The Need for "Creed" (or "Rocky VII" as I like to call it)

Getting punched by Rocky at Planet Hollywood, Times Square in 2008

I was exactly fifteen days old when Rocky won the Oscar for Best Picture. I remember watching Sylvester Stallone humbly accept the award and thinking, “We certainly have not seen the last of this film.” (I was a brilliant baby.) And now, almost 40 years later, Rocky is back for a 7^th time, and they can call it what they want but it’s still Rocky and we all know it.

In Creed, Adonis Johnson, Apollo’s illegitimate son, wants to be a fighter and is determined to prove himself without using his father’s name. Adonis convinces a reluctant Rocky to train him. Eventually, word gets out that Adonis is Creed’s blood and British light-heavyweight champion, “Pretty” Ricky Conlan, challenges him to a fight. Rocky fans will find no shortage of legendary training montages and a characteristic soundtrack that manipulates your emotions so that you want to jump out of your seat and cheer, but you don’t because you’re also crying. That’s the gist of the film right there, and it’s all you need to know.

But let’s get back to Rocky. Remember at the end of Rocky III when Apollo Creed calls in the favor that Rocky owes him? Apollo wants a private rematch, “No TV, no newspapers, just you and me.” The two fighters dance around the ring joking about getting older until, at the exact same moment, Rocky throws a left, Apollo throws a right, and the movie ends a split-second before the punches land. And for 33 years, the world has wandered aimlessly, wondering who won that rematch. In Creed, Rocky reveals the winner and now, breathing a huge collective sigh, the world can finally move forward. You wanna know who won? Go see Creed.

Let me caution you about reading reviews of the Rocky films. Stay away from pretentious critics who don’t possess the only quality necessary to enjoy a movie: The ability to suspend disbelief. Instead, go into these films blindly, with a child-like wonder, and you will never ever be disappointed. In Rocky IV, when Rocky defeated Ivan Drago and single-handedly ended the Cold War, I walked out of the movie theater with a new outlook on life because if he could change, and I could change, then everybody could change. It was the greatest film I had seen in all of my 8 years on earth, and I knew I would never be the same. When Drago beat Apollo Creed to death, as I watched Apollo lay there dying in Rocky's arms, I had to get up and move to the back of the movie theater because I was crying so hard. I hadn’t sobbed like that during a film since Elliot and Gertie said goodbye to E.T. three years earlier. I guess you could say I take movies seriously. So, when I tell you that these films are masterpieces, believe that I believe it. Critics be damned.

Like its predecessors, the new film deals with real life problems, and I was surprised how difficult it was for me to watch Rocky get sick (oh settle down, you see it in the trailer). There’s a scene where Rocky is laying in the hospital, and it made me think of when my father-in-law had heart surgery. As we stood around his hospital bed before they wheeled him to the OR, I experienced this ache in my gut and a tightening in my chest that I’d never felt before. I felt it again watching Rocky battle his illness in Creed. So maybe it’s all a little too real, but there’s a reason they’ve made seven of these films. They make them for people like me.

Creed has everything you can expect from a Rocky film; during his climactic fight against Conlan, Adonis wears the iconic red, white, and blue trunks (with a slight alteration) worn by Apollo and Rocky in the previous films. This installment is going to set a whole new generation on fire. For the next film, I hope Adonis travels to the Middle East and fights ISIS because, with Rocky’s help, he can put an end to radical Islam. Okay, that might be a stretch, but what I do know is that my infant-self was right, we certainly have not seen the last of this film.