Creed 2 tarnishes Rocky, provides unpalatable main character, misses opportunity

Rating: 1/10 (3 December 2018)

The movie begins with Creed, a loud-mouthed thug, beating a generic adversary and claiming the heavyweight championship. On the other side of the world, in Ukraine (later Russia, who cares, it's all the same, right?) Ivan Drago silently (as not to invoke too much humanity) trains his son while living in abject poverty conditions, his son also working carrying bricks for a living. Then we cut back to Creed just being super rich and pampered and successful, he's not even carrying his own luggage. Then Drago shows up in America, ready to challenge Creed (because of the stupid and laughable reason being that his wife left him because he lost to Rocky), and Creed reacts just like a back alley thug, with "dey iced my pops" and when Rocky tries to put some sense into him, telling him that his fight with Drago was not worth it because he had brain damage afterwards, Creed lashes out on Rocky and goes on to get beat by Drago's son, who of course plays dirty and cheats apart from being stronger and better, only to not learn anything, never give out a valid reason why Creed fights (his story is not Rocky's at all, Rocky was fighting for dignity), quick training montage somewhere dirty as to reflect how he's humbling down, and then beat Drago's son anyway. By the end of the movie I felt so sorry for Drago's son, even after they tried so hard to portray him as an amoral brute. This was supposed to be the fight that avenges his father and it played out superficially, the adversary was cardboard and that was bad, Apollo Creed had personality, that's why they are still using him goddammit, it's a movie that tries to portray that working hard will bring results but actually portrays the opposite, pampered rich loud-mouth thug beats poor Russian fighter that carries bricks for a living, and misses a huge opportunity to delve deeper into the struggles of parents that have children with disabilities.