Overrated, boring & unnecessary

Rating: 3/10 (16 December 2016)

I honestly don't understand all the love and praise this film gets. I'm a big fan of all the Rocky films (including V) and never have I wanted to see a pointless spin off with Apollo Creed's b*****d son. The movie felt like a forced attempt to bring back Rocky like Hollywood did with Jurassic Park, Star Wars and the Terminator but even worse.
First of all, I didn't care about the character Adonis, I didn't care if he succeeded or "went to distance". What made the character Rocky work was that he grew up in a rough Philadelphia neighborhood with hardly any money and a tiny house and the only way he could make money was to fight and work as a loan shark which he didn't even want to do. Whereas with Adonis, although his mum died and didn't know his father and was in foster care, he was brought in by Apollo Creed's widow, Mary Ann, then spends his teen and early adulthood years living rich, in a nice house and is given a promotion at his white collar office job but gives it all up because "I want to be a boxer" (????)
Also, I'm supposed to sympathise with him because "I want to get out of my fathers shadow" and people keep associating him with Apollo Creed. Awww, boo-f***ing-hoo! Cry me a river will you? Not only that, Adonis was incredibly bland and boring, no personality and Michael B. Jordon had the same annoyed expression throughout. At least with Rocky he was lovable, witty and he saw beauty in Adrian who everyone thought was weird and never respected her.
Not to mention, the film is littered with plot holes, for example, in the opening scene (which takes place in 1998) Adonis looks about 10 or 11 so he was probably born around 1986 or 1987, yet, Apollo Creed died in Rocky IV, which took place in 1983 or 1984, so how the hell does that work? Why couldn't the film be about Apollo Creed's legitimate sons like the one you see briefly in Rocky II instead of creating a BS story of Apollo having an affair? Speaking of which, what on Earth happened to Apollo's other kids? If Adonis lived in Mary Ann's house, surely he would have met the others as they they would either still be living there or at least come visit and possibly meet and be in contact with Adonis after they see him on the news but who cares, right?
I didn't buy the love story with Bianca because one moment Adonis was telling her to keep the noise from her singing down at night (because his apartment is above hers) to which she slams the door in his face and Carries on with the loud noise (um, what a b***h!) but he then sees her performing some crappy song at a night club then SUDDENLY they're in love (WTF?). Sylvester Stallone was fine but was there any point showing Rocky dying of cancer? Rocky Balboa ended the series on a happy high note but now make a new film with him dying to make the film more depressing as it already is with how bad it is.
Finally, I've got a lot more problems but I'm only going to say one more thing because this review will just go on and on, the film is 2 hours and 13 minutes long making it the longest "Rocky" film in the series, why? I definitely felt the film dragging on and on all the way through and I kept thinking "oh god, how long of this left?" The training scenes were boring as they were rehashes of training scenes from the previous films and I felt nothing, no adrenaline and it didn't make me want to go out and train like the other films did.
The main "villain" (I don't remember his name and don't care) is boring and not anywhere near as memorable as Clubber Lang or Drago, I even thought Tommy Gunn was a better villain. The only thing the makers tried to make him interesting was that he's from Liverpool (because we've never seen a movie boxer from Liverpool, right?)
over all, the film was long,boring and should never have been made and just leave Rocky in the past, I don't understand how this got 94% on rotten tomatoes yet Rocky got 93%, I can name hundreds of films that deserve that 94% than Creed!