Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) may be the title character of the Creed movies, but they wouldn't exist without Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa. The Italian-American boxer from Philadelphia, first introduced in 1976's Rocky, starred in six movies before passing the torch to Adonis in 2015's Creed. That movie and its sequel, 2018's Creed II, effectively balanced storylines about Adonis' career and Rocky's struggles, with soulful performances from Stallone as the aging Rocky. Stallone is entirely absent from Creed III, and Rocky barely merits a brief mention, leaving the movie without one of the previous installments' greatest strengths.
Creed III also suffers from a problem that plagued the later Rocky movies, as its title character is no longer a scrappy underdog. As Creed III begins, world heavyweight champion Adonis is retiring from the ring after a full-circle victory over his first-ever opponent. A few years later, he's a wealthy, comfortable celebrity, training new fighters and living in a massive house with his musician wife, Bianca (Tessa Thompson), and their adorable daughter, Amara (Mila Davis-Kent). Bianca has shifted gears from performing to songwriting and producing, but she has a whole wall of gold records in her studio.
Writers Keenan Coogler and Zach Baylin (working from a story they conceived with original Creed director Ryan Coogler) look to Adonis' past to create a new obstacle for him, in the form of a previously unmentioned childhood best friend. Before being taken in by Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad), the widow of his father Apollo Creed, Adonis grew up in foster care, where he bonded with the slightly older Damien "Dame" Anderson. Dame was a promising amateur boxing champion, but his career was cut short when he was sent to prison.
Now, nearly 20 years later, the adult Dame (Jonathan Majors) is out of prison and looking to resume his career. He comes to Adonis for help, but it's clear that there's unspoken bad blood between them, which the movie teases out over the course of several flashbacks that reveal more about the incident that sent Dame to prison. Majors plays Dame with a sense of casual menace, and he's more of a full-on villain than just another boxing opponent. He seems determined to destroy Adonis' whole life, and Creed III has elements of a revenge thriller as Dame manipulates and provokes his old friend.
Majors, who's also currently in theaters as the villainous Kang in Marvel's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, gives Dame a formidable, scary presence, but that makes it tougher to find him sympathetic, even though he has legitimate grievances. Creed II did a remarkable job of generating goodwill for previously cartoonish Russian boxer Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) and his son Viktor (Florian Munteanu), but Dame comes off as a borderline sociopath at times. Munteanu returns as Viktor, continuing the franchise's trend of turning rivals into allies, but it's hard to imagine the same happening for Dame.
Jordan continues another franchise tradition by taking over as director, as Stallone did for four of the six Rocky movies, and he brings a slick approach that is sometimes at odds with the gritty tone that Coogler established in the first Creed. In particular, the overly stylized representation of the climactic fight turns it into something almost abstract, losing much of the emotional impact.
Jordan fares better in the quieter scenes, and the relationship between Adonis and Bianca remains grounded and genuine, with Thompson elevating the role of the supportive, confident partner. After three movies, Adonis is still guarded and insecure, but literally fighting his past isn't a particularly compelling way for him to move forward. ♦
CREED III
