Creed II Total Box Office Collection

Creed II Lacks the Spark to Rewrite Rocky History Again

Ryan Coogler’s Creed was a masterful return to a well-worn franchise. Written and directed by the budding auteur, the 2015 film succeeded in a number of important ways, including radically shifting the series’s problematic racial dynamics and making its star Michael B. Jordan one of Hollywood’s few bona fide leading black men. By interrogating one of film history’s most persistent foundational myths, Coogler orchestrated a kind of narrative coup, using one of Hollywood’s favorite white saviors as the springboard for a renewed story about redemption, loss, and legacy. But despite its own individual merits, this year’s sequel, Creed II, fails to quite live up to the potential of its predecessor, and Coogler himself seems to be the essential missing ingredient.

Michael B. Jordan Starrer ‘Creed II’ First Day Collaction Total Box Office Collection:

The Dragos aren’t the film’s only issue. Despite a clear attempt to course-correct, Creed II still renders Adonis’ girlfriend Bianca in two dimensions. Creed was rightly critiqued for sidelining its charismatic love interest, especially after going through the trouble of casting the dynamic Tessa Thompson in the role. Audiences left the first film enticed by Bianca’s story and empathizing with her frantic race to fully realize her music career before degenerative hearing loss rendered her totally deaf. Her character was beloved but lacking, despite the clear potential for a more substantive story. While Creed II makes a sincere effort to right that wrong by giving Bianca more to do, it does so in a way that largely takes her out of the main narrative. There are no real stakes for her story that don’t tie directly into Adonis’ well-being. While Bianca’s musical pursuits get a lot more screen time, they feel tacked onto the story as an addendum to the film’s real narrative arc.

• For the most part, Bianca’s role is to be Adonis’s supportive partner and later his fiancée and mother of his child. She’s given no family that is not his, and no backstory that isn’t a gesture at the already established music career. It’s hard to believe that in a time when the black maternal mortality rate has dominated news coverage, there would be no real engagement with Bianca’s fears of giving birth, her desire to have her own family nearby, or just the complications of juggling her blossoming career with motherhood. Her hereditary disability is also treated like a creeping tragedy afflicting her child. Their daughter’s deafness is presented as a struggle Adonis has to overcome rather than simply a fact of her own life. It was a strange choice given the lengths the first film went to to show how Bianca’s deafness had changed and improved her experiences with music. Being deaf brought richness to Bianca’s life, not sorrow.

But in the end, Creed II’s biggest sin is that it feels strangely blind to the long historical arc that it steps into, despite a narrative that tackles that history head-on. Interactions between characters that should be bursting at the seams with decades of tension feel perfunctory and stilted. Instead, motivations are disseminated through clunky exposition. This is a film that requires homework. Viewers unfamiliar with the Rocky franchise (admittedly the odd exception) are left spending much of the runtime piecing together the resentments and rivalries of the characters onscreen. Sadly, Creed II misses that magical spark that made Coogler’s previous film crackle with new possibility and promise. Adonis Creed is the establishment now. His real fight was only ever with himself.


In 1985, Russian boxer Ivan Drago killed former U.S. champion Apollo Creed in a tragic match that stunned the world. Against the wishes of trainer Rocky Balboa, Apollo's son Adonis Johnson accepts a challenge from Drago's son -- another dangerous fighter. Under guidance from Rocky, Adonis trains for the showdown of his life -- a date with destiny that soon becomes his obsession. Now, Johnson and Balboa must confront their shared legacy as the past comes back to haunt each man.

Initial release: 21 November 2018 (USA)

Director: Steven Caple Jr.

Based on: Characters; by Sylvester Stallone

Budget: 5 crores USD

Producers: Sylvester Stallone, Irwin Winkler, David Winkler, William Chartoff, Charles Winkler, Kevin King Templeton

Read More