{"id":1372,"date":"2019-02-12T15:00:51","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T22:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1372"},"modified":"2019-01-31T20:22:23","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T03:22:23","slug":"movie-creed-ii-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2019\/02\/12\/movie-creed-ii-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: Creed II (2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/9\/90\/Creed_II_poster.png\/220px-Creed_II_poster.png\" alt=\"Creed II\" width=\"220\" height=\"326\" \/>Creed II<br \/>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2018<br \/>\nRating: PG-13<br \/>\nLength: 130 minutes \/ 2.17 hours<\/p>\n<p>While I have only ever seen the original\u00a0<em>Rocky<\/em>\u00a0(1976) and the spinoff\/reboot\u00a0<em>Creed<\/em>\u00a0(2015), I\u2019m still aware of some of the details of the\u00a0<em>Rocky<\/em>\u00a0franchise as a whole. I know who some of Rocky Balboa\u2019s (Sylvester Stallone) opponents were over the years, including James \u201cClubber\u201d Lang (Mr. T) and Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren). Consequently, even though\u00a0<em>Creed<\/em> felt like it took the franchise in a new direction by focusing on Apollo Creed\u2019s (Carl Weathers) son, its sequel,\u00a0<em>Creed II<\/em>\u00a0(2018) felt too steeped in the franchise\u2019s history and nostalgia to be anything more than a rehash of\u00a0<em>Rocky IV<\/em>\u00a0(1985).<\/p>\n<p>If anything, having Apollo Creed\u2019s son, Adonis (Michael B. Jordan), face off against Ivan Drago\u2019s son, Viktor (Florian Munteanu), as a\u00a0revenge match that followed the same plot points as its predecessor smacks of lazy and clich\u00e9d writing. I would have been much more interested in this film if, even despite all the training each son endured, the outcome would have been different than before. Pulling out all the recognizable bits from past Rocky movies makes it seem like there\u2019s not many more rounds this franchise can go before falling to the mat.<\/p>\n<p>I will applaud the filmmakers\u2019 restraint for not including that weird robot that was in\u00a0<em>Rocky IV<\/em>, but a lot of the sentimentality and overly dramatic sub-plots seemed like they were trying too hard to get an emotional response from the audience. Fortunately, the boxing in this film looks brutal,\u00a0a testament to both the choreography and training of the actors to make the fight seem so real. It\u2019s probably not anything more special than what <em>Creed<\/em>\u00a0had\u00a0in terms of cinematography, but if you\u2019re looking for a boxing match that doesn\u2019t require pay-per-view, this movie can fit the bill.<\/p>\n<p>An OK sequel that relies way too much on nostalgia, I give\u00a0<em>Creed II<\/em>\u00a03.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a01\/2<\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Creed II Year: 2018 Rating: PG-13 Length: 130 minutes \/ 2.17 hours While I have only ever seen the original\u00a0Rocky\u00a0(1976) and the spinoff\/reboot\u00a0Creed\u00a0(2015), I\u2019m still aware of some of the details of the\u00a0Rocky\u00a0franchise as a whole. I know who some of Rocky Balboa\u2019s (Sylvester Stallone) opponents were over the years, including James \u201cClubber\u201d Lang (Mr. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,2],"tags":[1020,1660,1657,1661,13,630,8,1658,1659,1594],"class_list":["post-1372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-5-stars","category-movie","tag-1020","tag-creed","tag-creed-ii","tag-michael-b-jordan","tag-movie","tag-reboot","tag-review","tag-rocky","tag-rocky-iv","tag-spinoff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1377,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions\/1377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}