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If you were giving a lecture on how to make the most of a used formula, you could do worse than directing your audience to the latest Rocky movie.
Creed II his young, immediate predecessor – the young Steven Caple Jr. – hardly replaces Ryan Coogler, a little younger – but he plays his old tunes with such indecent vigor that only the meanest will complain. Little else has been so entertaining this season.
Nobody would deny that clumsy tropes abound. For example, there are more conversations with the tombstones in the Rocky series than in all the rest of the folk art combined. Always in the pleasantly unbalanced form of Sylvester Stallone, Rocky Balboa has more than a few with the one sitting above his late wife Adrian.
Returning as Michael B Jordan, charismatic and flexible, Adonis "Donnie" Creed chews the imagined ear of the stone on top of his dead father, Apollo. The subject of these one-sided conversations has a lot to do with the impending threat of Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu).
You will know this last name. Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren), Viktor's father, defeated Apollo to death 33 years ago in Rocky IV. Rocky is later avenged on the ring, but he still regrets allowing Apollo to take the fight earlier against the Russian giant.
No need to explain why Donnie is inclined to accept Viktor's challenge. Will Rocky overcome his worries and help the young man train for the title? Not at the beginning. May be later. Some stories are immutable, but others are to be negotiated.
Older viewers will marvel at the icons of 1980s pop culture that are part of the action. There is Sly himself, of course (a creation from the 1970s that, like his old comrade Schwarzenegger, proved his success during the most turbulent decade).
Formerly an accidental truth teller, Rocky now brims with the kind of ancestral wisdom that only graying coaches in boxing movies get. Lundgren is as monumental as the old Draco. The distinguished Phylicia Rashad, formerly Mrs. Cosby, dispenses wisdom as Donnie's mother.
About Brigitte Nielsen's brief imperial turn as Ludmilla Drago (that name!), We'll say nothing without forgetting that few of them have done so much with so little since Michael Caine's men defended Rorke's Drift in Zulu. She is magnificent
The attitude of the series towards our Russian friends has evolved without becoming more nuanced. In Rocky IV they were slaves pumped by steroids from a monumental Soviet dictatorship. Now, they hide miserably in brutalist towers or flee goblets in incredibly vulgar post-Romanoff mansions.
But the tone of the movies has evolved. All these deliciously ripe materials are housed in a project that is concerned with characterization and knows how to create sympathy for the less lovable personalities. Ivan's quest now has a poignant character.
Tessa Thompson (one of the most inescapable players this year), who has always been excellent, manages to create a sort of role that, in the hands less qualified, could have become a generic "wag".
Indeed, the acting game has never been better in the Rocky series. "It feels like Shakespeare," said a sports presenter when the young Creed and the young Draco meet together.
It may be stretching. But there is enough texture that the pbadage to the inevitable return of the band of Bill Conti is done with a welcome speed. This theme comes as a thank-you to all those involved for doing a better job than necessary.
If you do not leave the air, you may want to throw away the sponge (or any other metaphor combination of boxing).
Opening: November 30
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