So yesterday afternoon after I did my Christmas shopping, I went and finally saw “Creed II”. I thought it was an incredible and very well done film. Like the blog title says, I was very impressed. It’s definitely one of the best Rocky films in the series. Still won’t top the 1st one but “Creed II” is definitely the second best Rocky film.

I thought the film was very well acted by the whole cast, very well written and very well directed too. It was an all around great movie so no complaints at all and it was definitely way better than the first “Creed” movie. They really stepped their game up with “Creed II”.

Michael B. Jordan’s acting skills has been heavily criticized for the past several years of his career and I can understand why ’cause I haven’t been too thrilled with his acting skills lately. I thought Michael was really good in “Creed II”, though. It seems he is getting better and better with his acting. I wasn’t too thrilled with his acting in the first Creed movie but he was actually impressive in the second one. Michael was actually watchable this time.

In the past, a lot of people thought it would be a silly idea to bring Ivan Drago back but I think it’s a great idea and it makes total sense to bring Drago back. As a matter of fact, I always knew that Drago would come back in a Rocky film in some way whether it would be for Rocky 7 or a prequel, reboot or a spinoff. It ended up being for a spinoff. I was really impressed witih Dolph Lundgren’s acting in this movie too. He still plays Ivan Drago really well after all these years and Ivan talks a lot more in this one too. Even though Dolph was originally from Sweden, he’s very good at getting the Russian accent down. Why is Dolph so good at playing a Russian character? It’s because he played a lot of Russian characters in his direct-to-video action movies that he played in over the years. Dolph played a very good villain in the movie. Dolph still played a very scary and evil villain that you really wanted to hate just like in “Rocky IV”.

The movie had plenty of flashbacks and memories from the earlier Rocky films which is what made it interesting. I won’t spoil anything but the film did had a few surprising cameos.

The Creed spinoffs makes it looks like that it’s about celebrating the history of Apollo Creed and Rocky Balboa but the way I see the Creed films, not really. The films are about avenging the death of Apollo. I see these as revenge movies ’cause that’s what they are technically. Adonis wanting to get revenge at Ivan Drago for killing his father.

“Creed II” was more powerful than the earlier Rocky films. The new film had more heart and it was a lot more sad and emotional. “Creed II” had too many mixed emotions while you watch it… it’ll also make you happy, laugh at the comedic scenes and make you have a blast watching the training scenes and boxing matches.

As far as Sly’s acting goes, he kills it like he always does really. Sly announced that “Creed II” will be the final time he’ll be playing Rocky. “Creed III” will probably end up happening but it’s going to be without Rocky sadly. That’s understandable ’cause Sly is getting old. He feels he can no longer play the Rocky Balboa character anymore due to his age.

With all this being said, “Creed II” was an amazing film and I was blown away by it. Will the film land some Oscar nominations? I don’t know, we’ll see. I can see it getting nominated for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and that’s about it.

If you’re a Rocky fan, you definitely gotta go see this one.

Kev