A lot of sappiness and melodrama, but not an awful lot else

Rating: 4/10 (27 January 2020)

Following on from the events of the first film Adonis is now champion of the world. However, his elation is to be short-lived when he discovers that someone else is hungry for his title. Its turn out though that this man isn't just any boxer, but he happens to be the son of the man who killed his father in an exhibition match over 30 years. With a combination of pride and revenge, Adonis takes on Viktor, but like his father Viktor is big and powerful so Rocky once again turns trainer to help Adonis prepare both physically and mentally...
Creed 2 is basically a pastiche of Rocky 3 and Rocky 4 (although it's clearly got more in common with part 4). It starts off like 3 where over-confidence becomes the boxer's undoing and the trainer has to take the boxer through a brutal training regime. Of course there are more parallels with 4 in that team Creed are fighting for pride, but the difference between Rocky 4 and Creed 2 is that team Drago are also fighting for pride (Drago Snr had nothing to lose when he first came to America in Rocky 4, but he brought shame on his country after his defeat to Rocky so Drago Jnr is trying to set the record straight).
In fairness the idea of 2 sons duking it out (particularly given the circumstances that has brought them together) has potential, but sadly a lot of the time Creed 2 felt like a lot less than the sum of its parts. For a start, there is am awful lot of melodrama in this film, but the problem is that a lot of it never really seems to add much or feel all that important. We hear endless conversations between the Drago's about Ivan letting his country down and then blaming him for his mother leaving them etc... This would have been fine if it amounted to anything, but it seems to just be insipid dialogue that's merely used to fill the gaps between the training and the fighting. To be fair Ivan may have his flaws as a person and is by no means a perfect parent, but at least he stuck by his son.
Another problem with this film seems to lay with how it fills its running time; in the first film there was a bit of time spent developing Adonis as a character, but that's not needed here so what do the writers do?? Well after the first fight which happens at around the 45 minute mark (which predictably can only go one way or else there'd be nowhere for the film to go in the second half) the film then spends a good chunk of its time focusing on Adonis playing happy families with his new-born child. Admittedly this is a nice aspect of the film for let's say 10 minutes, but too much time is spent on, let's face it, not a particularly interesting aspect of the narrative. Training & boxing is what I came to see and I didn't get enough of either here to be honest.
As far as performances go then Michael B Jordan is OK here (he's not quite as brattish as he was in the first film, but I'm still struggling to warm to his character overall - he's still lacking a bit of charisma). Thompson is lovely and her chemistry with Jordan is pretty good. Stallone is a good presence and handles some of the emotional scenes surprisingly well. Aside from a couple of moments, Lundgren (despite being integral to the story) doesn't add very much -although he's far less robotic than he was in Rocky 4. Nielsen's cameo is silly and unnecessary.
Although the film traipses through several predictable narrative tropes there was one thing that happens towards the end of the film in the final match which I did not expect to happen..
Overall then Creed 2 has a bit too much sap and melodrama for my liking and whilst these things do not always make a film bad they do if they feel as though they exist merely as filler and with how little development each of the threads had here this can be the only reason for their existence. On the whole I found this film less entertaining than the first film and at times I did find it a tad boring.