An unfortunate effort

Rating: 4/10 (12 October 2019)

Creed II - REVIEW
First of all, and I say this as a HUGE fan of Michael B. Jordan, of Sly, and of the whole Rocky franchise, this is a derivative, motionless movie.
SPOILERS AHEAD:
In Creed II, the hero loses the first fight because he's compelled to by the script. He wins the rematch, again, because the script says, "Hero must win the rematch."
It's all paint by numbers. And the writers and director take great pains to stay well within the lines.
Compare this to Rocky III and IV, which contain all the vastly superior and far more original and organic narrative elements upon which Creed II tries ostensibly to draw.
In Rocky III, Rocky, successful, overconfident and then distracted and distraught over Mickey's failing health, loses to Clubber Lang. He regroups by "going back to the basics" under the tutelage of his rival-turned-friend Apollo Creed. His comeback is spurred on by a confession of fear in an emotional shoreside argument with Adrian, who reminds him what it really means to be a fighter.
In Rocky IV, Rocky wins his fight against Ivan Drago by "going back to the basics" and working out in the Russian tundra while Drago gets juiced up in his high-tech training facility. It's a Predator-esque triumph of the natural American spirit over a world/universe of burgeoning technology.
We get absolutely none of this thematic subtext in Creed II. Even the astronomically unlikely fact of a newborn baby (of a hearing-abled father and a mother with what appears to have been adult onset hearing loss) being diagnosed as completely deaf upon birth seems contrived and pigeonholed in. And it doesn't come close to even finding the slimmest thread of a heartstring to tug upon.
(I'm not going to even get into the head-scratching choice to turn Drago back into a vengeful, scowling villain after we saw him stand up to his entire manipulative, totalitarian government in the spirit of one-on-one combat with the "piece of iron" adversary he came to fear and respect in their epic battle "to the end.")
So...I wound up giving Creed II what I feel is an accurate if slightly generous four stars out of ten. Mostly because-for all it tries to do and for all it wants to be-I wound up just feeling kind of sorry for it.