Is ‘Creed III’ a Knockout? Plus: a rant about the state of movie theater exhibition!

Welcome back to across the movie. I’ll present it by Bulwark Plus. I am your host, Sunnybunch, culture editor of The Bulwark, I’m joined as always, by Elizabeth Rosenberg of the Washington Post and Peter Superman of Reason Magazine. And, Elizabeth, Peter, how are you today? I

am well.

I am so happy to be talking about movies with friends.

First up in controversies and controversies. When did movie palaces become broke down palaces? Do you see what I see what I do there? That’s the question Lane Brown asked at Vulture in a lengthy reported future about the sad state of exhibition. In our nation’s fine multiplexers, watching movies with experts at a series of New York auditoriums that are among the best in the country supposedly, a brown experienced the gamut of shoddy projection problems.

There were three d filters left on lenses, which reduces the brightness projected on screen by a third. The masking systems that just didn’t Bulwark. There were sagging screens with creases in them, projector bulbs that haven’t been replaced in years. It makes it makes it harder to see the action on screen I could go on and on. Problems are myriad.

As someone who goes to the movie theater more than, conservatively speaking, ninety nine percent of the country. I have to say

We’re the one percent, Sunny.

I am the literal one percent. I I have to concur with brown in a in a in a lot of these cases. Right? The state of projection is just bad. Like, set aside, set aside issues with audiences, the chatterboxes and the oblivious textures.

It’s a separate and pressing problem, but beyond the ability of most theaters to fix Draft House’s aside. The one thing that theaters absolutely have in their power to control is the quality of the image they put on their screen. It is entirely within their power to make sure little things like, say the picture is in focus or that the lens is properly aligned with the screen, so the image isn’t trapezoidal. Right? Those are things that they can do.

The problem is that maintaining quality projection is hard when you’ve gotten rid of all the projection Once upon a time, the projectionist in a movie theater was a skilled position that we as a person with technical skill, a lot of know how, institutional knowledge, A lot of them were even unionized. Right? Projectionists had to understand how to build film for projection. Right? They had to load reels.

They had to ensure that aspect ratios were correct. In some cases, they even had to perform minor surgeries. On the prints themselves, cutting off snippets of film, splicing the reels back together, that sort thing. Just a a quick story about this. You know, Stanley Cupric is kind of known for being legendary persnickety.

Right? But that persnickiness led to an actual record of what it take what it takes to ensure that movies get projected properly. Right? So for instance, in the letter he distributed to projection as for Barry Linden, he insisted that it be projected at one one six six to one and no wider than one seven five to one. Right?

Now these are aspect ratios. One six six to one is a slightly boxier picture than you are used to if you’re watching TV. And you have a sixteen by nine screen. Right? It’s much boxier than cinema scope, which is a two point three five to one aspect ratio.

Neither of which neither of which, anyway, back to back to Barry Linden, one six six and one seven five, neither of these are really standard aspect ratios. They’re they’re they’re slightly different point is he had to pay attention to get it right. He also demanded that no less than fifteen foot landlords of light on the screen be president. And no more than eighteen. You know, I’m just like imagining Kubrick’s right hand man, Leon Vitale, storming into a modern AMC with a light meter and holding it up to the screen to ensure that, you know, the movies there are being shown in the the proper brightness.

I I I gotta be honest. I’ve basically given up on standard screens at your AMC’s, your Regals, your Cinemarks of the world. Okay? I have an Alamo Pass, an Alamo Season Pass for that sort of thing. I go and watch the movies there, and it’s it’s I’m pretty pretty certain that I’m gonna get a good experience.

The IMAX and Dolby systems are a little bit better. They’re still far from perfect. And as one of the nation’s foremost defenders of the theatrical experience, I have to say, I’m kind of annoyed by this. I’m annoyed by this. I’m being made to look foolish by the theaters, by the multiplex operators, and a man in my position cannot be made to look foolish.

Peter, why can’t the theaters get their shit together. So you have one job. This is a you have one job situation, and it’s it’s not being done properly.

I think there are a bunch of reasons, and I would also just push back a little bit on your opening monologue, which suggested that at one point there was some sort of Halcyon days of, like, you know, union and projectionists in which everything worked well. I think that may have been true in some places. But everywhere I have lived for all of my life, projection has been spotty. And so I lived in small markets up until I moved to Washington DC. The biggest place I lived before Washington DC was Lexington, Kentucky.

And I went to the movies a lot starting at a about the age of ten, and I just constantly ran into terrible projection. Issues with sounds not matching up with with the picture. Issues with the picture just obviously being projected onto, you know, like off the screen. Right? Just stuff like that that I noticed even as a kid.

Before I was attuned to things like black levels. Although my parents, like, my mom’s, like, has an art degree and it’s all who would, like, walk out of movies and be like, the contrast in that movie was way off. And I’d be like, what are you talking about, mom? And she’d be like, well, there are darks. Like, the the Bulwark levels are supposed to be, you know, actually black rather than like everything sort of washed out in gray.

And then she’d sort of explain this stuff to me. And so I just don’t feel like I have ever lived in an era where projection was particularly good. I do think there are some new things that have happened or some some things that have happened over the past couple decades. And one is, yes, the projectionist is it was at one point a sort of technical job. But even by the time I started going to see movies in high school, that job had been taken over in most chain theaters by by high school kids by, like, maybe at best you know, a sort of a a local college film major who was kinda interested in this stuff, but being paid essentially nothing.

I knew kids who worked in theaters who knew that the projectionists were twenty year olds who had who didn’t know anything about about how movies were supposed to be projected. So part of it is a is a labor force issue. Just I’m not sure that we’ve ever had a good labor force, at least in small markets, in a point where time where I’ve ever looked. Another thing that’s happened though, and this is something you really see in that vulture piece. Is the profusion of formats.

So we’ve talked about this with, like, with with movies like Avatar. Right? There’s all these formats out there. And one of the things that is that that has come out of that is that when you have three d projectors, for example, three d projectors have reset if you’re gonna show a two d movie because otherwise you end up with a much two dim image. And the perfusion of formats, there’s just so many different ways of projecting a movie right now means that that each time somebody has to go in and look at it and confirm that it is correct.

Another thing is There’s not a person in the theater who is a representative of the theater who is there to judge picture quality, and it’s not even obvious that most theaters have have very many people. Maybe there’s a manager. Maybe there’s one senior projectionist. Most project most theaters just don’t have somebody who can even tell. And that’s the other and that brings me to my last thing is most audience members can’t tell.

This is a like, this is an actual thing that I just don’t think people, like like us, sure to think about that much. We would love for audience members to, like, know and have a deep sense of, like, oh, this is what, like, most audience members cannot tell a especially unless it is really, really obvious that the screen is just being projected off of the, you know, off of that that the projection is going off the screen Ron DeSantis a sound issue that’s really obvious or do the sound is just cutting out, something like that. A washed out image like a a a not light enough image a slightly out of focus image. I think a lot of audience members don’t know, don’t care, and they’re looking at their phones anyway. Now, see, I think I think this is wrong in in a

I mean, I think this is right in the specific sense that they could not articulate why what they are seeing is wrong. I think this is actually wrong. I think audiences go to these movies and understand something is wrong. They understand that the image is not correct, that they are they are seeing something that a subpar that they should not be experiencing and then say to themselves, why would I bother? Why, you know, I can go home and I watch something on my four k.

It’s better than this. I do think audiences subconsciously understand that what they are seeing is inferior. And even if they can’t, even if they can’t, that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. You say that the the theaters don’t have anybody who is checking a movie when the movie starts.

That’s you’re right, probably. There there isn’t somebody who is their a quality check every time a movie starts rolling, and that’s a problem. That is a real problem that theater should work to fix. I understand times are tight. I understand stand.

So many of these theaters are more interested in selling.

But that’s

been true for them. They’re they’re Applebee’s. They’re they’re they’re an Applebee’s with a movie theater screen attack. To it. Right?

I understand that to a certain extent. But the that doesn’t change the fact that, again, they are there for a very specific purpose, which is to show films on a large screen to paying customers. And if that is your job, if that is the job of your business, then you need to have somebody who was in sureing that each of those screenings goes off correctly. I don’t know. Maybe I’m maybe I’m crazy here.

Alyssa, what what was your take away from the story?

Look, I think that both of you are actually correct in that I think there are probably a fair number of audiences who don’t grasp the finer distinctions of what’s being projected or not projected correctly on their screens. But I think Sunny is probably correct that folks sense on some level that this is not a premium experience. And I think the lack of attention to the basic thing that they’re supposed to be delivering is part of the degradation of the movie Go A experience sort of broadly over time. At a time, when prices have escalated to the extent that, you know, a date night out to the movies, especially, you know, when you factor in babysitting, a, you know, a family out into the movies is a fairly expensive commitment for people. And the product that you get at the vast majority of movie houses does not feel like a premium product.

Right? It doesn’t feel like a premium product in that the food is not very good. It’s, you know, such law it’s, you know, the food is terrible in such large portions and so expensive. The, you know, the projection is not good. We’ve talked about, you know, the fact that places just aren’t consistently even clean on a level that feels nice to go to.

And, you know, to you know, if you cannot respect the specific thing that you’re supposed to be delivering or any of the wraparound experiences. But then your industry is also going out and selling this as a premium sort of artistic experience. There is a disjoint there that even audiences who aren’t terribly sophisticated are absolutely going to grasp. Right? I mean, you know, maybe you don’t care if there’s like a little bit of spillover on the edges, but you notice that it’s happening and you notice that, like, you didn’t really get enough butter in your popcorn and oh, god.

Somebody left a wrapper under the seat and like half the bathrooms are out of order. Right? And, you know, it’s It’s like the, you know, it’s the broken screen’s theory of the moviegoing experience. If you let the core product go and then you let everything else around it go, people will notice and they will stop buying your argument that this is something that is special. You know?

I mean, that I I enjoy I wanna connect with people when I go to the movies, but, like, the places that I prefer to connect with people don’t generally have, like, sticky floors. Right? You know, if I’m gonna pay my nanny to stay late with the kids and go to a movie with my husband, like, I want that to be a nice experience overall. And, you know, if if I’m not getting that, you know, people aren’t gonna move away whether or not they feel, you know, super affected by the details of the projection. And so I think it’s just you know, if you let the core product go, nothing else really matters.

And it sends the signal that nothing else really matters.

I I agree with that. And I I will just relate this back to my other sort of hobby, which is a cocktails and bartending. And one of my favorite craft cocktail bartender geniuses runs a bar in New York that I won’t name because I don’t wanna bring this person into Secret Podcast. But it’s just like a great great bar who is like a drinks genius. And he says that when he started in the bar business, he thought that the the real thing was that we wanted to make great drinks.

And that’s what mattered. And he was said he eventually realized, like, well, great drinks will, like, matter to some extent, but what matters is the customer experience. And the overall feeling that, like, this is high quality and that this, you know, sort of, that this is that this is premium and that there’s some prestige to it. And that’s true in a lot of ways. And if you like a great drink, I think great drinks matter a watch, but I think for a lot of people

— Right.

— like, it’s the drinks are actually in some ways less important. What matters is just sort of the overall experience. That said, most of my favorite cocktail bars, it’s do test every single drink that they send out and we do not see something similar in the world of theatrical projection.

Yeah. You have if If you have contempt for the thing that you’re selling, how would you expect anyone else to have respect for it or have love for it?

Part of this, again, part of this gets back to a a labor question. Right? And so the way theaters basically operate now is that the the the projectors are all essentially run from centralized hubs somewhere else. You you have people in the in the theatres who, you know, can change a bulb or can wipe it wipe down a projector or can, you know, move a three d filter on and off, and that’s about it. That’s like the extent of the the work that they can do on it, which in turn, I think, leads to a situation where part of the reason why IMAX and Dolby and the rest are so popular now.

I think it’s not simply because of the size screen. And not simply because of the quality of the speakers though, I think those two things are very important. The the the real benefit of those screens is that you are essentially always going to get a the proper experience because IMAX and Dolby have their names out there. They’re they are branded as you come here, you’re gonna get a premium experience and we are paying attention to every screen everywhere in the world where we have somebody we we have somebody, you know, watching a movie. I mean, like, I I remember talking to somebody who worked at IMAX once.

And he was like, we get an alert if the brightness level drops ten percent on a ball. We know when something is gone wrong. We know when the whiteness levels aren’t right on the screen. We know we know when things need to be taken care of. Now look, even then, it’s not a hundred percent guaranteed.

I I I mentioned this in my my newsletter this week, but I I went to see God, what was I went to go see a ghost in the show, the live action ghost in the show back in my two thousand seventeen, sought at the Georgetown Dolby Atmos. Arguably the nicest single nicest screen in the city depending on how you want to measure. At the time. At the time. Arguably, the single nicest screen in in all of Washington DC at the time.

And I realized something was off about ten minutes into the movie because subtitles were getting cut off. Subtitles were getting cut off. Sure enough it was being projected in the wrong aspect ratio. It was being projected in the wrong aspect ratio on the nicest theater in Washington DC. And I thought to my and I and I I should have out and told somebody in the in the booth area, but I didn’t I didn’t wanna get up and miss anything.

I was reviewing it. I just sat there and took it. I went back to that same exact theater three months later. To see atomic blonde, also at the the Georgetown AMC Dolby Atmos Theatre. And some of a bitch It was in the wrong aspect ratio again.

It was in it it had been in the wrong aspect ratio possibly for three straight months. Without anybody saying anything. And like I I I lost I I I went out to the I went out to the I went out the previews were playing, I went out. I was like, you guys gotta fix this projector. It’s you’re you’re projecting it in the wrong aspect ratio I’m telling you.

The the the MPAA previews are cut off at the bottom. If you go and you look at whatever the specs are, you’re you’re projecting it wrong. I promise you. And the guy looked at me very skeptically. He’s like, okay, sir.

We’ll go we’ll go check. Anyone

attack? Yeah.

And I go I go back to my seat and I sit down and, like, two minutes later, the screen, like, flips black and then flips to a different aspect ratio, still the wrong aspect ratio, flips to another aspect ratio, that’s the right one. And movie after that plays perfectly, plays in plays in the proper whatever whatever the aspect ratio for atomic law did in Dolby Atmos was. And as I was coming out of the theater after the movie ended, the guy flagged me down. He was like, how could you tell? How could I tell that it was right?

What? And I was just I like I died a little inside. I died a little inside that day because it

You should’ve just been, like, you know, I just know. I

would I mean, it was but it but this is, like, this is the absolute stay of things in so many theaters. And it’s it’s a real it is a real problem. Again, I this is why I just go to the Elmo Drafthouse in in Dallas now because it’s much easier, you know, you have them in DC. You’re never gonna get something like that. And the problem is that there’s not an alkyl draft in every city.

I mean, like, every every city is not is it does not necessarily have something better than an AMC or a Regal. It’s a problem. It’s a problem for theaters. I’m sorry, slash slash rant Ron DeSantis. I’ll stop now.

We can move to the exit question, but it drives me bonkers. So it drives me bonkers.

Sony. Sunny. Sony. Sony. Sony.

Have you ever, like, spent, like, twenty minutes trying to adjust the aspect ratio on a hotel television because it annoyed you. Because

I just don’t I just don’t watch. Just don’t watch TV on it. I don’t I literally will not turn on a TV in a hotel. I’ll I’ll watch something on my laptop but not on on a hotel TV because there’s a ninety percent chance that motion smoothing will be on, you you won’t be able to change the aspect ratios. I’m just I don’t I don’t even bother.

I would rather die than deal with that I would rather watch something on my phone. I’d rather watch Tennant on my phone held above my head than deal with that nonsense. Alright. Sorry. This is this is gone on too long.

Alright. What do we think? Is the controversy or controversy? The theaters are are really just often so bad at their one actual job, Peter. It’s the worst.

It’s not even a controversy. It just makes me mad. Alyssa. It’s

whatever the cinematic equivalent of a Shanda for the Goyam is. For non Jewish listeners of this podcast. A shout out for The Goiem is basically someone or something that shames like, Jews collectively in front of gentiles. And yeah. This is this is that.

I don’t okay. I don’t know what any of that. I I feel very I’m a very trick just dance around that entirely because I don’t I don’t feel comfortable. No. I it’s a controversy.

It’s insane to me. It isn’t it drives it drives me. Absolutely bonkers. That this is not a thing that is taken care of on a granular level in every theater. The fact that not every theater has a me in it going from screen to screen and making sure things are being projected just in the right aspect ratio.

Leave everything else aside drives me insane. Alright. Make sure to swing by Bulwark Bulwark Plus this week. On Friday, we’re gonna have a bonus episode discussing an Oscar snub. No.

Not for an individual award, not for an individual actor or an actress, but a whole category of awards. Why don’t stunt performances get more love from the awards groups? We’ll talk we’ll discuss that in more on Friday. And now on to the main event, creed three, a k a Rocky nine, hit theaters this weekend and did some pretty solid business. It just destroyed projections earning about fifty eight million dollars in its first weekend.

That’s roughly two thirds higher than was expected. People can’t get enough of a Donna’s creed. It seems, Donna’s who was played by Michael b Jordan, He is the bastard son of Apollo Creed. The boxer brutally killed by Ivan Drago way back in nineteen eighty five’s Rocky four. Over the creed series we’ve seen as his name was first to hindrance.

Right? His adopted mother, Apollo’s wife. I didn’t want him to fight. She banned him from training with any of the LA gyms, so he had to go out affiliate get training from from Rocky Balboa as Sylvester Stallone. And then his name is a help because he gets his title shot solely because his last name is creed.

And he had spent the whole movie being like, no, I gotta make it on my own. I’m I’m not not on my last name. And then they’re like, here’s a title fight. We just need your last name. He’s like Deal.

I’m in. I’m in. In Cree too, he earned another huge payday because of his name. He was fighting another guy who had another very famous name, Victor Drago, son of Ivan. Soviet outcast.

And in Creed three, Creed three is the first film in this whole series in which Rocky does not make even an appearance. There was a contractual dispute between Stallone and the producer, which kept the Italian stallion at home. So this is just a Donas baby. We’re just it’s the first time we’re really just getting seeing him on his own, do his own thing. It’s it’s all about him.

And I gotta be honest with you guys, he’s he’s kind of a dick. He’s kind of a dick. Look, here’s the setup. Adonis has retired from boxing, having lost just once in his career. He’s moved over to promotion where his prize fighter in his gym is gonna go up against Victor Draggo.

Enter Damien, Damien, Anderson, who’s played by Jonathan Majors, he’s a childhood friend who went to prison when he pulled the gun on some guys who were beating up Adonis. Dame is finally out. He wants a shot at the title. And following a barroom brawl that leaves Victor unable to fight, Dane gets his chance against Adonis’s golden boy and proudly beats him, he takes the belts. And then he starts insulting Adonis in front of everyone.

And then and then they get in a fight. Right? Adonis must defeat Damien to reclaim his honor, and you could probably guess that goes because this is a boxing movie. Now look, here’s the thing. Alright.

Adonis, I just wanna I wanna I wanna spell this out for people because the movie really tries to gloss over it. Adonis is setting up his friend, the guy who went to prison for him for two decades to get his ass kicked. In front of an international audience just so he doesn’t miss out on a pay per view payday. Adonis also through his own fighter into the ring under prepared against the guy who is just out there trying to hurt people and is just trying to destroy the world. And nothing Adonis does in this movie like to Damon who he abandoned and ignored in prison or or his own fighter who he is again just kind of like screwing over with this title shot.

Is honorable. He’s like he has become Don King. He is the Don King of the series now. And the movie is clearly at war with itself here because it it wants us to love a Don It really wants us to love a Donna’s and I like a Donna’s. Michael b Jordan, he’s great actor.

He’s very charming. He’s got a lot of personality. I I wanna cheer for him. But he’s such a classic Nevo baby. He’s this guy who gets all the chances because of his name and resents having that thrown in his face and is just screwing people over all the time.

I I don’t know. I don’t know. Anyway, I had a great time with this film. I I do. I’m I’m throwing all this out there.

I still really enjoyed it. It’s a fun crowd pleasing picture. Michael b Jordan is the director here. It’s his directorial debut. His influences here are less the stallone entries in the series and more like video games or anime.

There’s a moment early on where he is pinpointing a fighter’s weak points. You can almost see like the video game focus meter kick in. And then he’s he, like, delivers the death blow and, like, knocks the guy out. It’s it’s kind of funny. And then the closing fight is is it’s actually unlike anything else we’ve seen in the series.

That’s far. It’s very expressionistic. It’s less realistic. It’s very very kind of art house. It’s a it’s welcome change of pace, I think.

There’s only so many you can do the We’re shooting a boxing match, and it’s a real fight sort of thing. I don’t know. I like the movie. It’s fine. I I do find the whole NEPO baby angle here to be very interesting, but apparently, I’m the only one.

I don’t know. Alyssa, what did you make of it?

So I texted I think I saw this before either of you, and I texted both of you that men would rather contend for the world heavyweight title than go to therapy. And then rewatch creative and creed two before this podcast and realize there’s actually a scene inquiry to where Adonis is like working out of the bag right after winning his his world title and he’d already have an actual conversation about how it’s cheaper to, like, hit things than to go to therapy. So I feel vindicated. I did not love this movie. And I really I was someone who is hugely skeptical of the entire enterprise.

I was very disappointed that this is what Kugler and Michael B. Jordan were doing with their time, and then just completely loved create, really liked create too as well. And I agree with Sunny that I think this movie has a real sort of hero problem. And more than that, it’s sort of it’s a vision of justice. It’s very strange.

The idea that, like so Damien is this person who, you know, came out of this incredibly brutal group home or he had a Thomas were living, did not get rescued by, like, a rich lady from Beverly Hills. Was completely like, the movie again sort of suggests that, you know, the reason that Adonis didn’t check up on him or ever visit him in prison is because you know, his surrogate mother or, like, his Damien’s letters, but, like, he never checked up on his friend in prison. He comes out, you know, sort of uses the guy as a punching bag. And then justice is supposed to be that, like, he, you know, knocks this guy out and humiliates him and probably ruins him. Right?

I mean, you know, it’s not like one title is going to make Damian, like, financially secure or, you know, there’s there’s no there are no questions here about, like, per role or, like, how a parole officer would feel about him, like, getting involved in professional boxing. It’s, like and so crude, like, knocks out and humiliates his own friend, and then they, like, go visit each other in the locker room and everyone’s, like, we good. Okay. I’ll be around if you need me. And it’s vision of justice is really weird.

Right? I mean and part of what’s strange about it is that there maybe sort of glosses over what’s I think it’s supposed to be sort of an extended period of time where Damian is, like, trash talking Adonis and blick and insulting his masculinity and, you know, talking about, like, how, you know, their past together And we never see any of that happen except for Damien calling in to, you know, a TV hit, and we don’t really see the cumulative effect of it. On Adonis. Right? Like, in a weird way, the movie deals with Adonis’s feelings about retiring and sort of unresolved shoes around sort of his father and his reputation through Bianca more so than, like, anything else that we see

Bianca brings his the one

thing on screen. Right? Like, Bianca has given up performing because she’s trying to preserve what’s left of her hearing as long she can. Like, they’ve had these sort of parallel career tracks, and we see her reckon with that, you know, and talk to Damien about it. More than Adonis ever does.

And, you know, the franchise as a whole has never you know, and I think structurally, it can’t pause it a future where Adonis fully moves on from boxing and, like, gets emotionally healthy. Right? Because then he wouldn’t be getting in the ring anymore. And, you know, a movie and part of what’s a bummer about that is, like, you do get the sort of steps towards emotional maturity in the previous two movies. Right?

Like, Rocky agrees to go through chemotherapy despite the fact that he doesn’t think it’s gonna work because Adonis basically who makes him do it, but like he gets healthy and like takes care of himself and sort of lives on despite the fact that everyone he loved is gone. In this I mean, this in the second movie, the real emotional peak is I’ve been throwing in the towel on behalf of son and protecting his son in a way that like Rocky didn’t do for Apollo creed back in the day and realizing that like preserving his son’s like life and ability is more important than this particular vendetta. And create three doesn’t have a moral step forward like that. For Adonis in a way that I think makes it feel just much less emotionally resonant and sort of like, morally and ethically weaker than the previous movies in this trilogy. And I’m, like, sorry, I hate of the staging of the third fight.

I mean, that To a certain extent that I thought it didn’t work at all. I thought it took. I thought it just sapped all of the sort of emotional tension out of the seat. I thought it looked cheesy. I did not work for me.

I I can understand that. No. I mean, I I I I still think the best you mentioned the the arc with Victor and Ivan Drago in the second movie. I still think the the best arc in the whole in the whole series. The it’s the thing that is the most emotionally resonant in this in this whole series.

I mean, I I think I I really think that Cree three would have been stronger if they just leaned into Adonis being a real villain. Because I like, he’s just he’s just that bad he’s a bad friend and a bad guy in this movie. Nothing he does is is looking out for anybody but himself. It’s it’s really weird. Also,

can I just say as a lady if I discovered that, like, my husband and the father of my child had concealed significant material facts about his life for me and was behaving the way Adonis was and wouldn’t go to therapy, we would have had some serious problems? Well,

I mean, I would still I still I agree with your text. A man would rather fight for the heavyweight title than go to therapy. And that’s only reasonable. Peter, would you agree or disagree with that?

Yeah. I mean, I I think that’s the point of the movie, but I’m I I liked it better than Alyssa because I’m unironically just kind of agree with that. I like I’m not much of a boxing fan or sports fan generally, but I I do like boxing movies because they’re all kind of In some sense, they’re always about male rage and identity issues. Right? Is this Rocky?

It’s raging bull? It’s if you remember Antoine Fuqua’s south paw with Jake Gyllenhaal from, I don’t know, five, six years ago. Right? And and so what you get in creed three is this kind of goopy melodrama. About a crisis of masculinity and about what it means to be man and have man feelings, which is, you know, all feelings, which feelings you don’t know what to do with.

They’re confusing because feelings are always confusing. Right? There’s literally a scene in in creed three in which he’s talking to his wife, and he’s like, you’re always better with the the feelings. He’s like, you can’t even, like, say the word. Because he’s just so totally not in touch with any of that.

And and what the movie then sort of posits is, well, like dealing with your feelings means doing push ups and punching stuff and like running in the heat and just getting out of your head until you can’t think anymore. And I think that’s that’s not gonna be satisfying to a certain type of person. And in some ways, like, you we could argue with the sort of the the psychological critical healthiness of that. But there is actually something realistic even if this is sort of cartoony and sort of melodramatic. Right?

In in the way that it kind of gets it how a lot of dudes just don’t know what to do with their feelings except to exercise them physically. And I will just tell a personal story here, which was that I recently spent a weekend with a bunch of old guy friends, all of whom are about forty years old. We’ve known each other for a very long time. And at one point, we were just talking about like, what do you do when you’re like stressed? And tool one, every single one of them was just like, well, I I have some sort of routine.

It was just, like, karate and golf and, like, all these other like, physical thing that they do just to get themselves out of their head to sort of burn through whatever that energy is. And like that’s a thing that guys do and it’s real. And this movie is The movie has, like, some problems, I think, just as a movie, just in in the the story, is, like, it’s it is quite underwritten. And in particular, Dave’s story and background and what is happening to Dave off screen, there’s just not nearly enough there. So, like, he’s living in a crappy it’s, you know, not quite not even a studio apartment and then he wins a fight and he’s in a a much nicer place and there’s a girl with him He’s got a posse.

Like, send him somehow, like, if you win a fight, you get a posse immediately. And they they’ll, like, kill it for you. I guess, I don’t know how that works. I guess, I’m not again, I’m not much of a Like, I’m not into boxing. Oh,

so Where

does he get the money to hire someone to, like, do a hit on Ivan Drago? Right? Well,

let me well, no. Those were right. Like, Well, so those were those were his boys from prison. We

that’s

we we see the we see the picture. Remember? That

that’s right. That’s

right. The the guy who got the hit from prison. Boys. They guy who says they hit on Andrago is is his boy from prison. Are

the other guys? That’s right. If

the whole crew, do they all get released at the exact time?

The beach party. Yeah. That beach that beach seat is is is hilarious because he is like, Dave really is basically the Joker in this movie. Yeah. It’s like it’s like all he has this he has this incredibly convoluted plan that all works perfectly.

And then we cut him and he’s got like a whole gang around him. Yeah. And he’s he’s got like a fancy apartment and it’s and he’s calling into talk shows and being like, I challenge the Batman to a fight. Okay. And it’s like, it’s amazing.

It’s it’s really careful. But

can I

oh, sorry? Go ahead.

Yeah. No. No. I just wanted to go back to sort of what you were saying personally. Have I talk to you guys about my grandfather and, like, why I have trouble with boxing movies.

I

don’t think so. I don’t think so.

Apologies that you have that we’ve forgotten. Yeah. I don’t know.

Yeah. No. No. No. So my grandfather on my mother’s side, was like a an amateur boxer and was blinded in one of his eyes, boxing.

And suffered really serious depression later in his life that I assume is, like, partially attributable to getting hit a lot. And I have, you know, I have very sort of tender memories. I mean, he was a wonderful grandfather to me. But I think really struggled in a lot of ways. And I I remember that, you know, one of my most intense physical memories of him is that blinded eye.

And I, you know, I have

a

really hard time watching the scenes in boxing movies because of that. And I have a hard time, you know I mean, he was not obviously not boxing when I was like alive and remembered any of this. But I I think for me, having stallone in the previous movie. Is this someone who sort of Ron DeSantis, like, the physical toll of that? Was an anchor for me in those movies.

And the scene where Duke would Harris’ character is sort of going over with Adonis, just like the catalog of his sort of serious injuries and the toll that’s taken on this body. And, like, the risk of that wasn’t some ways to be the most affecting scene in the movie because, to a certain extent, like, I I have lived with some knowledge of what that’s like without the payday at the glamour and the, like, famous wife and the legacy.

You

know, I mean, I wouldn’t, you know, my grandfather was not a ruined person. He was, you know, my mother he was wonderful. My mother he was wonderful to me and my sister But I really I really struggle with the violence of it of these movies and the presentation of that like, a healthy way to, like, get your man’s healings out. Because the vast majority of people who box are not gonna get any of the rewards. Like, getting hit a lot just has consequences.

And, you know, I I think it is to the credit of the first couple movies in this franchise and to just like the incredible charisma of Michael B. Jordan, the great work of Jonathan Majors, who I just I love to see on screen even when he drives him even in movies that largely drives me bananas like — Yep. — quantum mania did, that I have found these movies like sort of watchable. And in some cases even rewatchable and really engaging. But yeah, just speaking personally, like, they they are hard for me.

And Yeah. It’s it’s just it’s always interesting to watch them having seen a very different side of that sport.

Yeah. I can I can definitely imagine that? And that is in fact well, so obviously I don’t have the personal experience, but the the level of violence is one reason why I’m not a fan of actual boxing and it’s different for me watching in a in a movie like this where I know that it’s staged and that it’s not that it’s not threatening anyone in the same way. But but I’m not a big fan of of boxing in part because like, guys punching each other actually does not seem like a particularly good way of of working things out, you know, at the same time. What I think this movie gets at, what I think this series gets at is this way that dudes will will work out their issues by turning off their brains and and by max maxing out their bodies.

You’re maxing out their bodies to turn their brains.

And — Yeah. —

it puts that it puts that on screen in a way that I think is recognizable to a lot of guys even if they’re not actually punching stuff. I mean, again, I, you know, I have a couple of friends who who play golf. And it’s and, like, you would think that golf is, like, not like, I know really, like, intense focus. You know, a physical thing for for people who take it seriously. But it’s that thing that you don’t often see on screen in a way that is yeah.

At some I don’t know superhero movies or something, which, like, doesn’t really make make the case for this sort of thing.

Do I interview your guys friends like toe light aircraft with their shoulders?

Not that I know. I will say. Would say my friends who actually do fight and train for fighting, hated some of the things in this movie like that, the punching the trees, which is like something got a martial arts, like a a, you know, Japanese martial arts epic or

Oh, so what did the tree do to you? Like,

come on, man? You just gotta you just gotta punch something sometimes. I’ll be in the trunk with that and say that I I really enjoy watching boxing and MMA and that sort of thing. I I am pro watching dudes way alone each other. There’s a lot of skill involved.

I enjoy watching skill I I enjoy watching people at the top of their game perform skilled violence. Against one another. That’s

It’s not violence. It’s about focus and control, Sunny. That’s what we learned from this movie.

Right. It’s well, it’s like saying like Poker is not gambling. It’s about probability in reading player. That’s all true. Kind of.

Alright. So what do we think? Thumbs up or thumbs

down on creed three, Peter. Thumbs up. This is not a great movie, but it’s an enjoyable one.

Alyssa. Like, with all my stipulations aside, I’d still say, like, a mile comes up.

Thumbs up. It’s fun. I enjoyed this whole NAPO franchise. It’s it’s great. Alright.

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