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>Who could have imagined that Sylvester Stallone’s 1976 Rocky – the most shamelessly sentimental boxing movie of them all — would inspire a black-liberation saga like the new movie Creed? After all, Rocky gave post–Civil Rights America the great white hope that Vietnam War draft-resister and heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali had made unthinkable.
>Rocky’s contrived innocence works like a charm in Creed. That delicious title brings a statement of belief, rules of behavior, and a sense of civilized faith back to our jaded pop and political culture — and in the unlikeliest figure. A fatherless black boy, Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan), trapped in systemic detention gets his shot at becoming the heavyweight champion of the world. He’s the son of Apollo Creed, the bodacious, Ali-like boxing champ (played by Carl Weathers) to whom Rocky plausibly and ingeniously lost — although Rocky would win movie immortality.
>Adonis answers the dissatisfaction lurking beneath the Rocky fantasies — the Hollywood fairy tale that seemed more out of reach the further America’s working class sank into an urban underclass. But if you think Adonis’s story won’t interest you, or fear that it’s selling more of the usual race-blame that the contemporary media now use to commandeer liberal consent (and condescension) among blacks and whites alike, you underestimate the enduring appeal of Stallone’s conceit (last put to use in the movie Grudge Match).
>It has taken two generations for Rocky to translate its own mythology through the evolution of pop-culture trends that include movies intersecting with pop music, both reflecting their historical and social contexts. Credit for this goes to Stallone’s personal largesse, but the startlingly satisfying story in Creed results from Coogler and Jordan’s astonishing cultural engagement. The three of them, together, have made the most American American movie this year.

Best Picture oscar when?