Is the Rocky Legacy Being Destroyed?

​By Chase Hensing

Attention: There will be spoilers in this article. The Rocky movies have been an iconic example of a successful, cult film franchise going 32 years strong. The eighth movie in the Rocky franchise, Creed II, came out on November 21st.   

In the film, Adonis has to live up to his late father's legacy of being one of the best boxers to ever live, just as the Creed movies have to live up to the Rocky movies legacy. Creed II starts off with Adonis on top of the boxing world. He has just won the heavyweight championship fight and finally has people seeing that he has real talent for boxing. After people previously thought he was only being given a shot at the title because he has a famous father. This was all until he was challenged by Viktor Drago, the son of Ivan Drago, the man who killed Adonis’ father Apollo after Rocky did not throw in the towel to end the fight. Glenelg Sophomore Chris Borkowski said, “Since I have seen every Rocky movie, I loved that they added Viktor Drago and developed this movie based off of previous movies. It really adds emotion when you know the characters backstories from previous movies.” Knowing this, the plot of the movie sounds spectacular and it could have been one of the highest quality movies in the entire series. However, the movie was, for the most part, a massive let down.

Throughout the movie, we are constantly reminded through news anchors, family members, and the actual challengers about Adonis’ fight being one of generations. About halfway through the movie these reminders become obnoxious and truly redundant. Since it is fairly obvious after the first newscast and multiple conversations with his family. After many emotional scenes about how Adonis would take the fight, he is training and getting ready for the fight, however he doesn’t have Rocky in his corner. Around the midway point through the movie, Adonis and Viktor have the fight and Adonis is completely blown out of the water. Although Adonis is being destroyed and nearly dies in the ring, he still wins the fight after Viktor was disqualified for throwing a brutal right hook while Adonis is down. This shows that Adonis has a long way to go before he has a chance of beating Viktor.

The next error in Creed II is the creation of a far too emotional Adonis. In the first Creed movie and even in the first three Rocky movies, Adonis and his father Apollo are very passionate. However in Creed II they exaggerate this trait way too much. After the first fight, Adonis sees that he is clearly far weaker and less prepared than his opponent. This then causes Adonis to slip into a state of depression where he cuts off every person in his life until his daughter is born. The sappy emotional scenes caused a fairly large portion of the movie to become dull and meaningless.

The second fight was the most intense part of the movie since tensions were high. Adonis has to prove that things are completely different, that he has Rocky Balboa in his corner coaching him and has just gone through the most grueling training of his life. The fight starts off very similar to the first one and most of the Russian crowd has already counted Adonis out. However, just like his trainer, Rocky, had done 30 years prior in Russia to Ivan Drago, Adonis made a huge comeback and gives the fight his all. At the end of the fight while Adonis is making his comeback Viktor looks over to where his mother was sitting and notices that she has left him just as she did when he was young. While Viktor is being smashed by Adonis, Ivan looks over and also notices that his ex-wife is gone and realizes that he cares for his son too much to have Adonis hurt him anymore, so he throws in the towel and ends the fight. After the fight Viktor is seen training back in Ukraine with his father. Instead of his father pushing Viktor to his max, his father is running along with him and helping Viktor get over the loss since he himself had been there 30 years before.    Despite having a few flaws in the beginning and middle parts of the movie, after the point in the movie where Adonis realizes that he not only has to win the fight for himself and his father, but he has to do it for his daughter too, the rest of the movie was definitely one of the greatest in the series. The insane training montages, great stage fighting, and unpredictable ending that no one expected helps tie the movie together and carry the rest of the movie. Glenelg Sophomore Stephen DeSantis says that, “When I saw the movie I was shocked at the ending since both of the Drago’s were so stone cold and never showed any emotion. It was a great ending to the fight.” However, the last half hour of the movie being excellent can pull the boring parts of the movie enough to call it one of the better movies in the entire series. The movie’s ending did end up being one of the better ones because it closed the story of the Drago’s and showed a more human side of Ivan that we had never seen.
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This is better than the previous movie because the original Creed  had an unsatisfying ending when Adonis lost the fight and the movie ended. This movie has a much more satisfying ending because it closes the storyline of the Drago’s and Adonis ended up winning the fight. In the end, this movie had a great story, but was poorly executed in main parts of the movie and caused large portions to be boring. All in all, the Rocky movie’s legacy is not being completely destroyed, but the new Creed movies do take away a certain aspect of the original movies that would make the new ones much better.