THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
The growing enthusiasm for the franchise Creed (itself spin-off of the saga Rocky Balboa, 1976-2006) can no longer be explained solely by the inalterable nostalgia of an audience crying over its old toys. It drains new generations for whom the name of Sylvester Stallone no longer evokes much. Let us hypothesize that the updating of the boxing film comes to fill a gap that the hegemony of Marvel superheroes and other Avatar has continued to dig: in post-body cinema, where the actors are only ectoplasms frolicking in a cloud of special effects, Creed rebuilt – muscular, ailing, heroic – the ultimate Hollywood spectacle.
It remained to Creed 3 to take up a major challenge: after exploiting the Balboa heritage, what remains to be told? We find Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan, actor and now director) at the peak of his career. A fulfilled father and world champion in the process of retraining, he no longer needs to put on the gloves and can finally enjoy a well-deserved gentrification in the company of his family. This was without counting the visit of a childhood friend, Damian Anderson (Jonathan Majors), just released from prison after serving an eighteen-year sentence. The reunion brings back a whole past that Creed had meticulously repressed. The story is engulfed without complex in this cooked and annealed narrative circuit: Anderson is none other than Creed’s nemesis, his evil double returned from hell to remind him where he comes from, to instill the poison of guilt in this image of gentrified happiness that he meticulously built.
If the film emancipates itself from the crushing shadow of its model to stand on its own two feet, it poses a question that had already been raised in its day Rocky 3 (Sylvester Stallone, 1982) : what happens to the boxer’s body when it gentrifies – and therefore loses its raison d’être? Then, quite intelligently, shifts the fault line: it is no longer between communities (Blacks, Latinos, Whites) but between members of the same racial minority separated by the fate of social class. Between Creed, a lifeless and devitalized figure, and Damian, moved by the ferocity of his survival instinct.
Derealized fight scenes
The appearance of Damian brings this something dirty that was sorely lacking in a franchise hitherto marked by its desire to do well and deference to its model. We owe this fury to its actor, Jonathan Majors, a truly disturbing bundle of nerves who fully inhabits his role as the puffy-faced angel of vengeance. In the ring, Damian accumulates intentional faults and proves to be uncontrollable.
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