In 2015, the classic “Rocky” series made a return from a new perspective with the movie “Creed”, which was instantly a huge commercial and critical success. Upon the movie’s release, despite suspicion that it was just an easy way to play off of “Rocky’s” popularity and do big in the box office, it was actually one of the best movies from the entire series. The story following Adonis Creed’s (Michael B. Jordan) boxing career following the death of his father Apollo in the ring. The movie was one of the biggest of the year, and the hype for the Rocky/Creed series was undeniably back.

Personally, “Creed” became one of my favorite movies because of its ability to make you emotionally involved in the story as well as inspired the story of the movie as well. That being said, going into “Creed 2” I was extremely excited to see the sequel and what it could do after the success of the first movie.

Within the first 15 minutes of “Creed 2,” there is an immediate surprise on just how far into the future the movie is from the first movie. Even though I was suspicious of this time jump in the beginning, I realized that the same happened in the “Rocky” series and it was essential to the story of this film.

The way the story comes together is extremely entertaining as while Adonis is dominating in boxing in the states Viktor Drago, Ivan Drago’s son, is silently dominating all of his opponents in Russia. Not to give anything away, but it was clear that Creed and Drago would face off just like their fathers in Rocky IV.

The only downside to the film could be it’s predictability, the film had its moments where you just knew what was going to happen next, and even though it didn’t ruin the movie, it would’ve been nice to have a couple surprises. To give the movie credit though, there’s no real other way I could see the movie going down, so I wasn’t too disappointed to see my predictions play out.

The thing that made this and the last “Creed” movie so fantastic was just the emotions that you feel while watching the movie. I found myself on the edge of my seat during a lot of the movie which usually doesn’t happen. Every big punch that was thrown during the fight affected me as if I knew “Creed” personally. I would wince when he took a big hit, and I would get internally hyped when he would knock someone out.

Overall “Creed 2” is one of my favorite movies of the year purely because walkin out of the theatre feeling like I could take out Mike Tyson in his prime. Any movie that can do that, is a great movie. “Creed 2” is already one of the best movies from the “Rocky” series for me, and it is one of the most “must watch” movies of 2018.

Rating 9.1/10