Movies Creed III (03 March 2023) - Official Trailer, update: Michael B. Jordan spearheading "Creed-Verse" with Amazon

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

[TheLeon]

Really curious to see how MBJ is as a director. He's spent a lot of time with Ryan Coogler, hopefully he picked up a few pointers. 

[skillzdadirecta]

On 10/18/2022 at 10:14 AM, TheLeon said:

Really curious to see how MBJ is as a director. He's spent a lot of time with Ryan Coogler, hopefully he picked up a few pointers. 

They're like best friends so I'm sure Coogs mentored him through the process. Also I'm pretty sure Coogler is an exec producer.

[best3444]

 

[GeneticBlueprint]

Does the film acknowledge who the real villain of the movie is in this one?

[TheShader]

13 minutes ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

Does the film acknowledge who the real villain of the movie is in this one?

Capitalism?

[GeneticBlueprint]

1 minute ago, TheShader said:

Capitalism?

 

I don't know. Haven't seen it. But Creed II was deeply confused about its protagonist and antagonist and which one was the hero and villain. 

[Greatoneshere]

6 hours ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

 

I don't know. Haven't seen it. But Creed II was deeply confused about its protagonist and antagonist and which one was the hero and villain. 

 

I just watched Creed II and it didn't seem that confusing at all to me? You sympathize with Ivan Drago's son but clearly he's stuck due to his father and Creed succumbs to aspects of history, legacy, and "revenge" but is pretty clearly the protagonist unless I'm misunderstanding you.

[GeneticBlueprint]

1 hour ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

I just watched Creed II and it didn't seem that confusing at all to me? You sympathize with Ivan Drago's son but clearly he's stuck due to his father and Creed succumbs to aspects of history, legacy, and "revenge" but is pretty clearly the protagonist unless I'm misunderstanding you.

I’m being facetious mostly. The movie asks you to believe that a guy fighting to escape his poverty, political, and family circumstances is evil because of who his father is. Meanwhile the good guy lives a life of privilege and is fighting for… his feelings or something? I can’t remember. Something about being depressed. Anyways, rich guy sends poor dude packing back to his shitty life at the end, and the movie plays this as a just and happy ending. 

[Greatoneshere]

9 hours ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

I’m being facetious mostly. The movie asks you to believe that a guy fighting to escape his poverty, political, and family circumstances is evil because of who his father is. Meanwhile the good guy lives a life of privilege and is fighting for… his feelings or something? I can’t remember. Something about being depressed. Anyways, rich guy sends poor dude packing back to his shitty life at the end, and the movie plays this as a just and happy ending. 

 

I mean, he does what his father tells him, cheap shotting Creed to try and win (this is a bad thing, Creed doesn't fight dirty by comparison). Yes, his circumstances suck but that's what the movie is trying to illustrate, that had Creed not had good parenting in his life like his adoptive mother and Rocky and also having Tessa Thompson he may have otherwise become Ivan Drago's son, who was raised by a dad who plays dirty, is obsessed with his ex-wife and the status he lost in Russia, and keeps his son under his thumb. The movie is more about Creed, Rocky, and Ivan Drago, not really Drago's son, who you do feel for but I still wanted to lose not because of him, but because of his dad.

 

Also, Creed isn't fighting for his feelings. A sleazy boxing promoter and Ivan Drago call Creed out regularly on national news, saying he needs to step up, defend his father's death and honor, is he a wimp for not stepping up to fight for his father's legacy, etc. Everyone tells him not to even bother with the fight, so even the movie understands that Creed is doing this despite the advice of the people around him, so arguably the movie paints him doing this fight somewhat as a bad thing in the first place.

[GeneticBlueprint]

21 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

I mean, he does what his father tells him, cheap shotting Creed to try and win (this is a bad thing, Creed doesn't fight dirty by comparison). Yes, his circumstances suck but that's what the movie is trying to illustrate, that had Creed not had good parenting in his life like his adoptive mother and Rocky and also having Tessa Thompson he may have otherwise become Ivan Drago's son, who was raised by a dad who plays dirty, is obsessed with his ex-wife and the status he lost in Russia, and keeps his son under his thumb. The movie is more about Creed, Rocky, and Ivan Drago, not really Drago's son, who you do feel for but I still wanted to lose not because of him, but because of his dad.

 

Also, Creed isn't fighting for his feelings. A sleazy boxing promoter and Ivan Drago call Creed out regularly on national news, saying he needs to step up, defend his father's death and honor, is he a wimp for not stepping up to fight for his father's legacy, etc. Everyone tells him not to even bother with the fight, so even the movie understands that Creed is doing this despite the advice of the people around him, so arguably the movie paints him doing this fight somewhat as a bad thing in the first place.

 

And for me that's exactly the issue. The movie wants us to want him to lose because of his dad. But really he's a manipulated victim.

 

So... his feelings :P 

[Greatoneshere]

4 minutes ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

 

And for me that's exactly the issue. The movie wants us to want him to lose because of his dad. But really he's a manipulated victim.

 

So... his feelings :P 

 

Well, I mean, his dad is a good reason to want his son to lose, since his son just does what his dad tells him to. I see no problem there? His dad is enflaming an old generational hatred between him and Apollo through their sons and his own son and Creed succumb to his manipulations, but I still empathize with Creed more than his own son.

[TheShader]

It's a movie about generational trauma, and Viktor Drago is intended to be a mirror of Creed as to work as a foil. He's not a 1920s black-and-white villain twirling his mustache if that's what you're expecting out of the movie. He and his father combined are the antagonists of the film, but antagonists are not necessarily 'villains'. An antagonist is just whoever, or whatever, pushes back against the protagonist. You can have films with shades of gray that don't have the antagonist be a villain, or you can have it somewhere in the middle.

 

Viktor isn't Thanos or Ronan the Accuser, but he's not supposed to be. Creed II isn't meant to be an old western where the guy with the white hat is the savior of the West and the guy in the black hat is robbing the bank and shooting people in the street for no reason. Most of the Rocky movies, and of course by extension the Creed movies, have never been about strong villains you're supposed to hate and the good guy is supposed to beat. In fact, Rocky doesn't even win all of his fights. Even Clubber Lang, while an asshole, was a boxer that was rightfully calling out Rocky as taking on easy fights and was unfairly holding onto his championship. Even Rocky acknowledged this in the movie, and Rocky was in the wrong for most of the movie thinking he deserved to beat Clubber Lang even though he was barely training. IV and V are the two films where there really was a 'villain' character in both Ivan and George Washington Duke, but those were two of the more cartoonish Rocky films(Especially IV).

 

I think you might be missing something from the Rocky/Creed movies as a whole if you think the person they're boxing is inherently supposed to be a big bad villain to be hated. That's not what the series is about. The movies are about the internal conflicts of the protagonists by having an antagonist that is often going through their own reasons for the fight. The first Rocky film Apollo was just a star champion that needed to fill an empty booking and accidentally booked a low-level boxer that could go toe-to-toe with him, Rocky II we go through the movie as we see both Rocky and Apollo have the same conflicts about their previous fight and feeling like the fight wasn't truly resolved, Rocky III is about a complacent Rocky that's forgotten what it's like to want to win Vs Clubber who reflects the eager Rocky of the first and second films, etc.

 

Same with Creed II. Viktor isn't there to be a villain. He's there to be the antagonist by having his life be a foil to the life of Adonis, and challenge Adonis to reflect on himself and the life he has been given.

[GeneticBlueprint]

I'm sitting here arguing for more humanization of the bad guy. "He's not a mustache twirling villain. He's not a big bad villain." Yeah. I know. That's my entire point. I'm not asking the movie to create a mustache twirling villain. I'm asking it to acknowledge the shades of grey you're talking about. By the end the movie itself has completely forgotten this. I haven't seen it since it came out so your recollection will be better than mine on the specifics. You mentioned Adonis reflecting on himself. Okay. That's fine. Great. But the personal internal struggles of privileged westerners don't seem all that important to me when compared to somebody struggling in poverty, familial abuse, and political exile in the former Soviet bloc. It's just so odd that the movie sets this up in the first bit and then does nothing with it. I don't recall any reflection on Adonis' part that the guy he defeats was being used. No acknowledgement that this other guy was in many respects fighting for his life. So when Adonis triumphantly sends Viktor packing back to his misery--and Adonis gets to go back to his comfortable swanky life without those realizations--the victory feels pretty hollow. But the movie doesn't play it like that at all. It wants you happy that the poor sap gets to go back to being poor.

[TheShader]

That just goes back to the Rocky style. The focus tends to be purely on the antagonist once the final match begins, and the movie cuts out shortly after the match ends. Any fallout, resolutions, etc., if any, will bleed into the next movie. Just like the relationship between Rocky and Apollo in the original 3. Of course now that Michael B Jordan has been given full control of the franchise we'll see if he sticks with that in Creed III, but at a minimum Viktor is supposed to be in the movie.

[TheShader]

If you want to be technical, there's the final part of a story called the denouement which wraps up the story after the climax. These are the parts of the story that tie things up, express lessons learned by the characters, shows their growth, etc. In Endgame, for Example, this section starts off with Tony's funeral and then progresses as we see Thor leaving his life as a leader of Asgard behind, Rogers goes back to return the stones and preserve the timeline, and subsequently Rogers passes on his shield.

 

This would generally be, in a movie, where we would get the bits that you're asking for, but Rocky movies have skipped the denouement since the very first movie. We never get these post-climax revelations and character reveals because the movies just simply don't do them. Which has been a stylistic/writing choice since the very first movie.

[GeneticBlueprint]

Creed II had that though. He goes to Apollo's grave and talks to him about the why of the fight (which from my recollection clashed with everything else we saw in the movie). While he's doing that we get a montage of several things that are supposed to visually rhyme with what he's telling his dad. One of which being Viktor stuck with his dad back where they came from since mom abandoned him again after the fight. But either way not every movie needs a denouement to spell things out for you as we surmised all that two seconds after the fight was over.

[Guest]

This flick is fantastic. Maybe still not quite to the level of the first film, but MBJ is more than competent in the director's chair. I think the cliche "fitting end to the story" is true here. I'm very interested to see where MBJ goes next. I'm also glad for my kids that they live in a time where there isn't just one really well known Black director, like Spike Lee was for people of my generation. Ava, Coogler, Jenkins, McQueen, Peele, all out there making Oscar nominated and winning flicks.

 

Also the film is under 120 minutes long, THANK YOU MBJ AND YOUR EDITOR!

[TheLeon]

Good movie! I like that it’s more about Donny’s own past than his father and Rocky’s legacy. 

[outsida]

It was great, it didn’t relay on nostalgia. 

[skillzdadirecta]

Michael B. Jordan Spearheading ‘Creed-Verse’ In Works At Amazon Across Film & TV

DEADLINE.COM

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EXCLUSIVE: Creed already broke ground for Amazon with the latest installment in the MGM movie franchise, Creed III, racking up a $100M+ global opening and setting a boxoffice record for the tech gi…

 

[SoberChef]

Went to see this earlier today & while I still prefer the Rocky franchise over the Creed trilogy, it was a solid entry that echoed a lot of Rocky III in ways which was enjoyable. One thing that can be said is that at the very least, this franchise definitely is consistent with its intention & quality.

[MarSolo]

On 2/16/2023 at 5:13 PM, GeneticBlueprint said:

Creed II had that though. He goes to Apollo's grave and talks to him about the why of the fight (which from my recollection clashed with everything else we saw in the movie). While he's doing that we get a montage of several things that are supposed to visually rhyme with what he's telling his dad. One of which being Viktor stuck with his dad back where they came from since mom abandoned him again after the fight. But either way not every movie needs a denouement to spell things out for you as we surmised all that two seconds after the fight was over.

The thing you’re missing thought is that it takes Viktor for Ivan to see his wrongs. There’s a scene in the middle of the flick where Viktor and Ivan are being honored by Ivan’s ex and the Russian elite, but Viktor walks out and berates his dad over sucking up to the people that left them behind. Then Ivan sees Viktor getting pummeled and throws in the towel for his son, and tells him it’s okay he didn’t win, when the entire flick he kept pushing him harder and harder.

 

Then you see the two of them training together at the end, rather than Ivan training Viktor.

[TwinIon]

I enjoyed Creed 3 well enough, but I think it's the worst of the Creed movies (which still makes it better than more than a couple Rocky films).

 

Ultimately, Rocky/Creed films are as formulaic as they come. There aren't really may surprises and their quality rests less on novelty than it does execution. Creed 3 executes some things really well, while others it falls pretty flat. I felt like it really lacked the emotional resonance that you're looking for to heighten the drama and make the fights more exciting.

 

Story spoilers

 

Spoiler

Part of the formula that these films follow is that no matter how excellent the protagonist is, they need to be the underdog by the end. Another part of that formula is that the last fight needs to be about more than just the belt. Neither of those parts worked for me in Creed 3. The film opens with Creed clearly on top of the world. It's not like he lets fame and fortune and family soften him. They keep telling us about how he walked away from boxing and it's made him soft, but the man never looks soft. He certainly never looks out of shape. In walks his opponent who has one fight and some prison training with a man Creed already beat twice and we're supposed to think Creed is the underdog?

 

Not only did they fail to sell the underdog story, but they failed to sufficiently raise the stakes. Hell, when Creed announced he was going to fight again (while it was obvious the film would demand it), I could hardly figure out why. Yeah, Creed's prize fighter lost, but so did his old pal, someone he has every reason in the world to want to see succeed. Yeah, the guy that was in prison for 18 years is a little rude at times, and they briefly mention that he's badmouthing Creed in the press, but that's it. The natural progression felt to me like Damian should have become Creed's new prize fighter, not his opponent.

 

Additionally, I think the b-plot of the kid wanting to fight was really half-baked. There was a ton of potential for Adonis to self-reflect and change, but I don't think we got that. Mostly, I think these are script issues that probably should have been worked out.

 

Script problems aside, I think there was still a lot to like about the film. The fights themselves are dynamic and exciting, and despite being the 9th film in this franchise, MBJ found exciting ways to make them more dramatic. It's not a 100% success, but MBJ was clearly taking risks that I think paid off. Even little things like keeping Johnathan Majors in sweatshirts until his first fight really work.

 

I also think the actors are all as good as you would expect them to be. MBJ has always been great at being either a street kid or a powerful man of privilege, and here he gets to do both. Jonathan Majors doesn't have as much demanded of him, but I really appreciated how his character had such a distinct fighting style; brutal, unpolished, and sly. Even when the story might not sell him as a favorite, his presence demanded that he should be. I know MBJ and Majors have talked about collaborating more together and I'll very much look forward to whatever they end up doing together. I'd also be really interested in seeing what MBJ directs next.

 

Overall a film that I liked but really wanted to love.

[Derek]

I thought this was kind of fun...

 

Jonathan Majors gets vindication as MCU fans realize the ‘Creed’ movies really are part of the Marvel multiverse

WEGOTTHISCOVERED.COM

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We're sorry we ever doubted you, Mr. Majors.

Something about Rocky appearing in a Marvel GI Joe comic years ago.

 

[SuperSpreader]

Finally saw Creed after realizing what a chore Avatar was gonna be, wow that was awesome! I can't wait to watch 2 and 3 now.