{"id":19828,"date":"2016-03-03T21:15:01","date_gmt":"2016-03-04T02:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=19828"},"modified":"2016-03-03T21:15:01","modified_gmt":"2016-03-04T02:15:01","slug":"creed-2015-blu-raydvddigital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/03\/creed-2015-blu-raydvddigital\/","title":{"rendered":"Creed (2015) [Blu-Ray\/DVD\/Digital]"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Rocky saga has always been about parental issues and how parenting and lack thereof define our characters. Rocky had no real parents thus he was always thought of as a loser who gained a dad through Mickey. Adrian and Pauley were each others\u2019 parents, while Rocky\u2019s own son is somewhat a distant memory by the time \u201cCreed<\/a>\u201d rolls around thanks to Rocky\u2019s own destructive quest for glory. Despite their bonding in \u201cRocky Balboa<\/a>\u201d Rocky is still a lonely hermit of a man who runs a restaurant and lives in Philadelphia, still mourning the loss of wife Adrian and best friend Pauley. His effect has had more of a profound effect than he ever realized, as director Ryan Coogler reaches in to the Balboa mythology to touch on another family within the fold of the series that we rarely visited.<\/p>\n

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Years after the untimely death of Apollo Creed, his son Adonis was left something of an orphan and juvenile delinquent prone to fighting every day of his life and looking for something he could never quite find. Every time he stepped up to fight, he was battling a foe he could never see. After being adopted by his long lost mother, Adonis Johnson now lives a posh life, but realizes his love for fighting can only improve if he reaches down and touches upon the roots of where the great fighter Rocky Balboa stemmed from. Where Rocky was a man who had to fight his way to the top, Adonis is a young man at the top who has to prove his salt as a true fighter. When he is discovered to be the son of Apollo Creed, the fight to get out of the shadows of giants becomes the biggest match in Adonis\u2019 life. For Adonis to truly become a champion he has to take on a plethora of foes from within and without that chain him down and keep him from fulfilling his role as a person.<\/p>\n

Coogler views Adonis\u2019 struggle as something truly tumultuous and painful, which is successfully conveyed by the brilliant performance by Michael B Jordan, who is the titular Creed. Jordan doesn\u2019t miss a beat, carrying the torch for Stallone wonderfully, portraying a character that has to prove credibility and show he\u2019s anything but a coddled descendant of a champion. This becomes especially troublesome when he begins to realize he resents his absentee father, prompting him to seek comfort in the gradually feeble Balboa. Balboa is now as we saw him in the first film. He\u2019s a tragic figure left with no one at his side, who has accepted his lot in life. When he meets Adonis, he doesn\u2019t just feel obligated to train him due to Apollo, but he finds a new reason to get up and continue fighting, despite the painful isolation he endures day in and day out.<\/p>\n

Apart and together, Michael B. Jordan and Stallone are mesmerizing, presenting a chemistry that is unexpected and absolutely touching. It eventually becomes detrimental to the success of the film, as Adonis\u2019 fight becomes less and less about sport, and more about personal happiness, and by the end he\u2019s still fighting. Featured on the new release, there\u2019s \u201cKnow the Past, Own the Future,\u201d a fifteen minute series of interviews with stars Stallone, and Jordan, and director Ryan Coogler, all of whom explore the history of the character, and the transition from Rocky\u2019s tale to Adonis\u2019 tale. \u201cBecoming Adonis\u201d is a six minute look at the year long training and exercise regimen that transformed star Jordan in to a boxer. Finally there are nineteen minutes of eleven deleted scenes, most of which include Adonis visiting his dad\u2019s trophy room, the bus ride before Adonis and Tessa\u2019s first date, and Rocky watching old fights on tape.<\/p>\n