Creed II

Ryan Coogler’s Creed was a clever and ultimately satisfying resurrection of the Rocky franchise, one that updated the formula without monkeying with it very much at all. That easygoing reverence for the source material wasn’t precious and was all about moving forward with its new hero, Donnie, son of Rocky’s first foe and eventual friend, Apollo Creed (played with singular pizzazz by Carl Weathers).

Creed II, directed by Stephen Caple Jr. with a script co-written by Stallone himself, is, for my money, a better film, one that finds the series’ sea legs with Donnie as a protagonist. It also connects more firmly than its predecessor with the prevailing theme of Rocky films: fathers and sons.

One of the detriments of the first Creed film was the lack of a compelling opponent for Donnie (Michael B. Jordan). (Perhaps the plot of Creed II should have been the plot of Creed I?) This time they get it right. Somewhat ham-fisted dialogue lets us know that there’s been a six-fight time jump between films. This film begins with Donnie, with Bianca (Tessa Thompson) and Rocky (Stallone) at his side, now challenging for the heavyweight title (the champ is played by former light-heavyweight titlist Andre Ward).

Like Rocky before him, Donnie’s success in the ring is attended by ennui and familial strife. It’s revealed that the mighty Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren), who was defeated by Rocky only after killing Apollo Creed in the ring, lives in Ukraine with his son, Viktor (Florian Munteanu). Viktor is a young, inexperienced fighter. But he has the benefit of his father’s training and resentments. It is revealed that after losing to Rocky, Ivan’s country turned its back on him, and his statuesque wife (Brigette Nielsen), Viktor’s mother, left them in shame.

Viktor also has the benefit of being big and scary looking, winning all of his handful of fights via devastating knockouts. In keeping with Rocky movie tradition, a slick promoter named Buddy Marcelle (Russell Hornsby, who is excellent with what little dialogue he’s given) sees an opportunity to make a superfight.

Can the newly crowned champion avenge his father’s death by defeating the son of his father’s killer? Pretty straightforward. Interestingly, Creed II swaps the cold war conflict of Rocky IV for what is essentially a familial dispute.

In the prior film, Coogler brought some degree of bravura camera moves to the Rocky franchise, which had until that point been conventionally shot. Caple at times mimics the style but without Coogler’s eye for shots. The fight sequences this time are less convincing, more choreographed seeming where Coogler used more wide shots that better resembled two fighters actually going at it.

Caple, though, is not without his tricks. The fight sequences are well timed and reliably surprising in how they play out. Once Donnie enters the ring with Drago, we really do feel the momentousness of it all.

Rocky’s reluctance to be in Donnie’s corner for a fight with Drago’s son is borne of the fact that Rocky failed to throw in the towel back in the day, which would have saved Apollo’s life. He doesn’t want history to repeat itself. Donnie feels this is simply his trainer and surrogate father having a lack of faith.

What Creed II cleverly achieves is that very dynamic — Rocky’s fear of repeating history, and his refusal to participate in the fight, actually repeats Mickey’s history with Rocky. Two consecutive movies have managed to literally recreate story aspects of the original films without it feeling stale or lazy.

Still, there is much to criticize in Creed II. Where Coogler’s film took its time in establishing its characters, this sequel leaves much under-developed. Drago & Son are actually fascinating, and the baggage they carry is somewhat more interesting than Donnie’s and Rocky’s. (If you play the movie from Viktor Drago’s point-of-view, it’s still a Rocky movie.) The dialogue is on-the-nose (as it was in the original films, admittedly), and the complications that arise in Donnie and Bianca’s efforts to build a family are of questionable wisdom.

Moreover, Rocky himself, and his strained relationship with his biological son, is dealt with in cursory fashion, making a key ending moment feel somewhat unearned. And yet —  Creed II impressed me. It is a beautiful exposition of the main themes of the franchise that, refreshingly, doesn’t worship the franchise.

Creed II — FOUR STARS

Directed by Stephen Caple Jr.

Rated PG-13

Warner Bros.

MGM

New Line Cinema

130 min.

Black Panther

The era of the high-octane superhero movie has wrought a lot of artistically vacuous pomp and circumstance and a handful of worthwhile, clever films. Marvel’s Black Panther, which has been placed in the care of Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Creed), indeed marks something different from worthwhile and clever — it is asking socially relevant questions without preaching their answers. It’s also a high-budget, almost entirely black film about black people.

Coogler’s intricate script, co-written with Joe Robert Cole, begins in Oakland in 1992. Before the first scene, we’re thrust into a VFX-powered exposition dump that, unlike 2017’s Wonder Woman, is over fast. The basics: Wakanda is a central African nation that everyone thinks is tribal and third-world. In fact, their possession of a precious mineral called Vibranium has led to a hidden society more technologically advanced than any on Earth. Their king is known as the “Black Panther” and has superpowers. To preserve their way of life, the Wakandans have chosen to isolate themselves and not share their tech with the world. Again, we’re zipped through this exposition in about sixty seconds, a choice that felt rushed at first, but one wishes more superhero movies would respect our time in this way.

From there, Coogler and Cole present a delightfully convoluted (reminiscent of a Bond film in some respects) plot that sidesteps the usual high-spot nonsense that characterizes so many movies of this kind. There is not necessarily an action beat every ten minutes. And despite the voiceover exposition dump at the beginning, Coogler is skilled at delivering information visually in a manner rarely seen in Marvel films. (During a fast-paced heist scene, Coogler’s camera catches a glimpse of a villain, Michael B. Jordan, smooching one of his accomplices as they flee. The camera doesn’t linger on it or cut in for a close up to tell us our bad guy, Killmonger, is in love and has something to lose.) Although the pacing of Black Panther slows much too much at times, it is a comic book film that draws the viewer in precisely because it’s taking the time to do so. After the brief visit to 1992 Oakland, the significance of which comes into play later, we’re hunkered down with the Wakandans. How they live, how their tech works, how the king must accept challenges from other tribes — the film becomes maximalist as it celebrates its own details.

Chadwick Boseman plays the Black Panther. An actor of great poise, Boseman has the ability to shimmy between quiet dignity and a playful smile in a way that makes his performances seem singularly natural. (He has played Thurgood Marshall and James Brown in prior films.) But the villain is far more interesting than the king. Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger, we come to learn, has the kind of life story that superheroes would envy. A special ops soldier, and now an international criminal and spy of sorts, Killmonger has a legitimate claim to the Wakandan throne as well as a legit personal beef with King T’Challa (Boseman). There is a modesty to Jordan as a performer that is endlessly appealing. Even as a bad guy, Jordan seems to do very little, making every blink have a substantial effect. Jordan in this way can be contrasted with Andy Serkis, who plays an eccentric one-armed villain in cahoots with Killmonger and seems to be having an illegal amount of fun doing it.

The Panther must claim his rightful throne while fending off challengers and trying to locate the stolen Vibranium. But the film takes its conflict in a more ideological form. Killmonger, a Wakandan who has grown up in the U.S. and been radicalized by racial injustice, wishes to use Wakandan Vibranium to arm “oppressed peoples around the world” to rise up against their oppressors. The Wakandan society has always prided itself on its way of life, not meddling in the affairs of outsiders, and not welcoming outsiders into its midst. T’Challa’s dilemma is not whether or not to fight the bad guys — being a superhero film, that’s an easy one — rather, it’s one of allegiance. What responsibility to the diaspora do the Wakandans have?

This is a theme that goes beyond the usual “With great power comes great responsibility” issue of the average Marvel story. Here we have a villain who not only has a point but makes an argument too strong to ignore. Killmonger is a hero himself, in a sense. The final battle, which includes giant rhinos and Martin Freeman remotely flying a Wakandan fighter plane, is as much an intellectual debate as it is a physical smash-’em-up.

Black Panther — THREE STARS

Directed by Ryan Coogler

Rated PG-13

Marvel Studios

134 min.

Creed

The latest Rocky film has been entrusted to director Ryan Coogler (“Fruitvale Station”), a twenty-nine year-old with a 1970s-era penchant for making the ordinary grit of urban life feel operatic. His success comes not in any formal innovation — “Creed” is in its essence a Rocky film like any other — but in taking a character we love to his logical conclusion, and in waking up Sylvester Stallone, who drops his best performance since the original “Rocky.”

Lest anyone forget, playing Rocky Balboa, who was always a back alley leg-breaker lucky to be anywhere but the gutter, is literally what Stallone does best. Coogler’s story, co-written with Aaron Covington, peppers in all the small details that first endeared us to Rock (the rubber ball, the chair at the cemetery, the kindhearted childishness) without crafting an engine that runs merely on nostalgia.

“Creed” runs on the intelligence of its star, Michael B. Jordan, a young actor who has thus far been at one with the characters he’s played. Rocky’s original nemesis, Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), once had an affair that produced a secret son, Adonis (Jordan). The first portion of “Creed” features Coogler’s bravura camerawork, chronicling Donnie’s difficult childhood, in and out of group homes and juvenile facilities. It’s an unnecessary backstory. “Creed” could have begun its tale at the point the journeyman fighter, now aware of his paternity, seeks out Rocky for training.

From there the “Rocky” formula, and the formula for most other boxing pictures, takes over. Will you train me? No, kid, sorry, I’m all washed up. The kid persists. Finally the old champ agrees to train the young fighter. Opponents, internal and external, are vanquished. “Creed” reminds us that the Rocky pictures were only ever as good as their directors. By cranking the “Rocky” equation in 2015 with a Black American hero, Coogler shakes up the franchise enough to make a shopworn storyline seem almost innovative.

Coogler’s new improved formula comes packed with inactive ingredients, such as giving Adonis’ love interest (the excellent Tessa Thompson) a physical ailment that amounts to a “shelf life” (like a boxer’s, get it?) and the choice to have Stallone’s character battling cancer (as opposed to, you know, something pursuant to his years of blunt head trauma).

Such choices make “Creed” feel like a long movie. Coogler’s reliance on one-shot takes and protests-too-much character moments shake us by the shoulders and say “this is important,” the opposite of his quietly cerebral “Fruitvale Station.”

Mr. Jordan looks like a fighter in a way we so rarely see on screen. Fight fans will note his rhythm, the snap on his punches. He looks like a real fighter, not an actor who has been taught to work mitts. Jordan’s angst-y portrayal of the ambitious Adonis is at times reminiscent of Carl Weathers’ Apollo Creed, but most of the time it is not.

Jordan’s character lacks the humor, the swagger of his dad. We remember Apollo as a man crushed by his own success. Weathers gave Creed the eyes of a sad, lonely champion whose boasting is a defense mechanism, which itself was often funny. Who can forget Apollo’s “Living in America” ring entrance, or the adorable way he called Rocky “Stallion”? Adonis calls Rocky “Unc,” reminding us how long this franchise has been insisting upon itself.

“Creed” — THREE STARS

Directed by Ryan Coogler. Rated PG-13. MGM, New Line Cinema. 133 min.