A solid follow-up to its predecessor and a great boxing film in general

Rating: 9/10 (29 November 2018)

Creed II (a.k.a. Rocky VIII) is the sequel to 2015's Creed and the eighth installment in the Rocky film franchise. Starring Michael B Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, and Dolph Lundgren, it is a solid follow-up to its predecessor and a great boxing film in general.
Three years after the events of the previous film, Adonis Creed (Michael B Jordan) has won several boxing matches to become the World Heavyweight Champion. However, Adonis' celebration is short lived as Viktor Drago (Florian "Big Nasty" Munteanu), the son of Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren), steps forward to challenge him. Despite the refusal of support from his trainer Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), Adonis decides to accept the challenge as a means to get revenge against Viktor's father Ivan for killing his father 33 years prior.
Still as feel-good as the Rocky films as can get, Creed II matches its predecessor in just about every way possible. Michael B Jordan is once again fantastic in the title role and he does a superb job holding the viewer's attention throughout the story. His scenes with Tessa Thompson were so touching and added a necessary degree of sweetness to the film that was often needed. Sylvester Stallone is also great as the elderly Rocky Balboa, and despite being limited to a supporting role, he still manages to have a memorable role in the story, especially when seeing him go eye-to-eye with his old nemesis Ivan Drago. In terms of plot, the film is an amalgamation of Rocky III and Rocky IV and while some outcomes were fairly predictable, there are still the occasional surprises to keep the audience on their toes. The only major complaint is that Viktor Drago's character wasn't developed as well as he should have been. There was only really one important scene of dialogue with him and his father but for the most part it just seemed like the only reason he was in the film was to be used as vessel for his father to channel his grudge against Rocky in the boxing ring. Overall, this is a solid sequel and a worthy eighth film featuring the character of Rocky Balboa and it would certainly be interesting to see where the franchise goes from here.
I rate it 8.5/10