Creed III is an anime-inspired knockout
Creed IIIfaces the unique challenge of bringing the Rocky series out of Sylvester Stallone’s shadow. The ninth installment of the franchise that started with 1976’s Rocky is the first to feature Stallone neither on screen nor in a creative capacity. This time, the directorial reins have been handed to Michael B. Jordan, who plays Rocky’s protege Adonis in the Creed movies. In his directorial debut, Jordan, a self-professed anime and manga fan, imbues the spinoff/threequel with a cinematic zest the series has never seen before, expanding the visual language of the Hollywood boxing movie in remarkable ways.
Jordan’s approach sometimes works against the saga’s previously grounded nature, but Creed III has enough visual panache to plaster over its occasional narrative inelegance. But its strongest suit is its creators’ desire to weave a character-centric tale that doesn’t repeat the beats of the Rocky movies, the way Creed and Creed II follow the broad structure of Rocky and Rocky IV. At the same time, the new film doesn’t mimic the emotional arcs of previous Creed installments. Scripted by Keenan Coogler and Zach Baylin (from a story they co-wrote with Ryan Coogler, Keenan’s brother and director of Creedand the Black Panther movies), it continues the trilogy’s running theme of people confronting the past, but it’s the first Creed movie where the emotional weight doesn’t stem from the original Rocky films.
Creed is about Adonis dealing with the legacy of his father, boxer Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), and Creed II sees him facing Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu), the son of Rocky IV villain Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren). Creed III draws on Adonis’ history as a child rescued from the foster care and juvenile detention systems by
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