With his rock-solid physique and thousand-foot gaze, ex-con Dame Anderson (Jonathan Majors) — a former Gold Gloves hope who had young Adonis Creed wearing his gloves to tournaments — makes the most imposing figure in the Rocky-verse in decades . Dame’s chip is more like a crater: As another character notes, “He’s fighting the world trying to hurt someone.” After spending 20 years in prison on a firearms charge, he’s returned to the outside world to take a bow a few heads. His real specialty, however, are mind games. When we first see him, he’s leaning against his childhood friend’s SUV as if to indicate that it’s his—along with all the other loot from Donnie’s masterful boxing career.
To be fair Donnie has a nice spread and Creed III makes the good life look pretty damn good. In his feature film directorial debut, Michael B. Jordan goes all out and indulges in self-mythology; A shot of Donnie ending an intense workout by dancing on a mountaintop above the Hollywood sign neatly epitomizes the star’s rise to the top of the industry’s A-list. But as much as Creed III was designed to give Jordan his big moments – including several tearful monologues and plenty of cute digs at his character’s daughter – it was also shot as a showcase for Majors, an actor whose time is very high. He has real malevolent energy, and for the first hour or so the story functions like some weird sports film take on Cape Fear, with Majors convincingly dividing the difference between James “Clubber” Lang and Max Cady. Peering out of sinister hooded sweatshirts, he accesses layers of shame and self-denial, defenses Dame employs to hide his anger.
The mid-film plot, which turns Dame from a grateful follower in the Creed camp to a potentially dangerous rival, seems melodramatic (and improbable) until you remember that this is a franchise Carl Weathers was once in Lundgren was beaten to death by Dolph after a James Brown concert. The true wonder of the first Creed was in instilling a sense of seriousness without breaking belief in the series’ essential cheesiness, and Jordan deserves credit for continuing the balancing act here. The problem is that after creating a monster with realistic depth and shading, Creed III doesn’t do nearly enough with it. We know Donnie will fight him, and we understand why, but along the way, Dame fades from the film’s consciousness and the tension fades with him.
The common denominator between the Rocky movies, as well as the Bond universe, is that they’re usually only as good as their villains. Overwhelming opponents were unfortunately a consistent feature in the Creed films. For all its excellence as a character study of a young fighter carrying out his father’s legacy in shadowboxing, Ryan Coogler’s first installment suffered slightly from the weak presence of former WBC cruiserweight champion Tony Bellew as the smug British pugilist “Pretty” Ricky Conlan. On a structural level, Coogler’s inversion of the original Rocky was brilliant: instead of an arrogant, media-savvy Muhammad Ali Manqué handpicking an obscure Italian palooka as a self-serving publicity stunt, we have a white champion who chooses his foil based solely on name recognition. But because Creed is so beautifully written and acted between Jordan and Sylvester Stallone — who truly deserves an Oscar — and heeds larger currents of social and cultural resonance, Conlan never develops into anything more than a plot device. It’s telling that when he made a cameo early in Creed III, I didn’t even recognize Bellew.
Perhaps for good reason, Bellew isn’t the only Creed graduate appearing in Part 3. There’s also a welcome – and surprisingly pivotal – appearance by Florian Munteanu’s Viktor Drago. If the problem with “Pretty” Ricky was a lack of truly compelling characterization, Munteanu’s minimalist performance was very intentional; The premise of Creed II was that Drago Jr. had been molded by his father into a ruthless robot who maintained glasnost in search of a way to get revenge on Rocky and his camp. The mountainous Munteanu is by no means a bad actor, but he is overshadowed in his own breakthrough by Dolph Lundgren, whose cameo is the film’s clear highlight. Showing up unannounced at Rocky’s restaurant and noting his absence from the ringside snaps that line the walls, he is melancholy and menacing in a way that surpasses his performance in Rocky IV without denying it. Always an underrated actor, Lundgren bridges the gap between the franchise’s past and present as adeptly as Stallone.
The Rocky IV version of Drago – the mute Soviet golem who promises to break Rocky (and with him the capitalist system) – has been cited by critics as the culmination of the Rocky films’ procession from New Hollywood tenacity to Reagan stickiness; I remember the highlight of the film, set in Moscow, was seeing Rocky literally wrap himself in the American flag. Anyone who thought Drago was too much should consider how memorable his Russian Terminator act was compared to Rocky V antagonist Tommy “The Machine” Gunn (Tommy Morrison), a dope whose vendetta against his former Mentor culminated in an unsanctioned (and unconvincing) street fight. Or Antonio Tarver’s Mason “The Line” Dixon in Rocky Balboa – arguably the worst boxer of the bunch, failing to take down a 60-year-old tomato can, and not a particularly feisty villain either.
If there’s one Rocky film that offers a ton of riches when it comes to villains, it’s Rocky III, which has three: two of them embody the brand’s outsized showmanship, and a third lends it some soul. The early set piece, which pits Rocky against behemoth professional wrestler Thunderlips, is a wonderfully conceived piece of satire, implicitly satirizing the franchise’s slide from realism to spectacle, while Terry Bollea – aka Hulk Hogan – is near the peak of his physical abilities and his Charisma is captured. Incredibly youthful and blonde, Hogan shows his scruffy side in Rocky III, styling Thunderlips – known as “The Ultimate Male” – after his hero, Gorgeous George, while towering over Stallone like an Easter Island statue. Of course, Rocky overpowers the giant, but the clever joke is that Thunderlips doesn’t mind being hit: he’s just trying to put on a show for the crowd. Somewhere smiling was the Vince McMahon who would blur the lines between “wrestling” and “sports entertainment” — a year later he would poach Hogan from AWA to join WWE, en route to making the latter company an international juggernaut.
At the end of Rocky and Thunderlips’ game, the camera catches a face in the crowd – the face of a disgusted purist. What makes Laurence “Mr. T” Tureaud’s performance as clubber Lang is so indelible that the character is all about boxing: he’s a student of the game who rightly suspects that Rocky has gone soft from hanging out with talk show hosts and Muppets. It helps that his dialogue is great: Ghostface Killah’s stunning 2004 single “The Champ” interpolates some of Clubber’s rants, and they hold up (“Don’t give this sucka a statue / Give him death!”). Importantly, Clubber shows up without much backstory, save for a montage where he lines up weaker fighters all in a row: he’s more of a manifestation of Rocky’s impostor syndrome, called upon to fulfill his (and our) fantasies in one fell swoop end.
No one can say with any seriousness that Rocky III is a particularly subtle or refined film, but Stallone’s instincts as a playwright are solid. The revelation that Burgess Meredith’s Mickey protected his charge by feeding him weak opponents is played beautifully by both sides: Meredith’s fear and Stallone’s embarrassment are palpable. Mickey knows Clubber is young, hungry, and indestructible, and that he’ll knock Rocky out tomorrow – which he does in a scene that still satisfies a deep, gleeful urge to see our superstars humiliated.
Clubber’s obsessive drive for dominance – reinforced by footage of him exercising in a run-down concrete apartment – gives Rocky III an edge despite its general stupidity, and Jordan borrows some of those visual ideas into Creed III, including the fact that checkers are up similarly used a door frame as a training device. But Mr. T is only second best to Rocky III – first place goes to Carl Weathers, who modulates the character of Apollo Creed so slowly and carefully that he becomes one of the greatest faces in American cinema. Rocky worked as a boxing film because it was clear from the script, direction and choreography that its namesake was really only marginally as skilled as its opponent and that Apollo was taking it too lightly. This dynamic lingers over Apollo’s actions in Rocky III. Crucially, Weathers doesn’t soften him up or make him a good Samaritan: when he shows up halfway to train the ailing Italian stallion, it’s less out of the kindness of his heart than out of an indirect and thinly veiled sense of outrage . He doesn’t think Rocky is a better boxer than he is, but Apollo couldn’t beat him even when he was in his prime. After this result, Clubber must also be better than Apollo – and he will not have that. Reviewing the film for The New Yorker, Pauline Kael noted that Weathers Stallone appeared in his own vanity project; When Apollo tells Rocky he needs “the eye of the tiger,” he’s really talking to himself. It follows that Rocky III’s true stand-up-and-cheer moment isn’t Rocky beating clubbers into submission, it’s the coda when our heroes decide to face off one last time in an empty gym with no one looking and nothing at stake but bragging rights.
In one of the most beautifully acted exchanges in Creed, Rocky tells Donnie about the outcome of this fight and that his father won. There is just enough ambiguity in Stallone’s line reading to preserve the integrity of Rocky III’s final still. (The less talked about Sly’s original plans for the Rocky vs. Apollo rematch, the better.) Jordan pays homage to Rocky III by filming parts of the Donnie Dame fight in an empty gym, when in reality we know they’re each other in a sold-out arena, a boldly expressionist choice that should elevate the film to another emotional stratosphere. That it doesn’t – not quite – speaks to a certain indecisiveness about whether to use Majors as co-protagonists or just another dragon to kill the hero. Ultimately, choosing the latter is a missed opportunity. The post-fight coda leaves the door open to Dame to return and perhaps even evolve into a character with his own long, worthy arc to salvation. Let’s hope so, because anything else would be a waste.