Creed II Review: 6 Ups & 3 Downs

2. Tessa Thompson's Expanded Role

One of the few qualms about the first Creed was how utterly perfunctory Tessa Thompson's Bianca seemed to the overall narrative.

Rather than just go the whole hog and make her "the new Adrian", she seemed like a bit of an afterthought, as though a studio exec insisted that the film needed a love interest to spice things up a bit.

Thankfully Thompson has a decidedly more expanded role in the sequel, and though she also gets saddled with some of the aforementioned hokey melodrama, she mostly serves a stronger storytelling purpose this time around.

She is effectively Adonis' ballast and grounding force, attempting to pull him back from the brink when his lack of self-regard becomes too much.

Thompson nails the concern brilliantly, and while the role of long-suffering wife and mother is hardly a progressive one, she carries it out with absolute dignity.