Great sequel

Rating: 8/10 (24 December 2018)

It's been over 40 years since the multi-Oscar winning Rocky hit cinemas with the equally good Rocky II coming out shortly after however the series got a little bit silly with the fourth and fifth chapters. It wasn't until 2006 when the series was reinvigorated and brought back to its more grounded roots with Rocky Balboa which I highly recommend! The first Creed came out in 2015 earning Stallone a Golden Globe win and an Oscar nomination. It was a spinoff to the franchise but it still focused on plot lines from those films while also creating its own legacy. It made Michael B Jordan a star and he's certainly one of the best actors working today.
Starring Michael B Jordan, Tessa Thompson, Dolph Lundgren and Sylvester Stallone. Adonis and Bianca settle down and plan to get married but Ivan Drago comes back out of shadows to pit his son against Creed. Ryan Cooglar returns but only as executive producer, thankfully the tone he set with the first film still remains untouched here. First time director Steven Caple Jr does a fine job with it pushing great performances from everyone. The film looks and sounds great and he builds on the characters and develops their stories even further.
With a screenplay by Juel Taylor and Sylvester Stallone the writing is a little more clichéd but it feels more and more like the original franchise with nods to all of the earlier films. There are a lot of emotional scenes and some good character moments and it delves further into their past than the last film did. There is never a dull moment there is always something interesting happening that pushes the story forward. There are things that work better than the previous film but there are also a few things that drag it down like the repeated story elements. At times there's a feeling of Déjà vu as it's structured in a similar way to Rocky III - It shows him at the top of his game, then there is a mid section defeat where he has to pick himself up and he even goes to train in an isolated location.
Annoyingly Drago is still a man of few words and his son played by real life boxer Florian Munteanu is in every way the same. 30 years after losing the fight to Rocky, Drago has been cast out from society ever since. His own wife disowned him and their son and so there's a feeling of empathy for them both. The pair don't get much screen time but they still have a good story arc regardless and Dolph Lundren gives a much better performance than his last outing as Drago which was wooden by comparison. There is a lot of drama in the film and the fight sequences pack a real punch, the sound effects are so good with each punch sounding like they really hurt. Seeing Stallone and Lundgren share scenes together is every bit as intense as you would hope. There's also more chemistry between Michael B Jordan and Tessa Thompson who both give terrific performances.
The opponent from the last film was more one dimensional than the one here. With him being the son of the man who killed Apollo Creed, it makes the fight more personal and we learn a few things about him as the film progresses. Sly Stallone was great and he gets some emotional scenes often reminiscing events of his past but the film didn't really need his presence here. He just lingers around most of the time with nothing much to do but it's still good seeing him in the role of Rocky. The music score by Ludwig Göransson has some great themes to it but it doesn't quite capture the same feeling of the previous films. With hip hop tracks by artists such as Future, Meek Mill, and White Dave the soundtrack gives it a modern feel which will connect with new audiences. There is already talk of another Creed film where we see Clubber Lang (Mr T) make a return with his son, hopefully this doesn't happen because it will most likely ruin the franchise, Creed II was a great send off to the series.