Ryan Coogler’s Creed takes a franchise that had already ended once and hands it to the son of a man who died in the ring. The film stars Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Johnson and Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa, and it was released in the United States on November 25, 2015.
Trailer, via Warner Bros..
Adonis Johnson Starts in Tijuana
The film opens in 1998, in a Los Angeles youth detention center. Adonis “Donnie” Johnson is serving time when Mary Anne Creed, the widow of heavyweight champion Apollo Creed, visits and offers to take him in. He is Apollo’s son, born of an extramarital affair.
Seventeen years later, Adonis is in Tijuana, Mexico, preparing for an amateur bout in a bar. He returns from the fight, then goes back to his day job at the Smith Boardley Financial Group and resigns. He wants to box professionally.
That decision costs him. He auditions at Delphi Boxing Academy in Los Angeles, run by Tony “Little Duke” Evers Jr., the son of Apollo’s trainer. Little Duke turns him down. Adonis then challenges the whole gym, betting his 1967 Ford Mustang that nobody can land a clean head shot on him. Heavyweight champion Danny “Stuntman” Wheeler, the No. 2 pound-for-pound fighter, takes the bet and beats him in a sparring match.
Mary Anne opposes his aspirations. She remembers how her husband was killed in the ring by Ivan Drago thirty years ago. Adonis leaves anyway, for Philadelphia.
Rocky Balboa Runs a Restaurant Now
Adonis finds Rocky at Adrian’s, the Italian restaurant Rocky named for his late wife. He asks Rocky to train him. Rocky is reluctant at first, because of bad prior experiences as a trainer, then agrees.
The two men talk about the “secret third fight” between Rocky and Apollo, the one after Apollo helped Rocky win back the heavyweight title. Rocky tells him Apollo won.
Training happens at the Front Street Gym, with several of Rocky’s longtime friends working his corner. Adonis also meets Bianca Taylor, a singer-songwriter with a hearing impairment, and the two start a relationship.
| Date in the film | Event |
|---|---|
| 1998 | Mary Anne Creed takes in Adonis at a Los Angeles youth detention center |
| 2015 | Adonis prepares for an amateur bout in a bar in Tijuana, Mexico |
| 2015 | Adonis resigns from the Smith Boardley Financial Group |
| 2015 | Adonis is rejected at Delphi Boxing Academy |
| 2015 | Adonis spars Danny “Stuntman” Wheeler and loses |
| 2015 | Adonis moves to Philadelphia and asks Rocky Balboa to train him |
| 2015 | Adonis trains at Front Street Gym and begins a relationship with Bianca |
Michael B. Jordan Plays Adonis Creed
Jordan plays Adonis as a light heavyweight boxer who is an underdog but talented. He is not Rocky. The film’s central relationship is the one between Adonis and the father he never knew, and between Adonis and the man who fought that father three times.
The source material is thin on what Adonis wants beyond a career. That is the film’s gamble, and it works because Jordan plays the ambition without announcing it. He is a man in a hurry.
Stallone’s Rocky is a two-time world heavyweight champion who owns and operates an Italian restaurant in Philadelphia named after his deceased wife Adrian. He becomes Adonis’s trainer and mentor. He is reluctant to return to boxing, and the film does not pretend otherwise.
Tessa Thompson and Phylicia Rashad
Thompson’s Bianca is a singer-songwriter with a hearing impairment who becomes Adonis’s love interest. The film treats her as a working musician with her own career, not as a prize.
Rashad has fewer scenes. Mary Anne takes Adonis in as a child following the death of his biological mother, then watches him walk into the same sport that killed her husband. Her opposition is the film’s clearest emotional stake.
Tony Bellew, a real light heavyweight, plays “Pretty” Ricky Conlan, the British world light heavyweight champion. Conlan is arrogant and formidable. Graham McTavish plays Conlan’s trainer Tommy Holiday.
The film stacks its cast with real boxing people. Andre Ward plays Wheeler. Gabriel Rosado plays Leo “The Lion” Sporino. Jacob “Stitch” Duran plays himself, the cutman, after playing a cutman in Rocky Balboa. Liev Schreiber voices an HBO 24/7 announcer. Michael Buffer cameos as the ring announcer. Tony Kornheiser, Michael Wilbon, Hannah Storm and Max Kellerman appear, along with HBO Sports boxing announcer Jim Lampley.
| Element | Creed (2015) | Rocky Balboa (2006) |
|---|---|---|
| Lead character | Adonis Johnson, Apollo Creed’s son | Robert “Rocky” Balboa |
| Rocky’s role | Trainer and mentor | Not given in source |
| Director | Ryan Coogler | Not given in source |
| Writer | Ryan Coogler and Aaron Covington | Not given in source |
| Franchise position | Seventh installment, spin-off and sequel | Sixth installment |
| Runtime | 133 minutes | Not given in source |
| Release date | November 25, 2015 | Not given in source |
| Worldwide gross | $174.1 million | Not given in source |
The Fight Scenes and the Release Date
Coogler shoots boxing close. The camera moves with the fighters. The sparring match against Wheeler is a loss for Adonis, and the film does not soften it.
The Tijuana bar fight comes early. The Front Street Gym training scenes carry the franchise’s oldest ritual, and Creed keeps them.
The release date was not an accident. Creed opened in the United States on November 25, 2015, to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the date of the opening scene in the first film. It premiered on November 19, 2015, at the Regency Village Theater in Los Angeles. Warner Bros. Pictures released it.
Robert Chartoff and the End of an Era
Creed is the last film in the career of Robert Chartoff, one of the franchise’s main producers. He died two months after filming ended, and the film is dedicated to him.
That detail matters more than most credits. Chartoff produced the Rocky films from the beginning. Creed is not a reboot made by strangers.
MGM hired Coogler in 2013 to develop a spin-off, even though Rocky Balboa had been treated as the end of the franchise. Coogler and Covington finished their screenplay by April 2014, with Jordan and Stallone confirmed. The rest of the cast was hired by January 2015. Principal photography ran from then until that April, in Liverpool, Philadelphia, and Gainesville, Georgia.
What Creed Gets Right
Creed is a legacy sequel that understands the trap of legacy sequels. It does not ask you to cheer when an old character appears. It asks what an old character is worth when the fighting is done.
The film’s answer is Rocky Balboa, restaurant owner, a man who buried his wife and his best friend and still shows up at the gym.
Jordan carries the film. He plays a character who belongs to a franchise that belongs to someone else, opposite the man who built it.
The weaknesses are real but small. The film runs 133 minutes, and some of the sports-media cameos sit awkwardly against the rest of the picture.
None of that changes the verdict. Creed takes a franchise that had already said goodbye once and finds a new reason to exist. It earns its tagline: “Your legacy is more than a name.”
The published critical score is 8.2/10, Metacritic 82/100. That is about right. Creed is a drama about inheritance, and it is the rare franchise film that knows what it is handing over.
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