#1. Creed (2015) w/ Michael #filmreview

In this podcast, Andrew reviews Creed with Michael *****, a combat sports fan from the US.

~ FILM SUGGESTIONS ~

Comment about films you guy's want to see, and I'll credit you.

~ HOST ~

Andrew Heilman is a student film producer, owner operator of Heilman Productions (a free-lance media/film production company in Silicon Valley) and social media editor.

~ GUESTS ~

The guests for this show are people who are not actively seeking a career in the film and television industries.

#podcast #filmreview #bothsidespodcast

~ FILM SUGGESTIONS ~

Comment about films you guy's want to see, and I'll credit you.

~ HOST ~

Andrew Heilman is a student film producer, owner operator of Heilman Productions (a free-lance media/film production company in Silicon Valley) and social media editor.

~ GUESTS ~

The guests for this show are people who are not actively seeking a career in the film and television industries.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Both Sides Podcast, a conversation between a film industry insider and an outsider to get their unique perspectives on films. I'm your host, Andrew Heinelman, a student of film and owner-operator of a film and media production company. Today, my guest is my friend Michael, a combat sports fan from the United States. Today, requested by Meme Spaghetti on YouTube, we're watching Creed. Michael has never seen this movie before. I have. Here's the story in a nutshell. Creed is about Adonis, the son of the famous boxer Apollo Creed. Even though he has a normal life and job, he wants to become a boxer like his father. He goes to Philadelphia to ask Rocky Balpoa to train him. In the middle of the movie, Rocky trains Adonis, and they become very close. Adonis also falls in love with Bianca, a singer. Rocky finds out he has cancer, but Adonis encourages him not to give up. At the end, Adonis fights the world champion, Ricky Conlan. He loses the match by decision, but he proves he is a real fighter and earns everyone's respect. Rocky and Adonis end the movie together as a team and a family. Stay tuned till the end to hear Michael and my final review of the film. Now, let's talk about this movie. What do you uh what do you think of it?

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Uh I think that it was a fantastic movie, an expression of just like modern-day boxing, and honestly, the combat was quite uh well put together.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Yeah, and for a little bit of context, I never really grew up watching sports, and you know this. Um so I don't I can't really say whether or not I don't have a reigning opinion on if the sports in the combat side of this movie is accurate or not. So that's kind of really why I wanted the world to know if it was or not from an opinion from someone who has an opinion that's a little bit more rooted in knowledge about it. Because my know from my understanding of you is that you've at least grown up for a while watching um UFC and boxing. So was there any like particular moments that you felt like really stood out as authentic or interesting or any takeaways like that?

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Well, I thought like they obviously took a lot of uh leeway with Adonis' knockdown in that last round with him waking up like that so so suddenly and just being able to stand up. Uh that doesn't usually happen from like his vision of his dad. Um I a real knockdown looks a lot more like what happened to uh his opponent, like when Creed finally knocked him down. Um the way he stood up using the ropes, a little bit slower, leaning back against the ropes and getting the okay from the uh rep and all that. That was a much more realistic example of a knockdown, and I thought that that was pretty good to see. Also, uh when for both of them, when they were falling, they fell really realistically in terms of like how someone would fall when they're like unconscious or hurt or something, like stiff legs, they didn't protect their head, like it flopped, they didn't put their arms down or something like that, you know? So just a very realistic portrayal.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Your body I think just shuts down at that point and you just topple over.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Yeah, I think that the boxing combos and the way that they were performed were very realistic and um thrown with good intention.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

So I choreography was definitely very, very uh impressive.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

I preferred the first fight in the movie where he fought the the guy from Mickey's gym. Um specifically because if you'd paid a if someone paid attention to it from a filmmaking perspective, it was I'm pretty sure it was all one shot or one long take. Could have been multiple shots, but it was a very continuous thing, which when you're trying to tell a story, you can stylize how you're telling it in different ways. This movie took much more of an immersive vibe with it, less of like a realistic feel, um, where it really put you in the ring as opposed to watching two people in the ring. Like my favorite fight of the franchise um so far has been the one in the last movie, Rocky Balboa, uh, the final fight of the of Rocky VI, where we go from you know, this filmic, you know, Hollywood look to literally like we have like the it's the HBO like title graphics and the announcer talks the entire time pretty much, and the camera quality is worse. And I don't know, just something about that style of showing the fight felt really cool and innovative and creative while also looking realistic to what watching a real fight would be, versus this movie's take of it is much more of like a Hollywood like immersion where it like its pristine um digital quality and sound quality and every you can feel every every hit and every punch and every spit of blood and all of that. Um which was it's just a different way to tackle the same uh the same kind of story.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Uh yeah, I could definitely see that, and I actually really liked that fight that you're talking about uh in Rocky Balboa as well. Um the I guess the the only thing like I felt like that was very realistic to the audience in terms of how it would feel to watch a modern fight nowadays. That would be that is very more uh aligned with how it would actually feel to watch a fight. I just felt like in Creed 1, I felt like it they were trying to let you almost I felt like just watching it from a layman's uh perspective, I felt like they were trying to let you feel how the fighters would feel absorbing this kind of punishment. I felt like they put a lot of uh they put a lot of research and time into like the things that happen to people when they're hit and how that looks, and they translated that into film very well, so you can almost understand what it would be like to be punched by watching this movie, where you wouldn't be able to get that from watching like Rocky Balboa, but I do think that Rocky Balboa's fight is so much more close to how it would feel like to actually watch a fight, like if we were to watch a boxing fight today, then that would be what it would look like.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Yeah, there's another one of those shots that feels very immersive about exactly what you're saying of putting the audience in the ring. Um when he's fighting Conlin, when he enters into the ring, it's a real it's a it's the same thing where it's a really long take of us behind Rocky and Um Adonis as Rocky's walking him out to the to the stadium, um, and it goes from this very quiet clinical hallway to you know a roaring crowd, and there's no music, um, and it's it it's very little sound effects and it's very calm, and then all of a sudden it's it's crazy and wild. And that that kind of pacing I don't think we have seen yet in a particular shot of the other movies, because the other movies feel more stylized or more Hollywood-esque, where this movie has much more of an immersion um feel to it. One of the a few things that stood out to me, I just have a few notes here. Um my favorite scene in this movie is the one where Adonis first learns that um Rock Rocky has cancer in the locker the locker room scene. Um and not just because it's so emotional and intense, but also because it's just the introduction of that scene is really smartly blocked. Um blocking is like a from my knowledge of it, is it's it's a direct my understanding of it is that it's a director's term where the director really helps influence where the actors are in a certain location and what they do in that location, like if they smoke a cigarette or whatever. Um and in that scene in the locker room, Adonis is you know taking a break from working out, he goes into the locker room, and then he notices uh he notices this really brightly colored um I forget what uh I don't I'm blanking on the word of what you call it, but it's a pamphlet. So he sees a brightly colored pamphlet next to, and this is why costume design is so important, it's in a black jacket. And if anyone knows anything about colors, if you have a black jacket or a black article of clothing, if something colorful and bright is on it, then that thing sticks out like anything. So it it's a realistic way to not only point an audience's eye to it, because the first thing in composition is that bright colors are where the audience goes. This is, you know, we play video games all the time together. That's why in video game design, everything that a player needs to know is that's important is yellow or you know, neon yellow or bright green or whatever. Um so he walks into this this room, and all that all that to say that in a movie things can't just happen. They need to have, in order to immerse your audience in the illusion that this is a real thing that's happening and these characters are real, you have to root it in some sort of reality. He can't just come walking into the room and immediately pick up off the jacket. He needs to take the character needs to take time to realize, you know, what's going on with that sequence and in that room. So when he comes into the room, he you know puts his stuff down and he's kind of like relaxed and whatever. Okay, thank you. Um he walks into the room and then he sees the brightly colored pamphlet, and then he goes over to the pamphlet, he takes it out, and then he you know he he thinks about it. And then it's so smart how it does it, where he the movie takes a little bit of time to uh to have Adonis put it down or whatever, and then Rocky comes in and grabs the jacket off the um he he walks in and grabs the track uh the jacket off the hook, and that's what initiates the conversation. Again, you can't have a character in order to progress the story, you need to have plot events. And in order for those plot events to happen realistically, they need to have reasons for happening. Rocky can't just teleport in the room and then have this, you know, intense conversation about his health. He needs to walk into the room and have a reason to be in that room. And the reason for him being in that room as visually shown, we talk about visual storytelling in the in the medium of film. You can't just tell everything with dialogue. Movies are a visual medium, it's not like a book or something. So he walks into the room and he grabs the jacket, and then he notices that his uh I believe he notices that his pamphlet's gone, and then um Adonis confronts him. So that's just a great example of a blocking decision or a writing decision where Stallone was told to go over and pick up that jacket and then initiate that conversation that way, versus him just coming in and then, you know, Adonis confronting him. It is just little details like that really help immerse the audience in the story um and build more of a reality with it. Um and I thought that was a really smartly done little detail.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Yeah, uh I'm glad to see that you think that that is your favorite moment in the movie, because honestly, it was mine as well. And I think that all of those uh reasons mixed with just like the performance of both of them here, the vulnerability that they both show, like Stallone obviously being like so scared of having to go through what he's gonna go through because he's already watched uh Adrian go through it and whatnot. And the emotion that both Michael and Stallone or Sylvester can um conjure up so well. Just it was a very powerful moment and all that, so like, even though I am such a like fan of combat sports, like this was still my favorite uh part in the movie.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Yeah, and and we've for those of uh people who don't know, we watched, we just watched um this month, we watched all the Rocky movies from one to six. Unfortunately, we didn't record those, but we did watch them. And we were I had noticed that there's two different directors that made that franchise, John G. Avaldson and um uh Stallone. John G. Avoldson, he directed the first movie, and then two, three, and four were directed by Stallone, and then Avoldson came back and did Rocky V, and then Stallone did Rocky VI. And we had noticed that the two directors have a different way of showing sides of the character, um, versus you know, Avoldson in Rocky and Avaldson's versions in Rocky I and Rocky V, he has more of a like a goofier, kind of like down-to-earth, uh simple-minded kind of Rocky. Um, and Stallone's Rocky is much more, he feels much more intense, he feels much more calculated, um, one might say smarter. And in this movie, the reason I bring that up is that in this movie, I think we get to see yet another side of Rocky, which is just a and it the this movie is directed by Ryan Kugler, who did Sinners. Um and you know, it's a new director into the field, and normally when you have a franchise, the best way to change a visual style or to change um the feel of a movie is by bringing in new creative heads. So when you bring in the director, a new director, he brings a new flavor of these characters. And Rocky, he feels all in an effort to make these characters come to life with showing different sides of them. The biggest mistake a storyteller can create is make one-dimensional characters. Um and meaning we only get to see them happy, we only get to see them angry, we only get to see them mad, whatever. But being able to explore all of these emotions in these characters is is a really cool thing. And we haven't really seen the kind of this kind of health scare, fear, and loneliness um in Rocky. And something about Stallone's performance felt unique in this movie as opposed to his other ones that he's made. And I thought that was um I thought that was a really cool thing to actually see like the makeup department get behind um the script and make him look like he was uh that he had cancer and everything. Um and it it was it just built it built more of his character. Um and I always like to explore seeing different sides of characters.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

Yeah, I did notice that um as well about Rocky in this movie. I don't know exactly I guess what we see the most here is uh Rocky be able to like truly live out the training of a fighter, also regaining some of his like life back in certain ways, like um getting Adonis back in his life, which brings Apollo back into his mind, something he potentially could have been running from in some sorts of ways, not to say he actually was, because obviously he went to Adrian and Pauli's grave and stuff, so it's not like he runs from it totally, but boxing I do feel like he was running from in some way. Like his love of boxing, he ran from in almost a way to pay respects to the loved ones he has lost. You know what I mean? I feel like like especially if you were to ask Rocky in the show, I feel like he would say, or not maybe he would admit to um just feeling like to himself that he feels like boxing was less important than his family, and in ways the leaving it behind him is his one of his ways of paying respects to the loved ones. I feel like he exemples or uh exemplifies those traits to the maximum in this movie, and it's put together perfectly as far as I can say.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Yeah, yeah, he's he's the farthest from the sport in this movie than he is in any of the other movies. Um to see him come back to it through Adonis, um, which for those of you uh those who don't know, um the story is about Adonis Creed, whose dad, Apollo Creed, was one of Rocky uh Rocky Balboa's best friends and um competitive fighter, and uh Apollo Creed died in the ring to Drago in Rocky IV, and that sets the catalyst for the whole conflict of the movie. Um one of the whole conflicts of the movie with Adonis and him trying to come up and kind of like I I didn't really think that that might be a motivation as well, but I guess it could be one where Adonis, not only does Adonis want to prove himself, um, that he can do it and he can do it on his own legs, but he also has some sort of pride to the creed name and kind of wants to kind of wants to like redeem his father in a way almost, maybe. Um and I don't know if that's a really common thing. Like I asked um Mike during the watching of the movie if it was a common thing for these kind of ancestral generational fighters whose dads have died in the ring or or grandfathers or whatever. Um have you seen similar fights to that or similar things like that, Mike?

SPEAKER_01 19:48

I've only ever seen one person or a video of like one person who was killed in the ring by boxing, and there's not the generational gap of that. Like, that's not something as far as I know that's I'm like not a historian on boxing. I'm much closer to being something like that on MMA. But when it comes to the boxing stuff, I do know, like what I was trying to say is that there are definitely father-son generational like boxers, like Floyd Mun uh Money Mayweather, he is a junior, and his father was a fairly successful boxer himself. Um yeah, that's I would just say that like I don't I don't know of any off the top of my head sons of suc successful fighters whose fathers have died in the ring becoming successful fighters themselves. I don't know if that's a real uh thing that has happened. Well, yeah, it could be. But it also could just be based on something that has happened because boxing has been along for so long that something like that in the long expanse of like a hundred and to a hundred and fifty years of boxing being a popular popular global phenomenon, I would say that uh the likelihoods of something like that happening in the existence of it is probably pretty high. But do I know it off the top of my head? No.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Well, you did say to broaden it to more MMA um more combat sports, you did say that that it's a pretty common thing for certain boxers to have certain traits passed down to them from their other family members who were in the industry. Um, because we were talking about how Adonis kind of has maybe he is a similar more of a similar style of fighting to his dad as opposed to coming in like a Rocky clone, which is another way to separate this movie from the other Rocky movies, is to bring a new main character who fights. A little different and you know isn't just a brick wall like Rocky was.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Yeah, a lot of that has to do with just like for one, like how you're raised and stuff like that, goes to like how you your posture sits and stuff like that. But uh mostly it's I would say genetic. Like if you have a super successful father who's ripped and passes his genes down to you, and you have a similar enough frame to him, you're gonna be able to do similar things, especially if you start training with him while he's still alive, which Adonis didn't or anything, but in real life, the examples of like Floyd Sr. and Junior and um there's another one I just can't think of ever. But like for examples of them in real life, they would have started like he would have trained Junior since he was like five or something, you know what I mean? So like your father is the one teaching you how to box, so not only has he passed down his genetics to you, he is now tea he is now your teacher into boxing. So the likelihood that you're going to fight extremely similarly, if not the same, as your father when you're being trained by him, is pretty damn high. So seeing that in the movie and then acknowledging that as an idea and whatnot, uh and implementing it in the movie in ways you can clearly see, like evidently, I thought was pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Do you know which fighter do you do you think is most similar to um well I know you watch a lot of powerscaling videos um uh about certain how certain characters in this franchise would fight against real fighters. Is there a fighting is there a fighter that s Adonis is similar to that you know of? That he might have been inspired by or something?

SPEAKER_01 24:15

I have seen um a lot of Apollo's uh specifically um being attained to like uh Ali. Uh Ali you know Muhammad Ali. I see a lot of people comparing Apollo to him. You did you ask about Apollo or Adonis?

SPEAKER_00 24:43

Uh I guess they're kind of one and the same a little bit is what we're uh we're coming to the conclusion of, but I was asking specifically about Adonis if if he feels similar to some some other pickboxer.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

I guess the way that he can get in there and he is kind of a brawler maybe reminds me a bit of maybe Errol Spence. But like that I don't think Adonis is necessarily like what's the word where they're based on someone real, like Apollo was based on Muhammad Ali. I do I don't think that Adonis's character, by anything that I could see, makes me look like, oh, he's clearly built on him. I see Adonis being much more of his own boxer, and I think that that throughout this movie, this movie has done a lot to assume or to make us try to assume that he is trying to do his own thing. I think what he inherited from his father wasn't how he boxes, it's how he moves. When he wants to move, he can move very fl uh fleet of foot. You can see the Apollo footwork in Creed when Creed wants to, you know, or I mean in Adonis when he wants to show that off, but he doesn't usually want to show that off, and that's something that I imagine is gonna be kind of tried to work out of or worked out of him in the next coming movies, because right now Adonis just wants to get in there and brawl it out with people. He wants to get in there and be the big dog in the ring and just say, you're not gonna break me down, I'm gonna beat you down. If uh Donis went into this fight a little bit smarter, you know, uh if you're you're if you're still uh Rocky watching Adonis in that fight, you're watching him purposefully taking hits so that way he can land. You're gonna want to try to stop that with uh through training. You're also seeing him overcommit to combos. Like you'll see him because he's thrown with so much power and heat, you'll see him rip to the body, right, left, and then when he comes back up to the head, he fucking whiffs like way off, nowhere near him. Why? Because he puts a hundred percent power into that punch. Kind of like what Rocky would do. Uh, and that's why I'm thinking that you know they're doing as much as they possibly can to say that he's not going to be fighting like Apollo, but he does have Apollo's gifts of fleet of foot, he's fast, he has power, you know, Apollo is knocking people out, knocked people out all the time. So that's what I would say. I'm pretty sure he's just he's his own person fighting in his own style, uh, that is a little bit pulled towards Apollo with his genetics, but it's also being, as I said, a little bit pulled towards Rocky through his training. You can see some of the Rocky moments in uh Adonis, and it's also because he has something so much to prove. He wants to land this big shot, he wants to put him down, he doesn't want to win a boxing match, he wants to win a fight. You know what I mean? Uh and hopefully, I don't I'm yeah, I mean, hopefully for Adonis, he is taught how to be a boxer because if whatever what Conrad? Whatever the guy Conlin, yeah, Conlin.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

Conrad.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

Uh if Conlin wanted to, like his coach was telling him to, he could have just kept him at the end of his range and just like beat the crap out of him, probably. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Yeah. He definitely, and you can hear that. You can hear um t it it is interesting how we get to see Adonis, Apollo, and Rocky and their different fighting styles in Adonis, because in a few of those final uh final scenes of the final fight with Conlon, you can hear the Rocky theme um as he is getting up and like you know getting ready to finish the fight. And that's that symbolizes the the relationship that Rocky has with Adonis and what Rocky was able to give. Um so it I I I think having the drama be him trying to be his own person and be unique complements his fighting style, which I didn't even really realize, but seems to be more his fighting style seems to be more unique and more his own. And the movie in general has less of a focus on the specific fighting style, it has more of a focus on the drama, and all of these movies do to a certain extent. It's like I said, they're not really boxing like I say, it's they're not really boxing movies, they're they're about boxers and what they go through and their relationships and how it, you know, how it leads them to certain decisions in their lives. But there are more boxing sport focused Rocky movies, uh specifically the ones done by Stallone, um, like Rocky III, uh three and four are probably the most boxing technique um centered. And this movie takes a little bit more uh cues from the first movie and the fifth movie, which are Avaldson's um depiction of it. And I I like that side of it more but just because it's more it's more it makes me feel a little bit better about not having a deeper set knowledge of the sport. But I like also learning from yeah, that's why I like having conversations with you watching this these movies is because you have a you have a deeper understanding of the sport just because you've watched the sport more than I have.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

Yeah. Uh speaking of the coaching and how Adonis is picking up some things from Rocky's style and whatnot. Rocky as a coach, something they're doing in this movie um is really good. Like they have shown it like the first guy that Adonis ploughed, the guy from Mickey's gym, um, he got Adonis was uh losing that round. Uh he lost the first round. And when uh he got back to the uh the corner, Rocky settled him, centered him, and then what told him, hey, look, when he jabs, you're gonna duck. You're because he's also gonna come with a right hook right after. So right with the jab, you're gonna duck, juke, come up and uh land a shovel hook into a right hand, a right cross. Not only was Rocky watching with such intent that he knows how to settle Creed and or I meant, yeah, I mean that we can at this point we can just say Creed. Um, not only did he settle him and he knew how to center his fighter, he also was watching with such like focus that he seen where Adonis can take advantage of an opening that Adonis hadn't seen. So he Adonis, the moment that Rocky in the movie, it panned to him, and he was like, Now do what I told you or whatever, right now. And Adonis immediately not only shows how good of a listener he is, like how good of a student he is, he did it immediately. Dunked the jab, duked over, up shover, uh shovel up uh, and right into the cross, and it immediately dropped him, exactly like Rocky said. In this uh fight with Con uh Conlad or Rad, whatever the fuck, I can't remember. Conlan Conlin, yeah, he's uh whatever. He was like not kind of looked like Robert Whitaker from anyone who watches MMA. But um in that fight, Rocky was doing his absolute best to encourage and to give uh actual coach work to Adonis, something that like Mickey, if you think back to what Mickey did as a coach, he was good, sure. But when do what do you actually remember of him telling Rocky a specific like setup to use? Hey, I noticed this, you need to take advantage of it. You don't ever really get that, you just got Mickey saying to the body or something like that, just like a broad, like not a specific complete set of rules to follow because you can he noticed that that fighter that Mickey was fighting was throwing a specific combo over and over again that catching Adonis, and so uh Rocky knew exactly what to tell him to completely dodge that counter and set up the KO. It was perfect. It really shows how good of a trainer uh and coach uh Rocky really is, and how intelligent he is when it comes to boxing. He might not have been able to perform that level of like you know, is Rocky when he was fighting, is he gonna juke and jive a whole combo, land a shovel a shovel uppercut into a right hand? No, that's not Rocky. Maybe he'll dodge one of those punches and then he's just gonna rip to the body immediately. You know what I mean? But he does know how to notice those things and teach his student it. He's a master of the game.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

Yeah, and I think what helps that from my outsider's perspective, trying to understand a bit of the psychology of what it is to be a fighter and to have that be your whole life. Um I imagine when you get older as a fighter and you stop professionally fighting, but you you and your you know your muscles start to atrophy and you start to not be able to get in the ring anymore, stuff like that. That you're you have a heightened sense of understanding of the sport. And you know, it's like people who are blind have a heightened sense of taste and hearing and and feeling and all that kind of stuff. So it's cool to I think Rocky in this movie is probably the most knowledgeable of about the sport. You know, he's at the peak of his career in terms of his knowledge of the sport. Um and it's cool to see I I'm sure that's exactly why older people are great and wise, and we get to see a wise Rocky in this movie, wiser than we've ever seen him before, um, to where he's more of like a Yoda to um Adonis. And I'm sure that's similar to how it is in the real world. That just makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

Yeah. They did a really good job. Uh I see why you'd like Creed so much, because this is uh just really good. I love this entire series, and I can't believe that it's taken me this long to watch it for the first time.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Yeah, and I know your original what you were told about this franchise is that they're kind of like bad or campy or whatever, but you told me you were like pleasantly surprised of how entertain not only entertaining, but sometimes most of the time accurate. Obviously it's gonna have some sort of Hollywood flair to it, but they they try to tell a convincing story.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Yeah, for their I was impressed by not only how inter entertaining they were, how deep they could make you feel uh for their characters, um, and when uh and for their time period, how realistic they were. Just all and honestly, especially with some of these, how funny they are. Like they have no issue at all making, you know, moments ex like actually genuinely really funny. Like, and I I just I I don't know if I would go as far to say that they're masterpieces, maybe for what they are, you know what I mean? They could be masterpieces like for a boxing movie or something. Is it the shining that level a deep or something?

SPEAKER_00 38:18

No movie's perfect.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

That's exactly but exactly. Um, but for what they are, I would say actually they might be the masterpieces because I mean Creed is running on the coattails literally of Rocky and wouldn't be here without it. Right. And everything that they're doing in this movie was set up by the Rocky franchise, obviously. And they are what a what a franchise. I mean, this is an example of sequels that just keep hitting and nailing one after another. Like I know that for someone like you, three and four not being bad movies, but just being something that's a little bit harder for you to enjoy to the fullest extent extent. But for someone of a f combat uh combat sports fan like me, um I actually really liked three and four. They were uh faster paced, um, and got to show off the boxing side of Rocky a lot more. Uh so for sequels, I actually think that they are um perfectly serviceable. Are they as good as five and one and two and all that? Probably not. I agree with that, but I just feel like this whole franchise, what I mean is like as a franchise, this is incredible. I can't tell you another set of movies I've watched that are what 12 deep, and every one of them is a movie I would recommend you to watch.

SPEAKER_00 39:59

Right.

SPEAKER_01 39:59

I can't tell you another series about that, man. Like, that's incredible to me.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

Like, yeah, there's always something new that they tell which with each and every entry, and that's the mistake that a lot of people make and a lot of producers make with sequels is that they see the the original in a franchise and they go, Oh, oolala, it performed so well. Let's make the exact same movie again. And when they make the exact same movie again, it doesn't feel I mean, it just feels like you're watching the same movie again, and if you're gonna do that, why not just watch the first movie again? So when in a franchise, showing a different emotion from a character, showing them go through different things really helps build, they call it world building in storytelling, and the world building of this franchise is so deep and intense and realistic, not only because it shows a few real things, but it shows every real thing, every real emotion, every everything that a fighter goes through, um, or most things that a fighter goes through. No single franchise can be as in as deep as a all-encompassing or as deep as the human psyche. But I think that this move this franchise does a great job of not just making the same movie over again, even though it follows a similar formula, it always keeps things interesting with new perspectives with each every uh with each and every entry. Um so all that to say, as we kind of like wrap up, I like to I think it would be cool to like think about what we what we think of the movie overall in terms of like a number. Um so Rotten Tomatoes, for people who don't know, Rotten Tomatoes is the it's they're the prime review website for um opinions on movies. Um I I'm pretty sure that they contract a lot of work from uh newspapers and all sorts of stuff to give a review on um this website. And I think that the there and it separates it into two categories, which I like. They have a critics rating, um, which are the rotten tomatoes, and then they have what's they call I think it's a popcorn rating, which is what the audience votes on. So an audience member can and they don't have to be a verified film critic in order to post a review on their sites for a certain movie. And for Creed, the critics review, which critics can be, you know, they they're not always perfect, they can be pretty biased for certain things, but they gave it a score of 95 out of 100 or 95 percent, um a hundred being the best, zero being the worst, and audiences gave it a 89%. On a scale of zero to a hundred, where do you think personally this movie lies for you? Would you agree with those opinions or would you have a different uh look on it?

SPEAKER_01 43:01

You're really surprised that the critics specifically put this so high. And um what I'm about to say is probably gonna sound like kinda antithetical to everything I have been talking about this whole series. Uh when I watch a movie, entertainment overall is what I would call what I are the the next things I'm gonna talk about, but like how is the action, how was the comedy, how was the drama, and how did that whole thing come together to create a package, right? I think that all of those parts of this movie, while being good, serviceable, maybe even like great at certain points, well I don't know, that's what I was gonna say. Are were any of them really great? Like, yes, this scene, like with Rocky and Adonis, and Rocky like or Donis finding out about Rocky's cancer. That was the peak of this the drama. Uh I would say the drama I can see being like um I would say like maybe that would be a 90 because I do think that this was a very impactful scene. But was did I get that giddiness I got when Rocky would walk out sometimes? Like when he walked out to fight Drago for when um Adonis walked out. No, I didn't really get that. Like I didn't feel that like I told you I did when we were watching those movies, that like, oh my god, I'm getting the jitters. This feels like it's gonna be crazy. I don't know exactly why that is. So I have to say that I wasn't as excited to see this fight, and I think that was honestly because I went into the fight thinking I knew how it was gonna end. I went into the fight thinking Creed's going to win this. And because I went into the fight thinking that, I wasn't as excited because the other Rocky movies they genuinely gave me a feeling of I don't know how this is gonna go besides the Drago fight. I'm kind of freaking hyped to see how this goes. Um, so the action I'm gonna say is probably around a 70. Um the comedy, maybe even like a 60, there was a couple moments uh Rocky made me like.

SPEAKER_00 45:29

Definitely more of a serious movie.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

Yeah, exactly. Was it a really funny movie, like one was like uh some of the earlier ones were? No, uh I wouldn't say it is. So honestly, I would say that this is probably like a much closer to the audience score, but I would say even lower. I would say this is probably like an eight or eighty.

SPEAKER_00 45:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have uh not yeah, go ahead. Okay, I I have a similar number that comes to to my mind. There were a few things that if I were making this movie, I would have tried to experiment with doing a little more. Um this movie is one of those examples where I think it could actually be a little longer. Um it's two hours. I think they could they could make it two uh two thirty because I would want to develop um uh con uh what's his name?

SPEAKER_01 46:27

The you forgot it too. Conland or Conland? Conlin. Conlin.

SPEAKER_00 46:32

I would want to develop Conlin's character a little bit more because he seems very flat to me. Um I would want to see I would just want to see more of and the biggest complaint I have for this overall franchise is that at times I want to I want more of it, which is not a bad complaint at all. But for Conlon, I would want a little bit more to see his character and where he's coming from, so that I mean the best movie in this franchise from a filmmaking perspective, in my opinion, uh is probably Rocky II, because that final fight is that fight is the most intense to me because we spent a long time building that fight up. And when you have a audio when you whenever you're making a story, your biggest enemy is always um it could be your biggest enemy, it could be your biggest um strength, but you have to deal with audience expectations. You can't get around it. And with these kind of movies, the expectation is good guy is gonna win. And when you have that expectation going through the entire thing, a movie, if it's doesn't if if a story doesn't understand that, it can feel very low stakes. Um and it, you know, every because if everyone believes that the good guy's gonna win at the end, then who really cares about what they just watched? And the only way that I've seen to really cure that is by making the audience root for that outcome by showing this character go through, you know, all of this crap for so long that they eventually are awarded with a good a good thing, versus just having this character go through a lot of good happenstances and then um you know maybe one or two pivotal negative events and then him getting the win. And I felt like we saw from the very beginning in a very slow-paced style, we saw Rocky and Rocky II really just get life-handed to him in a really, really, really hard way. We got to see him, you know, lose everything financially and start to, you know, all that kind of stuff. Um, to where that final fight felt so intense because we just wanted to make sure it's a similar thing with my favorite movie, It's Wonderful Life, where we see George Bailey go through all of this crap and then he's finally awarded with the town getting behind him to help him get out of his debt that he that he gets into for um for his uh his f uh his uncle losing money um at his loan business. Um because you can't just have a movie like this or a story like this and then have the main character just win at the end. And we get to see a little bit of that in this movie. We get to see us uh we get to see the storytellers really try to inspire the audience to root for that specific outcome by having Conlin be um an asshole, but we don't get to see it from a same the same depth that we got to see Rocky with all of the different things that was happening in his life leading to the audience wanting to support that outcome. So that was a thing that I think could have been um improved. Um again, this movie takes less of a focus on the fighting and more of a focus on the drama, which I like, but even I can recognize that there's an extent of too much drama or too much drama and not enough action and not enough fight, um uh not enough action in a franchise. This movie already has a lot of these kind of talks and these kind of problems uh this movie franchise does. Um as a movie, if I were judging the individual movie, I would say the individual movies probably closer to that audience rating of you know 89, 88%. But if I'm looking at it as the whole Rocky spectrum, um as a franchise, and you know, this whole movie is it's it's about individuality and being unique, but I don't really see it that way. I see it as an extension in a Rocky movie reskinned in a new in a new light, in a new perspective. And in a Rocky scenario, I'd say it's probably closer to like a 75, kind of like what you're saying. Um and my personal opinion of the movie is that it's I'd probably give it a 75 out of 100, would be my personal rating.

SPEAKER_01 50:58

Yeah, uh I I agree, and that's what that's what I'm saying. I'm gonna keep mine at 80 just because I'm not gonna be like, yeah, you're totally right, and copy your score. No, yeah, I want you to be unique. Yeah, that is exactly like how I feel. Like, I don't think this is in contention in any way, shape, or form for being the best movie in the Rocky series. But so I think that that has to force it to be down, because to bring how important and how good these other movies are to be able to put them higher up, to give them reverence, you know what I mean? You have to put something like this, in my opinion, further down on the list. Not to in any way discount this movie, but just because this series is so good, and since we we've been watching it the whole series so closely recently, we have to allow for the other movies to have their exemplary uh traits shown, which means that this has to drop down because there's other movies that belong way higher than this in this series, and since we are kind of forced in ways to look at it as a whole, um, not just as the individual movie, at least for me, uh, because that's how I um consume this medium. Um it's just it's just further down on the list. Not to say that it's bad, this is a great movie, and I'd recommend a fan of combat sports or um the human condition under those kind of um constraints. I would recommend them to watch this in a heartbeat.

SPEAKER_00 52:44

Well, yeah, and people who don't people who uh who try to say the argument of, you know, don't look at it as a member of the franchise, try to look at it from a unique, you know, what is the movie itself on its own legs, this movie is less of a movie without the Rocky movies. Um the other Rocky movies add so much depth to this movie that if no one had ever seen any of the Rocky movies and then just started watching this movie, it would have less of an impact by default because of how much the movie spends on Rocky. Um so I think that you have to judge this movie as another entry of the Rocky franchise because there's no attachment to Rocky as a character, there's no attachment to the Creed family if you hadn't been if they hadn't been established in the franchise before.

SPEAKER_01 53:41

Yeah, exactly. So with that in mind, it's it's about 80 to me because it is still a really great movie. Um it's a great addition to this franchise. I love how they um brought this all together. I thought they brought it all together perfectly fine and good. The problem is, is it's just a part of a franchise with so many movies that are so fantastically put together, um, using the tropes that this movie has, and they may have even done it better in those older movies. It's just gotta be down there. Definitely not the worst, but it's just got there's gotta be room for better things.

SPEAKER_00 54:29

Yeah, and the one last takeaway I'd say is that uh there are hundred out of a hundred moments in every story, pretty much, and that's why I even like watch bad movies or spoof movies or whatever, is because I can always find something that is unique or interesting or good or an incredible perfect moment. So the you know, like the scene in the locker room for me in Creed is a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes for me moment. Um I think my favorite moment in the franchise is probably from Rocky III, which I don't even really like that much. Um, specifically Adrian's confrontation with Rocky on the beach. I think that scene in that moment is one of the best moments in the entire franchise, even though I'd I'd give that movie closer to a 65 for me personally. Um, but that moment is probably the best moment of the entire franchise. So, you know, these rate these arbitrary ratings that you can't really assign a number or a specific word to a movie. It's so much deeper than just good or bad. Um so that taken to an account, that's I'd probably say 75 uh 75, and you say probably 80, but in that a general range, not the best Rocky movie, not the worst Rocky movie, not the worst movie, not the best movie, um, but an incredible movie that I think people would enjoy. The acting is really solid, cinematography is really solid. It's it's a Hollywood movie, it's not a cheap student film or something, which I know a little bit about. Um it's it's its own American United States and Hollywood makes movies in a specific high-quality way that is really different than anyone else. And I'm glad that I'm able to share these movies with you. Um, and I'd love to have to watch more of them with you. Um and I I have a few other franchises that I think you would enjoy watching too, that I think you would have a cool input on. Um so you know, let me know whenever next time you're free, and then we'll we'll try to put something up. But I appreciate you being on the show. Um, it's an interesting thing to me to try to talk about movies and try to increase my knowledge in my analysis of movies, because I can be analytical when it turns when it comes to details of movies and stuff, but I want to increase that and I want to increase my knowledge of of stories, and you help me uh you help me get there in this particular field of combat sports, which I which I don't really know a whole lot of.

SPEAKER_01 57:24

I'm glad I can help you with that, and uh I am totally down to be on the show more and to watch more movies with you, and I'll get with you about when I'm available next.

SPEAKER_00 57:38

Alright, uh goodbye everybody. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening to both sides. Leave a comment below of a movie you want me to watch with a guest, and I'll credit you and your username. Like and follow if you enjoyed this podcast, and to stay notified of future reviews. Remember, your right to your opinion matters, whether you're an expert or not. Peace out.