I know this may be obvious, but just so you know: SPOILER ALERT! This review contains major spoilers for the new hit movie Creed II and spoils everything except who wins… gotta leave some of it as a surprise.

Redemption? Heartache? Drama? Killer story line? If you are looking for any of these things in a movie, I can assure you that Creed II is the movie for you. From the ups and the downs, the happiness and the sadness, the internal and external conflicts, and an awesome final fight scene, this movie is nothing short of brilliant.

Where it all began 

The 8th edition to the well famed Rocky franchise runs as a sequel to the 2015 movie, Creed, which showed the growth of Apollo Creed’s son, Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan), and his trainer and long time family friend, Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone). However, this movie also serves as a sequel to the 80’s cultural blockbuster Rocky IV. Rocky IV is known to be one of the most popular editions in the franchise, especially due to its antagonist, Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren). This Russian lab experiment killed Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers)  in an exhibition fight, leading to a dope Rocky redemption training montage in the mountains, and eventually the slaying of Drago in the 15th round.

What this has to do with Creed II.

After the loss to Rocky in 1985, Drago lost everything. He lost his fame, fortune, respect, his home, and even his wife. He was looked at as an unbeatable force, and he got out-boxed by Rocky. Drago then had to move away, with only him and his then new-born son. His son is basically another spawn of Ivan Drago and I loved it. Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu), is an absolute machine of a man. Drago trained him, seemingly as Rocky was always trained, within his environment. This man was brought up in a life full of disappointment in his family name, and has only known disgrace. This fueled the fire for Viktor, and he vowed to destroy anyone who came in his path. His father’s training made sure he would do just that. Destroy.

Montage and Final Fight

I can’t spoil who the winner of the fight is, because I am not that low of a person and because I encourage you all to go out and see it. However, I can tell you that there are indeed two fights that take place between Viktor and Adonis, and that there is an extremely awesome Adonis Creed training montage. The montage itself will give you the chills. Between that and the final fight, its all brilliant.

I understand some of the negative reviews of the movie, especially due to its structure being like every other Rocky film. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a great movie. Most fans of Rocky, like me, love the montages, the fight scenes, and just the overcoming of adversity. Creed II has it all.

Deeper Messages 

The movie does a great job at bringing up the internal conflicts between the families as well. First, Adonis is fighting for his dead father, who was killed by Ivan Drago. He wants to bring pride back to the Creed family by trying to do something his father couldn’t, and that’s beat Drago. Also, Adonis and his fiancé give birth to a child, so now he is also a father. This swings a lot of commotion around between Adonis’ mother who didn’t want her son to fight Drago at all, and his fiance that felt the same way. They didn’t want a repeat of what happened to Apollo. Even Rocky had doubts at first about the fight, and denied training Adonis. Rocky hesitates because he remembers what it was like fighting Ivan, and how he broke things in him that could never be fixed. He also is hesitant because he let the Ivan vs Apollo fight go on much longer than it should have, resulting in Apollo’s death.

The relationship with Ivan and Viktor is nothing short of brilliant as well. He knows his father has lost everything from his loss to Balboa. His whole childhood has been nothing but difficult. All we see in the beginning of the film, is how hard Ivan pushes Viktor. Ivan knows his son is bigger, stronger, and faster than he was. Viktor wasn’t a lab experiment like his father either, and he does’t accept anything less than greatness.

Overall I just feel this movie has a lot of great input on character development, and a lot of answers from Rocky IV that we were all dying to hear. Personally, brilliance is the only thing that comes to mind when reviewing this movie. Simply, pure brilliance. Set up perfectly, the way us Rocky fans love.

Gillespie’s Rating: 9.2/10

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