Creed: The Essence of Family
Exploring the father-son relationship between Adonis Creed and Rocky Balboa.
The first Creed follows Adonis Creed, Apollo Creed’s love child, as he trains with Rocky Balboa to prove that “he’s not a mistake” to himself. Adonis has no biological family to speak of; Apollo died before Adonis was born and his mother followed shortly thereafter. Adonis was ultimately discovered and taken out of juvenile detention and raised by Apollo’s magnanimous wife, Mary Anne Creed. Much to Mary’s chagrin, Apollo’s passion for boxing transferred to Adonis, who leaves his cushy LA finance job at the beginning of the movie to become a professional boxer in Philadelphia. After some cajoling, Rocky agrees to train Adonis and the two become surrogate father and son.
Like Broker1 , Creed is fundamentally a story about family. When Rocky is diagnosed with early stage lymphoma. Rocky initially denies chemotherapy because he feels like everything good in his life is behind him; he’s lost his best friends Apollo, Paulie, and his beloved wife Adrian years ago and his boxing career is behind him. He feels like he has nothing and nobody left to live for, explaining to Adonis:
Everything I got has moved on. And I’m here. But, you know what? It’s OK because I said to myself, “If I break, or I’m hurt, or whatever, I ain’t gonna fix it. Why bother?”
Adonis raises an obvious challenge to Rocky’s defeatist attitude: Rocky has him.
And I’m just some bum just living in your crib; just nothing?
Rocky praises Adonis for being a “good kid” and a “great fighter” but reiterates that his legacy lies behind him “in the back, in the past.” Most painfully—and this is where I began to (fail to) stifle tears—he clarifies his relationship to Adonis as purely professional:
I am to you just an old trainer. We’re not a real family. That was just in our heads, kid.
But it wasn’t just in their heads; Adonis and Rocky mend their father-son relationship and struggle together to win their respective fights in the ring and against cancer. While they’re not biological related, Rocky is as real a father to Adonis as Mary is his mom: absolutely. Immediately after the boxing match, Adonis thanks “[his] family,” i.e., Rocky, his coaches, and his girlfriend Bianca, for all their support. As in Broker, the audience is shown that kinship is not an essential quality of familial love but a secondary one.
The film ends with Adonis helping his father spiritually triumph in his battle against cancer by motivating him while he summits the famous steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. While neither Rocky nor Adonis win their specific bouts, they attain an even greater victory than physical health or a boxing title: self-esteem, belonging, hope, and love.