10 Movies That Had The Balls To Do It Better (AND WANTED YOU TO KNOW)
5. Creed
From one Creed family to another now, with Rocky spin-off Creed, focused on the ascent of the late Apollo Creed's (Carl Weathers) son Adonis (Michael B. Jordan).
Early on, Donnie visits Rocky's (Sylvester Stallone) restaurant and asks him about training him, to which Rocky is immediately heavily resistant, mentioning that he's been down that road and doesn't do it anymore.
This is one of the series' few passing references to its single maligned entry, Rocky V, where Rocky trained a protégé, Tommy Gunn (Tommy Morrison), who Rocky ultimately ended up battling in a street fight.
With Rocky briefly nodding towards his disastrous past as a trainer, this felt like the movie quickly assuring fans that no such nonsense would abound this time, before Creed indeed offered up an infinitely superior riff on the notion of Rocky training another up-and-coming fighter.
Basically, the movie is acutely aware, as we all are, that Rocky V blows, and wasn't going to fall into the same melodramatic traps.