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Creed II: A Perfectly Satisfying & Layered Family Film
Creed II is the perfect family film about what you will fight for and for whom. Americans in particular really love a good fight film but this is about more than about patriarchy, though certainly, at the heart of any American fight narrative is a story about fathers and sons, about struggle, victory and what it means to win.
Boxing, even as spectacle, also feels like it offers us something we never get to see anymore — real spontaneity, the intersection of brutality and heart that we often feel but can’t really articulate. You watch someone essentially fight to survive, often quite literally, and no matter what your gender expression, you can’t help but wonder, Am I that kind of fighter? What am I fighting for?
Maybe that’s just me, though. One of the things that’s delightful about Creed II is that these questions are posed explicitly. After all, why not be as demonstrative with your interrogation of self as you will be with these hands?
Because I love all things Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan, I was pre-disposed to like Creed II. But while I’m a fan of individual boxers and their stories, I have difficulty watching hard core violence as an empath. So I had a few tough moments in the theater, but thankfully not too many.
