Creed Soars with Critics, Lands an A Cinemascore

Creed is really the biggest surprise of Oscar season, 2015. Even though we wrote about it being as much back in September, still it’s surprising to see how many critics are praising Ryan Coogler’s entertaining, moving film. Why Creed works so well? It could be a film on its own without any dependence on or attachment to the Rocky myth. Creed landed an A Cinemascore, which was expected — there are two bonafide crowdpleasers released so far this year — The Martian and Creed. Both films might bridge the gap between the ever-increasing insular world of Oscar voters and the ticket buying public. The end to that story is still waiting to be told. Either way, Ryan Coogler will be having a happy Thanksgiving, without a doubt.

TIME’s Stephanie Zacharek on Creed:

Ryan Coogler’s film has an unexpected grace that makes it much more than just a Rocky reboot

Sometimes when a movie does everything right, you don’t even think about how wrong it could have gone until after it’s over. Creed, out Nov. 25, could have gone wrong in so many ways.

Directed by Ryan Coogler—whose deft 2013 debut, Fruitvale Station, chronicled the last day of Oscar Grant III before he was fatally shot by a BART police officer in Oakland—Creed introduces us to the illegitimate son of heavyweight champ Apollo Creed, who first bounded into the ring in the 1976 underdog hit Rocky. In a movie landscape littered with resuscitated franchises, this runs the risk of being just more of the same. Like Rocky, a smash that spawned 1,000 sequels (or so it seems), Creed mingles go-for-broke romance with bloody pugilist thrills—but instead of feeling like a rehash, it works like gangbusters. Coogler honors and builds upon the Rocky formula so that it feels both comfortingly old-fashioned and bracingly new. Audiences instantly adored Rocky, for good reason—it’s a great date movie, and Creed is too. You won’t have to be a lover-not-a-fighter to love it.

And the New York Times’ AO Scott writes:

A boxing movie without clichés is like a political campaign without lies. “Creed,” directed by Ryan Coogler from a script he wrote with Aaron Covington, is self-aware without being cute about it. In the movie as in the world beyond it, Rocky is part of the cultural tapestry. Everyone in Philadelphia knows him. There’s even a statue! But Mr. Coogler, a 29-year-old filmmaker whose debut was “Fruitvale Station” (also starring Mr. Jordan), looks at the Rocky story and the tradition of Hollywood pugilism through a fresh prism.

“Rocky” was the story of a Great White Hope, and also a fable for an era of racial backlash. Apollo Creed, played by Carl Weathers, was the heavy in that movie, and Rocky was the noble underdog. Later, they set aside their differences and faced a common Soviet enemy as the series turned its attention to Cold War geopolitics. By then, Apollo was the sidekick and the sacrificial friend, an injustice that “Creed,” by its very title, seeks to redress.

And the Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern on Sly:

Mr. Stallone is affecting not only as Rocky, but as Sylvester Stallone taking on, yet again, the Rocky character. I’d love to quote from his long meditation on mortality, but the scene is too good to spoil with so much as an excerpted sentence. And if ever you were moved by the series, in spite of or indeed because of its manipulativeness, you’ll be moved yet again by the moment when the young boxer and his venerable trainer climb those 72 steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, one man moving briskly and the other very slowly, but with a determination that doesn’t need, and doesn’t get, a triumphalist anthem.