Predictable and weak entry

Rating: 2/10 (5 January 2018)

So many things wrong with this film. Misplaced casting, with every fighter in the film besides the main character (Michael Jordan's Adonis Creed) looks like a fighter but our guy looks he's more apt to be seen stuck behind a desk in a cubicle, and while he's in shape, he's obviously not prepared for the role and obtained a fighter's physique. Something Stallone did like crazy back in the day, and had a reputation for.
The story is pretty weak, with Adonis wanting to make his own name but then after getting his ass beat in a local gym by a real pro, he sucks up immediately to Rocky Balboa, trading on his dad's friendship with Rocky to get some training. So most of the film makes little sense with Adonis trying to hide this at all. Also, I don't care who you are, but giving up what appears to be a lavish lifestyle living in a giant mansion with plenty of opportunities to succeed in life, including endless funds for a private boxing trainer and ring, you go seeking out a retired champion who doesn't even actively train anybody? Come on.
Stallone does well in this movie, but it's largely because for the first time in a long while, he's not playing an over the top character. He's depicted as just owning his wife's restaurant and living a pretty modest life, with some indicators that Paulie was living with him up until a few years prior to the events in the film, which is odd considering the history the two characters had. He is depicted as being diagnosed with cancer which provides for some limited emotional moments, but the film quickly forgets about this in favor of the ending fight debacle.
Michael Jordan's acting is also just lacking any charisma. He succeeds mostly in the film through his interactions with a girlfriend he acquires, and the two have some on screen chemistry, but beyond that he's just some guy, and lacks anything about him that really stands out. His boxing motivation is very weak and he never comes across as really wanting anything very much, and even his apparent willingness to get into fights are constantly strained overacting, especially given his lack of apparent boxer mentality. He again is just seriously miscast.
The fight scenes in the films are also just beyond realistic. In every one of the fights, Adonis gets big hits landed on him repeatedly, something no boxer can really survive more than one or two of. Yes, the original Rocky films showed an excess of this, but this is 2017 and other fighting films have set the standard for how a fight should be depicted today, and this film just gets it all wrong. Other problems are that the actor Michael Jordan also just (again) didn't really get much training for the role as a boxer, and there's repetitive slip ups with his fighting stance and actions in the ring, whereas his opponents appear to be very disciplined about it, likely being real boxers or at least having taken their roles more seriously.
The final fight in the film tries too hard to be a repeat of what we saw in the first Rocky, and results in a pretty weak ending. He doesn't win the fight, and by any scorecard, lost it badly despite not being knocked out.