Review of Creed III (2023) by Ethanrucker — 13 Mar 2023

Creed III starts slow and takes its time to build its story and they do it beautifully. What this movie does well is its personal conversations that the characters have, it's very well acted, directed and written. Some shots look beautiful and Creed III made an effort to make itself look and feel different from the other Creed movies and it succeeded for the most part. This installment had a stronger story than Creed II which I think was Creed II's weakest point. Even though this movie is overall better than Creed II in a lot of ways, this movie has some pacing issues. Once you know the fight is on BOOM they rush through the training monologue and we are right into the fight without much time for the characters to breathe, and that feels inconsistent to how the first two acts were. This is a good installment to the Rocky/Creed franchise and it will be interesting where they go from here.

*Slight Spoilers*.

As a Rocky fan this movie was hard to get invested in. Rocky isn't in it, they changed the themes and moved away from the original score. I understand that they are trying to become their own franchise and they did a pretty good job being their own thing. Even though this is a better overall movie than Creed II I enjoyed Creed II more just because of the nostalgia it has on me. I don't know what they will do from here, but I think Creed IV is a make or break movie for the franchise. The next movie will either be good and they will continue the story or be really bad and they won't make anymore. I just don't see what stories are left in this universe without being it cliche or bad.