Rocky Balboa gets mentioned exactly one time in Creed III. Apollo Creed a half-dozen, but none linger. This is a big departure from the first two Creed movies and especially the six Rocky movies before that. Creed and Creed II had to struggle with the legacy of Apollo Creed for perhaps longer than necessary, and had to find something useful to do for a still-present Rocky, a task that was far more natural in the first. Now that Michael B. Jordan has finally made the Creed franchise his own – symbolically cemented by directing this third instalment as well as starring in it – it’s time to end things. And that’s the right call, because in this Rocky Cinematic Universe, there just aren’t any more stories worth telling.

But this one is. Significantly, Creed III represents the first time in nine movies that two Black boxers square off in the climactic fight. It’s significant but it’s also unsurprising that it hasn’t happened before now. Sylvester Stallone, a noted white person, was an actual fighter in six of those nine movies, though it should be remembered that the worst of them (Rocky V) finds him in a third-act street fight rather than in the ring. Then in Creed and Creed II, Jordan’s opponent wasn’t Black (though it should be said that Creed rival Tony Bellew, who appears briefly again here, is of mixed heritage). It’s significant not only because it opens up new avenues of thematic material, but because it more accurately reflects the demographic makeup of the sport of boxing. (Chris Rock once had a great line about Rocky IV: “Two white guys fighting for the heavyweight championship of the world? Boy that Spielberg is something!”)

For Adonis Creed née Johnson, Creed III involves reckoning with his past in a different way. When he was young, his temperament was forged in an abusive group home, a life from which Apollo’s widow Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad) ultimately saved him. There he befriended Damian Anderson, an aspiring boxer who also became a low-level thug, who pulled out a gun when Adonis started beating up the man who had regularly thrashed them in the home years earlier. The police showed up, young Donnie ran – and Damian spent the next 18 years of his life behind bars.

Just released from prison last week – that old chestnut – Dame (Jonathan Majors) tracks down the now-retired Creed, who left on top of his game three years earlier after defeating “Pretty” Ricky Conlan (Bellew) and uniting the heavyweight championship belts. When Creed sees Dame leaning menacingly against his SUV, first not recognising his former friend, he thinks the parolee might mean him harm – or be looking for a handout. Dame doesn’t want the latter, but might secretly want the former – though only in the ring. See, even in his late 30s, Anderson still wants to launch that boxing career. Because Creed is a promoter now, he’s in a position to help make that a reality.

Creed’s current project has been a successful one, as the reigning heavyweight champion, Felix Chavez (Jose Benavidez Jr.), trains in his gym under Creed’s old boxing mentor, Little Duke (Wood Harris). Chavez is supposed to be fighting another of Creed’s old rivals, Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu) – and yes, everyone from another Creed movie appears here except Stallone – in what is sure to be the pay-per-view event of the year. But “Diamond Dame” thinks he may have something to say about that, through legitimate methods or otherwise.

At home, Creed’s wife Bianca (Tessa Thompson) is still trying to manage her encroaching deafness, having retired from performing music on stage and stepped into similar producer shoes in which Creed now finds himself. Their daughter Amara (Mila Davis-Kent) is herself deaf, and is imitating her father’s own aggressive tendencies with bullies at school. And Mary Anne is still around, but one wonders for how long – she’s recovering from a stroke.

It’s no surprise that the two best two Rocky movies – the best picture-winning original and Creed – are the ones that find the central fighter as an underdog, and in fact, the ones that both end with him failing to win the climactic bout. It’s inevitably harder to maintain interest in a boxer who is on top of the world. The third best Rocky movie, though – for this critic’s money anyway – is Rocky III, the one Creed III most closely mirrors in terms of where it finds the boxer in his trajectory of success and family life. And true enough, this movie does find a new entry into being interesting, even as some of the training beats are long past feeling overly familiar.

Key to that is Majors. After failing to make the impression one would have hoped in Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Majors has just the right mojo as Damian Anderson. He’s got this look in his eyes that might be disdain, might be the damaged optimism of a tough guy, but either way is always compelling. You know from the poster he’s got aims on Creed and will emerge as the villain of this piece, and you know from his gun-packing as a young man that he’s got his priorities skewed. But Majors makes the path getting there unpredictable, and it’s never possible to fully jeer him as we learn more about his origins within a socio-political structure that leaves someone like him without better options.

And Creed III gives more than lip service to these themes. It doesn’t didactically call out race as a factor in the beef that Anderson still has with Creed, and in the different trajectories of their respective fates, but it doesn’t need to. Two lines of dialogue by Anderson are enough, the one where they eat in a diner on their first meeting and Anderson jokes that Creed still eats with Black people, and one when he sees their palatial Hollywood Hills home and asks where the Black people live. “There are some,” says Bianca, but it’s obvious she’s uncomfortable with it too. These successful people have made certain choices, only too aware that they have forsaken others that might keep them more in touch with some essential part of themselves.

These shades of grey, though, inevitably lessen the urgency of the final fight. You know Creed comes out of retirement, because of course he does, and you know he has to fight Anderson, because posters. The film needs to manufacture hatred of Anderson because you have to hate the opponent in a boxing movie, and oddly, even upon never having met him, crowds are already booing Anderson – as though not a one of them appreciates his ridiculous underdog story. It’s like they already saw the first half of the movie and know that there’s something sketchy about this guy.

And maybe that’s why Creed III, even as compelling as it is, seems ultimately to limp back into its own corner at the end of this fight. It knows this series has already been 12 rounds and then some. The requirements of any entry in the most stalwart boxing franchise of all time allow only small variations from a repeating narrative structure.

To his credit, Jordan in the directing chair does realise this, and some bold choices are what steer the film ultimately in the direction of a solid recommendation. The most notable comes in that final fight, when Jordan makes the decision to step outside realism for a moment and take things into an existential space. Instead of a round-by-round montage of the usual punches, we see Creed and Anderson circling each other alone, without the cheering crowds, possibly on the astral plane, where the backgrounds change and the conflict is stripped down to its basics: a meeting of the wills of two men with a history. It’s nice to know that even after nine movies, there are some things we have not yet seen.

 

Creed III is currently playing in cinemas.