BEFORE: This week one of my 2023 documentary subjects passed away, Sinead O'Connor. Certainly she had some troubles, not the least of which was her son's suicide about a year ago. Now I'm trying not to take this as a bad luck thing, because eventually this will happen to everyone, and if you think about it, if you're at the point in life when someone has made a documentary about you, that probably means you've had a long and (ideally) successful career, or are getting up there in years, so in a way, maybe it's all just par for the course.
Many of this year's DocBloc subjects, of course, have already passed - Muhammed Ali, Jimmy Breslin and Denis Hamill, Arthur Ashe, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Roy Cohn, Kurt Vonnegut and Natalie Wood are also no longer with us - but the flip side of that is that Venus and Serena Williams, Idina Menzel (52), Sheryl Crow (61), Val Kilmer (63), John McEnroe (64), Dionne Warwick (83), Buddy Guy (87), Willie Mays (92) and Norman Lear (101) are all still with us. So that's good news, only 1/2 of this year's subjects are deceased. Phew.
Jonathan Majors carries over from "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Creed II" (Movie #3,360)
THE PLOT: Adonis Creed has been thriving in both his career and family life, but when a childhood friend and former boxing prodigy resurfaces, the face-off is more than just a fight.
AFTER: Well, I thought I could maybe coast a bit in July and August, but now I realize that if I want my September chain to line up the way I want, I can't skip more than 5 days in August if I want my film that references 9/11 to land on 9/11. Since I might be going up to Massachusetts for 4 days in the middle of the month, and I need to get up super early on my first day back at the theater, well, there are the 5 days. So every other night in August, I need to watch a movie. OK, bring it on, that will help the Dog Days of Summer pass more quickly. (And really, why didn't I think to schedule any movies about DOGS during August? The movie "Dog" was RIGHT THERE, as was DC League of Super-Pets, but I stupidly went ahead and watched those. Instead, I've got "Puss and Boots: The Last Wish" coming up, and that's about a CAT. Oh, well.)
Anyway, I think there's something kind of "off" about this third "Creed" movie, I don't know if the connections to the "Rocky" franchise are just fading away, or what. The first two "Creed" films had Sylvester Stallone in them, to train his rival/friend Apollo Creed's son, and then the second one also had Dolph Lundgren come back as Ivan Drago, as the trainer of HIS son, Viktor Drago. Now, logically, "Creed III" should have Adonis fighting Clubber Lang's son, wouldn't that make some kind of symmetry to it? But I guess if "Creed II" referenced "Rocky IV" then the sequel franchise doesn't need to align itself numerically with the originals.
Instead they reverse-engineered a backstory for Adonis where he snuck out at night to watch his best friend, Damian Anderson, in underground boxing matches. And then we (eventually) come to find out that one night they stopped at a convenience store on the way home, and Adonis saw some guy he knew and had a beef with (we never really learn why) and then started a fight with him. Damian backed Adonis up with a gun, just before the cops showed up, and Adonis took off running, leaving Damian to face charges - and with prior arrests, this meant doing years of prison for the gun possession.
In the present, Damian gets out of prison and reconnects with Creed and wants to re-start his boxing career, and wouldn't you know it, Donnie is retired from fighting himself, but seems to be some kind of Don King-like manager now, with his own gym and fighters that he's training for possible title shots, particularly Felix Chavez. Damian thinks he deserves a shot at the WBC title, even though he's never had a professional match - but since he served time for Donnie, he figures that Donnie owes him a big favor. Creed decides to take him on as a sparring partner for his own boxers, but he claims a title shot for an unknown in such short time would be impossible to arrange.
Here's where the rest of the film becomes extremely predictable - somebody attacks Viktor Drago, Tonya Harding style, leaving him with a broken hand and needing at least six months recovery time. But Chavez needs to defend his title, so whaddaya know, that leaves an opening for Damian to get his shot, even though this really isn't how the boxing world works, and also Creed had previously said this was impossible. I knew immediately that Damian would get the match, cripple or even kill Chavez, and this would force Creed back out of retirement to win the championship back from the unseeded, unprofessional guy who came out of nowhere.
Now, this is justified in the film by referring back to Rocky Balboa, who was also a boxing nobody when Apollo Creed picked him as somebody easy to beat. (And he was right, remember, Rocky didn't win the fight in the first movie, he just went the distance.). But here it plays out just like you'd think, Damian easily takes down Chavez because, well, he's a brutal guy and also somehow he's like a foot taller, which doesn't seem at all fair. NITPICK POINT: How are these two guys possibly in the same weight class, when one is so much bigger than the other?
The film never follows up on that "unknown assailant" who attacked Viktor Drago. Is it possible that (like in the Tonya Harding case) Damian hired that guy to bust up Drago's hand? I guess if nobody ever looks into it, then we're not really sure how much of a villain Damian is - but I would be money that he hired the guy, like his own personal Jeff Gillooly (look it up). It's a rather glaring omission, if you ask me - but it would make sense if Damian was the one who benefited by Drago's injury.
Donnie's adoptive mother, his father's widow, had kept all the letters that Damian wrote from prison, but never delivered them to Adonis, because she reasoned that Damian was a bad influence on him. I was going to call another N.P. here about Adonis' experience in group homes, like why did he live in group homes instead of with his father? Ah, but Adonis was illegitimate and I forgot that Mary Anne Creed is NOT his biological mother, but adopted him later in life, as he was her husband's son. Suddenly it all fits together, but this is a really roundabout way to explain why Adonis never got his friend's letters from prison. Mary Anne Creed is this franchise's version of Cassie Lang, she's been played by three different actresses over six films in total.
At least there's clearly somebody out there who keeps track of all of these fictional characters and maintains their backstories, since I sure didn't remember what I learned about Adonis Creed in the first film, how he left his financial securities job to train as a boxer with Rocky Balboa, and his adoptive mother wasn't crazy about the idea. But everything about this movie is so formulaic, right down to the required insane training montage, with Adonis flipping tires and then pulling a small aircraft down a runway by himself. Now, logically in "Creed IV" we should pick up the storyline with Adonis' deaf daughter training to become a boxer, and maybe she can fight Clubber Lang's granddaughter or something.
At least there was a lot of good high-speed cinematography during the fights, so you can really see those punches land and the skin rippling on impact. Yeah, more of that please - also more of the "checkmate" stuff where Adonis is holding back while he figures out his opponent's combinations and then dodges and counters with one of his own. That's what I like to see.
Also starring Michael B. Jordan (last seen in "Space Jam: A New Legacy"), Wood Harris (ditto), Tessa Thompson (last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Phylicia Rashad (last seen in "Tick, Tick... BOOM!"), Mila Davis-Kent, Jose Benavidez, Selenis Leyva (last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming"), Florian Munteanu (last seen in "The Contractor"), Thaddeus J. Mixson, Spence Moore II, Anthony Bellew (last seen in "Creed"), Patrice Harris, Ann Najjar, Jacob "Stitch" Duran (last seen in "Creed II"), Kenny Bayless (ditto), Terence Crawford, Bobby Hernandez, Yahya McClain, Lamont Lankford, Todd Grisham, Jessica McCaskill, Jimmy Lennon Jr. (last seen in "Southpaw"), David Diamante (ditto), Tony Weeks (ditto), Russell Mora, Al Bernstein (last seen in "Bleed for This"), Mauro Ranallo, Chris Mannix, Stephen A. Smith (last seen in "I Think I Love My Wife"), Jessica Holmes, Canelo Alvarez, Fernanda Gomez, Kehlani, Aaron D. Alexander (last seen in "One Night in Miami..."), Jude Wells, with a cameo from James Harden and the voice of Barry Pepper (last seen in "Snitch").
RATING: 6 out of 10 teeth knocked out
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