mixer: Damian Canelos
• Production Sound Mixer: Bayard Carey
• Construction Coordinator: Paul Maiello
• Set Dresser: Erika S. Katz
• Second Assistant Director: Xanthus Valan
• Director: Steven Caple Jr.
• First Assistant Director: Michele Ziegler
• Electrician: Daniel Barone
• Camera Operator: Drew Suppa
• Visual Effects Producer: Mare McIntosh
• Visual Effects Producer: Jo Hughes
• Art Direction: R. A. Arancio-Parrain
• Set Dresser: Omar Nadir
• Art Department Coordinator: Dave Kellom
• Special Effects Coordinator: Patrick Edward White
• Visual Effects Producer: Benedikt Laubenthal
• Visual Effects Producer: Adam Pere
• First Assistant “A” Camera: Ivan Chertov
• Story: Sascha Penn
• Prosthetics: Forrest Hill
• Visual Effects Production Manager: Jennifer Wang
• Electrician: Thomas Devine
• Key Rigging Grip: Daniel Rieser
• Second Assistant Camera: Leon Sanginiti
• Key Grip: Jon Sibert
• Screenplay: Juel Taylor
• Casting Associate: Bret Howe
• Casting: Nanw Rowlands
• Visual Effects Supervisor: Eric Robinson
• Ager/Dyer: Keith Hudson
• Visual Effects Editor: Steven Spady
• Title Designer: Garson Yu
• Foley Mixer: Kevin Schultz
• Key Grip: Charles Crivier
• ADR Mixer: Aaron Southerland
• First Assistant “C” Camera: Anthony DeFrancesco
• Assistant Editor: Carolyn Calvert
• Editor: Saira Haider
• Set Decoration: Amy Morrison
• Visual Effects Supervisor: Mark LeDoux
• Musician: Wade Culbreath
• Leadman: Josh Hadley
• Orchestrator: Jonathan Beard
• Orchestrator: Henri Wilkinson
• Set Costumer: Megan Sanders
• Second Unit Director of Photography: Steven Holleran
• Digital Compositor: Mark Larranaga
• Aerial Camera: Jason Kay
• Grip: Joe Mellon
• VFX Artist: Annalisa Torina
• Production Secretary: Craig Hacker
• Rigging Gaffer: Lawrence Price
• Ager/Dyer: German Lee Castillo
• Digital Compositor: Brandon Taylor
• Music Supervisor: Jen Malone
• Camera Operator: Alicia Robbins
• Set Dresser: Billy Stearne
• Digital Colorist: Mitch Paulson
• Costumer: Midge Denton
• Foley Mixer: Jack Heeren
• Compositing Supervisor: Chetan Gaur
• First Assistant “B” Camera: Aileen Taylor
• Camera Operator: Geo Ivanov
• Libra Head Technician: Jason Cortazzo
• First Assistant Camera: Tiffany Murray
• Costumer: Francisco Stoll
• Set Costumer: Kelly L. Brown
• First Assistant Accountant: Scott Herrick
• Production Accountant: Barbara Long
• Visual Effects Coordinator: Fred Duarte
• Foley Recordist: Davi Aquino
• Travel Coordinator: Janelle Coleman
• Second Assistant “A” Camera: Eve Strickman
• Compositing Supervisor: Vinay Thakur
• Lighting Technician: Michael Neal
• Foley Recordist: Chelsea Body
• Second Assistant “A” Camera: Ivelin Metodiev
• Digital Compositor: Davy Nethercutt
• VFX Artist: Richard Martinson
• VFX Artist: Rachan Chirarattanakornkul
• VFX Artist: David Pietricola
• CG Artist: Jake Cohen
• Visual Effects Coordinator: Marina Mozée
• Sound Effects Editor: Mitch Osias
• Colorist: Dave Lee
• Assistant Camera: Daniel C. Cook
• Assistant Art Director: Christopher Redmond
• Second Assistant “B” Camera: Borislav Belberov
• Location Manager: Patricia Taggart
• ADR Mixer: Mario De Socio
• Art Direction: Ilgi Candar
• Concept Artist: Matteo Marjoram
• Construction Coordinator: Robert Fritz
• Set Dresser: Kevin Isenberg
• Camera Operator: Daniel Schade
• Camera Production Assistant: Artina Nimpson
• Video Assist Operator: Bill Vargo
• CG Artist: Madison Maduri
• CG Supervisor: Isabelle Alles
• Matte Painter: Rakesh
• Matte Painter: Aritra Dey
• Visual Effects Coordinator: Andrew Carruthers
• Visual Effects Coordinator: Brittany Amos
• Visual Effects Production Manager: Jyoti Bhalchandra Deshpande
• Stunt Coordinator: Daniel Hernandez
• Boom Operator: Daniel Carlton
• Boom Operator: Mike Ford
• Location Coordinator: Matthew Howell-Clarke
• Title Designer: Yuanchen Jiang
• Costume Assistant: Diego Carranza
• Costumer: Liza James
• Costumer: Carol Swan
• Costumer: Julie Vogel
• Set Costumer: Ashley Dudek
• Tailor: Clara Diaz
• Tailor: Aidan John Miller
• Music Supervisor: Fam Udeorji
• Musician: Brian Kilgore
• Dialect Coach: Alina Yakubova
• Payroll Accountant: Rosa Garces
• Production Coordinator: James Lee Hardman
• Production Coordinator: Al Eales
• Leadman: Adrian Segura
• Visual Effects: Justin Lacalamita
• Second Second Assistant Director: Anna Olshansky
• Casting Assistant: Karrie Martin
• Set Dresser: Ron Mazzone
• Camera Operator: Chong K. Pak
• Second Assistant Camera: Kyle Hanus
• Visual Effects Coordinator: Gareth Kanter
• Set Dresser: Steve Sysko
• Dailies Manager: Leeza Diott
• Visual Effects Producer: Natalie Dury
• Assistant Property Master: Charles J. Scott
• Props: Damien Harrer
• Electrician: Molly Cheshire
• Grip: Sheridan Braxton
• Grip: Matthew Hanlon
• Best Boy Grip: Shane Sibert
• Casting Assistant: Dumitru Raica
• Casting Assistant: Emily Wisnieski
• Colorist: Borna Jafari
• Digital Intermediate Assistant: Kelsea Williams
• Editorial Staff: Jarret Berkowitz
• Musician: Meredith Crawford
• Musician: Karoline S. Menezes
• Musician: Corinne Sobolewski
• Musician: Jonathan Moerschel
• Assistant Accountant: Norina Morales
• Utility Sound: Ye Zhang
• Utility Sound: Michael Barela
• Assistant Camera: Ben Davies
• Digital Imaging Technician: Ryan Kunkleman
• Electrician: Jay Czajczynski
• Grip: Ezra Hertzel
• Second Assistant “B” Camera: James McCann
• Second Assistant “C” Camera: Simona Ravalieva
• Lighting Technician: Zac Kind
• Compositing Supervisor: Zena Bielewicz
• Digital Compositor: Christina Kammermeier
• Digital Compositor: Christian Wood
• Digital Compositor: Galo Gutiérrez
• Digital Compositor: Brodie McNeill
• Digital Compositor: Devin Marie Zoltowski
• Digital Compositor: Pedro Pozo Acosta
• Pipeline Technical Director: Ankit Sinha
• Pipeline Technical Director: Matthew Klein
• VFX Artist: Biswajit Pegu
• Visual Effects Coordinator: Danielle Carney
• Visual Effects Production Assistant: Patrick King-Templeton
• Visual Effects Supervisor: Louis Mackall
• Set Dresser: Daniel Gilroy

Movie Reviews:

• frank12: that’s the movie I wanted to see badly for a long time I watched its first part that was too awesome and creed 2 is marvelous I had to do my college homework but I skipped that just to watch creed 2 the training part and the last fight I can’t describe in words what I feels after watched.
• Stephen Campbell: **_Decent enough, but adheres far too rigidly to the_ Rocky _template_**

  > _I have not met one person who didn’t like a_ Rocky _movie._

  – Steven Caple Jr.; “How _Creed II_ Director Crafted His _Rocky IV_ Successor” (Mia Galuppo); _The Hollywood Reporter_ (November 21, 2018)

  Ryan Coogler’s _Creed_ (2015) was probably the best of the remakequels (ostensible sequels that are, for all intents and purposes, remakes) that came out in the mid-2010s (the most obvious ones being J.J Abrams’s _Star Wars: The Force Awakens_, Colin Trevorrow’s _Jurassic World_, and Adam Wingard’s _Blair Witch_), and was the first _Rocky_ film not written by Sylvester Stallone, and not directed by either Stallone or John G. Avildsen. After _Rocky Balboa_ did the seemingly impossible, redeeming and concluding the franchise after the damage done by _Rocky V_, _Creed_, written by Coogler and Aaron Covington, and directed by Coogler, did something even more unlikely – revitalising the franchise with Rocky himself as a supporting character. For the sequel, Stallone is back as a writer (sharing credit with Juel Taylor, from a story by Sascha Penn and Cheo Hodari Coker), with Steven Caple Jr. directing (Coogler is credited as an executive producer). Whereas _Creed_ was essentially a remake of the original _Rocky_, _Creed II_ is more of a combination of _Rocky III_ and _Rocky IV_, with some elements from _Rocky II_, and whilst it hits all the beats one expects from a _Rocky_ movie, the problem is that it hits them so slavishly, and does little else. It also, perhaps inevitably, suffers badly in comparison to its predecessor, especially in terms of direction – whereas Coogler’s directorial work was assured, distinctive, and inventive, Caple Jr.’s is pedestrian and functional. Had it strayed from the formula just a tad, the way _Creed_ did, the way _Rocky Balboa_ did, it would have been a much better film instead of a bland rehash of something we’ve seen multiple times (and not just in this franchise, but in virtually every boxing movie). The kernel for a terrific film is there, but the execution is not, it features a litany of clichés, it’s dull, repetitive, the antagonist’s subplot is infinitely more compelling than the main plot, and the culminating fight is almost parodic in design.

  In _Rocky IV_, former WBC Heavyweight Champion Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) was killed in the ring during an exhibition bout against Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren). Determined to avenge the loss of his best friend, reigning champion Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) travelled to Moscow, where he not only defeated Drago, he also got the Soviet crowd on his side. 33 years later, Ivan’s son, Viktor (the man-mountain that is Florian Munteanu), is training as a professional boxer in Ukraine, under the watchful eye of promoter Buddy Marcelle (Russell Hornsby). Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, three years after his professional debut against “Pretty” Ricky Conlan (Tony Bellew), Apollo’s son, Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan), is preparing for a bout against the champion, Danny “Stuntman” Wheeler (Andre Ward). Upon winning the title, Adonis proposes to his girlfriend, Bianca Taylor (Tessa Thompson), who says yes. Life seems perfect. That is until Viktor and Ivan head to the US and issue a very public challenge to Adonis. Meanwhile, Ivan tells Rocky, who is in Adonis’s corner, that the fight is a way to regain honour for the Drago name, explaining that after their bout 33 years ago, he lost everything, including his wife, Ludmilla (Brigitte Nielsen), who left him shortly after Viktor’s birth. Spurred on by Marcelle, and seeing an opportunity to avenge his father’s death, Adonis plans to take the fight, but is warned against doing so by Rocky. When Adonis insists, Rocky says he can no longer train him. Adonis and Bianca move to Los Angeles so she can pursue her singing career, moving into a luxury apartment near Apollo’s widow, Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashād). To replace Rocky, Adonis recruits Tony “Little Duke” Evers (Wood Harris), Wheeler’s former trainer, and son of Tony “Duke” Evers (Tony Burton), who trained both Apollo and Rocky in the past. Feeling betrayed by Rocky, and finding it difficult to adjust to the recent changes in his life, including the fact that Bianca is pregnant, Adonis’s preparations for the bout are not what they should be, whilst Ivan makes sure to push Viktor as hard as he possibly can.

  What’s perhaps most surprising about _Creed II_ is that not only is it a sequel to _Creed_, it’s also a sequel to one of the most ridiculous films of all time, and one which certainly didn’t cry out for a continuation of the narrative, _Rocky IV_. _Creed_ recast the _Rocky_ template for a modern audience, setting it in a social-realist African-American _milieu_ and relegating Rocky to a supporting player. _Rocky IV_, by contrast, was the movie wherein the franchise abandoned all semblance of realism; the film in which Rocky himself, the working-class everyman, became a superhero (he even had a talking robot sidekick), travelling to the Soviet Union, defeating Communism, and winning the Cold War by preaching _glasnost_ to the Soviet people (two years before Ronald Reagan’s “_tear down this wall_” speech). It’s a movie so ridiculous that the poster quite literally tells you how it ends! It also features Sylvester Stallone all but sexually abusing Sergei Eisenstein’s theories of montage. The first example of such (Rocky driving pensively into the night) is a montage of Rocky thinking about montages, and the second (Rocky training by cutting down trees and running atop mountains) is probably the most 80s thing to ever exist. The film is, in fact, so preposterous, far-fetched, and ludicrous that if you’re unable to have fun watching it, you may as well just stop watching movies.

  From an aesthetic point of view, _Creed II_ is largely unremarkable (there’s certainly nothing as epic as the single-shot fight from the first film), but one aspect that did stand out is the sound. As the first film established, Bianca is losing her hearing, something which is manifested in the aural design of _Creed II_ several times. At the start of the film, for example, as Bianca walks through the backstage area prior to the title fight, the sound of the crowd is soft and distanced until she puts in her hearing aid. Later, when Creed is training in a swimming pool, Bianca and Mary Anne are talking at another location, with their conversation carrying over his scenes. However, every time he goes below the water, the sound of their voices dulls as if it were diegetic. When Adonis is knocked down during his bout with Viktor, all sound is pulled from the film, only returning when he locks eyes with Bianca in the crowd. Even Adonis’s marriage proposal involves her hearing aid. This is all thematic, of course, insofar as they are worried their child may inherit her hereditary hearing loss.

  Thematically, legacy is a huge issue in _Creed II_, particularly as it relates to fathers and sons – Apollo and Adonis, Ivan and Viktor, Duke and Little Duke. Rocky himself is something of a surrogate father to Adonis, and is estranged from his own son, Robert (Milo Ventimiglia, who played the role in _Rocky Balboa_), and a grandson he has never met. Whilst _Creed_ saw Adonis use boxing as a way to symbolically bond with a father he never knew, _Creed II_ is more concerned with the emotionally fraught terrain that can result when fathers try to live vicariously through their sons, and when sons must live with their father’s failures. Everything Viktor does, for example, is an attempt to earn Ivan’s approval, whilst Ivan sees Viktor as the only way to atone for what happened to him after losing to Rocky.

  Indeed, the depiction of the Dragos in general is especially interesting, and is both one of the best aspects of the film, and simultaneously one of the most problematic. In _Rocky IV_, Ivan was a cartoon villain, a badly written, pseudo-xenophobic hyperbole of what some Americans seemed to think Soviets were like. He was barely one-dimensional. In _Creed II_, he’s still relatively thin as a character, but Lundgren is given enough room to portray him as essentially broken, living on nothing but bitterness, resentment, and shame. When he meets up with Rocky in the latter’s restaurant, promising, “_my son will break your boy_”, he comes across as more pathetic than anything else, a million miles from the almost automaton-like warrior of three decades prior. When Ivan mentions their fight, Rocky tries to dismiss it, “_that’s like a million years ago_.” Ivan, however, replies, “_but just yesterday to me_.” One gets the impression that from the moment of his loss he’s been waiting for this, seeing his son as nothing more than the delivery method of his vengeance. Ivan has raised Viktor in pure hate, teaching him that the only thing that matters is winning, but you can see in every move that Viktor is far more concerned with earning his father’s respect – winning as an end unto itself means relatively little to him. There’s a lot of pathos in that, and both Lundgren and Munteanu act the hell out of the complex dynamic. Working with Stallone for the fifth time, Lundgren’s understated and subtle performance is easily the best of his career, and the best in the film, with the quietness that spoke to lack of interiority in the previous film, here suggesting a deeply felt pain.

  The training montages also do something very interesting in respect to Viktor. Showing him jogging through economically impoverished communities, stacking crates, lugging around bags of cement, and working with less than state-of-the-art equipment, the parallel is not to Ivan, who trained with hi-tech gizmos and gadgets in _Rocky IV_, but to Rocky’s training in the original film. Indeed, whilst Adonis lives in a luxury apartment, Viktor and Ivan live in a dingy bedsit in Ukraine that recalls Rocky’s original digs in Philadelphia.

  The problem with all of this is that the Dragos’ story is by far the most compelling one in the film. One should not come away from a film named _Creed II_ wishing there had been less Creed and more of the antagonists. Although Creed, Bianca, and Rocky all get a little character development, the most interesting story arc is that of Ivan. Set against the complex and fascinating Drago family drama, Creed and Bianca’s story is pretty insipid, and is essentially a rehash of Rocky’s relationship with Adrian (Talia Shire) in _Rocky II_. The most dramatic and heartfelt moments of the film involve Ivan and Viktor, and the long middle section where Creed falls into a depression seems to go on forever; the whole time we were watching him fall apart, I was yearning to get back to the Dragos.

  And this feeds into the film’s most egregious problems – its rigid adhesion to the _Rocky_ template, and the concomitant predictability. Chances are that everything you think might happen in _Creed II_ does, as the film makes no attempt whatsoever to be original. Aside from the Drago subplot, there is nothing here that we haven’t seen before. Granted, the _Rocky_ franchise has always tended to wear its predictability like a badge of honour, and the core template does undoubtedly work. But even when a film adheres to that template, one shouldn’t be able to predict each narrative beat with near perfect accuracy. Even _Rocky V_, as awful as it was, tried something new, culminating with a street fight rather than an in-ring bout. It didn’t even remotely work, but the thinking behind it was admirable. Aside from two unexpected cameos, _Creed II_ never once caught me off-guard, doing nothing original, unexpected, or in any way daring. And because of that, for large portions of the runtime, particularly the middle section, the film is interminably boring.

  Even the boxing itself is not especially well-done. The cinematography by Kramer Morgenthau (_Thor: The Dark World_; _Chef_; _Terminator Genisys_) is fine, but nothing special, and pales in comparison to Maryse Alberti’s work in the first film. Similarly, Caple Jr.’s direction is efficient, but not in the same ballpark as Coogler’s. Aside from Martin Scorsese’s _Raging Bull_ (1980) and Michael Mann’s _Ali_ (2001), both visually unique in their own ways, _Creed_ is arguably the most technically proficient boxing movie in terms of in-ring competition. _Creed II_, however, shoots all the fights very conventionally, holding a fairly uniform three-quarters distance from the actors, with Caple Jr.’s only trick seeming to be slow-motion, which he grossly over-uses. This has the effect of making the fights seem repetitive, even when the story being told by the fighting action is different (which isn’t helped by the fact that Ivan tells Viktor to “break him” about 150 times).

  While we’re on the subject of the boxing itself, the culminating fight between Adonis and Viktor is beyond ridiculous, even for this franchise. The boxing in _Rocky_ films has never been even remotely realistic, with a laughable number of haymakers landing cleanly in every round of every fight, but _Creed II_ takes this almost to the point of parody. In the recent Deontay Wilder vs. Tyson Fury fight, the total power punches landed was 31-38 from 182-104 thrown (17%-36.5%), whilst overall punches was 71-84 from 430-327 (16.5%-25.7%). These numbers are a little below the heavyweight average (which is 15 punches per round), but they’re not especially unusual. In one round towards the end of _Creed II_, I counted Creed landing 19 power punches to Drago’s 12. That’s just ridiculous, to the point where it completely takes you out of the film. There’s also an unintentionally hilarious moment when Adonis is knocked down, and Little Duke, apparently auditioning as the worst corner man in boxing history, looks out to Bianca in the crowd and shrugs!

  Insanely, even “Gonna Fly Now”, that most fundamental aspect of all _Rocky_ movies (except the one it wasn’t used in) is underwhelming; whereas the first film used it to carry the audience to the emotional highpoint, combining Ludwig Göransson’s interpolation of Bill Conti’s legendary score with the on-screen action and Rocky screaming, “_You’re a Creed_” as a way to inspire Adonis off the canvas, _Creed II_ just kind of randomly drops it into the mix without a whole lot of justification or thematic relevance.

  Although there are some laudable elements here, _Creed II_ is a disappointment in almost every way, from the dull and soulless domestic scenes to a _dénouement_ that goes beyond suspension-of-disbelief, with not a hint of unpredictability. By essentially deconstructing the _Rocky_ template, _Creed_ found its way to unexpected thematic depths, recasting the great-white-hope subtext into a narrative about a struggling black man, whilst also examining notions of masculinity in the 21st century, and having Rocky himself face his own mortality. _Creed II_ exists entirely on the surface. Sure, the _Rocky_ melodrama is there, the _Rocky_ fights are there, the Stallone one-liners are there, but with a narrative focused almost entirely on the less interesting characters, this has to go down as a missed opportunity. Apart from the Drago subplot, everything is by-the-numbers. Yes, we care about these characters, but that’s primarily because of the previous films, and whereas _Creed_ forged a path very much its own, _Creed II_ returns us to the safety of the overly familiar.