Age of The Nerd
Last week, the first movie trailer to promote the November 21st release of ‘Creed 2‘ was unleashed online. The upcoming sequel to the 2015 film, telling the ups and downs of the son of former Rocky Balboa opponent Apollo Creed, will star Sylvester Stallone and Michael Jordan. Fans have been highly awaiting the sequel, largely due to the return of popular Rocky villain Ivan Drago who killed Carl Weather’s character in a fatal boxing match in the fourth instalment of the successful boxing franchise back in 1985.
Unfortunately, after months of awaiting even the smallest of glimpses of the new movie the trailer felt largely and surprisingly underwhelming. Here is why:
The trailer begins by showing what happened at the conclusion of the first film when Creed was beaten by Ricky Conlon and who now has to work his way back. Rocky insists on how dangerous this next mystery opponent is and that it’s not a good idea to fight this guy. A montage of shots from the sequel is presented to us, one of which actually gives away the likely possibility that Creed will eventually persuade Rocky to train him to fight him. It all ends with a shot of the back of the film’s nemesis in a boxing ring, a red vest adorned with big yellow letters displaying a very familiar surname – ‘Drago.’
It has been well documented that Dolph Lundgren will return to the role as Ivan Drago as the father to his son, allegedly named Viktor Drago, to train him which will probably reignite a rivalry with Balboa once again. Because, well, Rocky needs something else to do other than take a back seat role as an ageing coach. Stallone has confirmed that he will “slap” Ivan in ‘Creed 2′, although it remains to be seen if it is just merely a smack or whether it results in something being a bit more.
However, it is rather puzzling that Lundgren was not shown in the trailer at all, given that his presence is the main factor that fans will most likely be watching ‘Creed 2’ for. They may be taking the route of just allowing the anticipation to keep building. But it has been building up for a fair while now already!
The other issue is that the trailer seemingly assumes that everybody should just know the name ‘Drago.’ While the fan base of the Rocky franchise is pretty sizeable, most of the money at the box office will likely be gained from the casuals who have not closely followed every film since the 1976 original.
It would have been better had they started with showing what happened to Apollo at the hands of Drago rather than relying on little pieces of dialogue to give us clues. Perhaps there were legal reasons as to why they could not do this. I am not certain. It could have just been an artistic choice not to. And, of course, you would think it would have been almost mandatory to show even the briefest of shots of Ivan as he looks now. Perhaps even show a dialogue driven exchange between Rocky and the fictional Russian former boxer. Doing it all that way would have given the fans something to get excited about and inform the casuals of the narrative that the Creed spinoff series is heading towards.
Instead, it is all comes off as rather vague. Yes, it is just a teaser trailer. I get that. Teasers are known for not exactly going into much detail about much of anything. But running at just over two minutes, there was plenty of time to show something of substance. Instead, it gave me the impression that, “Yeah, another Creed movie is coming out and Adonis is going to have another big fight again.” And…that is it. There were no nods shown to Rocky IV apart from the final shot, no appearance by Dolph Lundgren himself, no showing the tension between Rocky and Ivan due to their eventful past, amongst other things.
The whole two minute and nine second trailer for ‘Creed 2′ felt like one big missed opportunity and an unexpected disappointment for me. Let us hope they get it right in the next one.
