Awesome / Creed (2015)

• The first half of the trailer seems like a fairly generic underdog movie. Then Adonis starts talking about his father Apollo and Sylvester Stallone steps out of the shadows, and you suddenly realize this is a Rocky movie.
• The trailer's opening scene, with Adonis psyching himself up by punching the wall before heading out to the ring, with Ryan Coogler's stark, dramatic direction making quite an impact.
  • The fight being showcased becomes this and a Establishing Character Moment for Adonis and his skills; it turns out that Donnie flew down to Mexico over the weekend from his regular, white collar job, and flattened his opponent before returning home. We later find out he's done this 15 previous times.
• After quitting his job, we see Adonis return to his family's mansion and sit in the screening room. He turns on the TV and plays the second fight between his father and Rocky. Adonis gets up from the couch and proceeds to perfectly mimic everything his father does.
• The first official professional fight of Adonis's career against Leo "The Lion" Sporino, who's an Olympic level boxer and no push over. The entire fight is a perfectly executed example of The Oner, and Adonis's victory wins him the acclaim needed to make the final fight happen.
• Conlan's trainer/promoter chewing Conlan out when Conlan doesn't want to fight Adonis. His Trainer reminding Conlan all the reasons why he has to do it, the gun possession charges, him blowing a guarantee payday for not only him, but for his family, when Conlan expresses concern over his legacy and how he wants to be remembered, Conlan's promoter tells Conlan that the only thing the he cares about is Conlan's kids being financially secure and having a roof over their heads when their father eventually has to go to prison.
  Conlan: I don't want to be remembered like this.
  Conlan's Trainer: I don't care how you're remembered, I care about your kids having a roof over their heads when you're done. Do you understand?
• The latter portion of Adonis's second training montage, which is, of course, a Call-Back to Rocky's famous run through the Philly streets during his own montage, capping it off with Adonis and some local four-wheeler riders and bikers saluting the Italian Stallion.
• The final fight, where Adonis proves himself worthy of the Creed name and gives the soon-to-be-jailed champion a final fight with someone he can identify as a Worthy Opponent.
  • After being disrespected with a late jab by the contemptuous Conlan, Donnie comes back in the second round with a series of good punches and combinations, and the round ends with a stare-down between the opponents; no illegal hits, no cheap shots, just two fighters sizing each other up.
  • All through the fight you have Rocky slowly starting to channel Mickey's pep talking style; especially the bit where he tells him that he loves him in the same manner Mickey would have said to him, and when he straight up tells him to knock Conlan's head off his shoulders and bust through him.
  • Conlan lands a vicious punch in the 11th, vicious enough to not just send Donnie flat, but enough that he seems to honestly lose consciousness. Then Donnie flashes to the film of his father's Rocky fight, and - as described by one of the commentators - rises like a man possessed. Everyone is shocked, including Conlan, who was celebrating his presumed victory and is now giving Donnie the closest thing he has to an Oh, Crap! look.
    • The way Donnie goes from horizontal to vertical in a second is pretty stunning, considering how his mentor, famous for his cast iron jaw, often struggled to rise from the mat.
    • Just as the defining moment of Stallone's Rocky is getting up after getting knocked down in the 14th round in his fight with Apollo, so too is getting up from being knocked down the defining moment of Jordan's Adonis. Particularly when he has flashbacks of what happened in the movie leading up to the knockdown before he springs right back up after seeing a vision of his father fighting Balboa, as if he was encouraging his son from beyond the grave.
    • What's more, Sylvester Stallone reveals in The Tonight Show that the knockdown was a real one that involved Michael B. Jordan moving his head towards an actual hard-hitting punch from a world champion professional boxer. Sly calls it the "Dead Man Walking" scene.
  • The windup to the 12th and final round, when the original notes of "Gonna Fly Now" flare up.
  • Following that; the entirety of the final round is fought to a rousing combination of both Adonis' new theme and Rocky's classic Going The Distance (the very same tune heard when Rocky first took Apollo all the way to final round of the match that first brought them together).
  • During that final round; Adonis fights using a blistering combination of Rocky's signature body blows and Apollo's distinct head shots - even the announcers pick up on it and it is awesome to watch.
  • Finally, Donnie's barrage of punches sends Conlan down, and Conlan just barely manages to rise in time to avoid a technical knockout.
• In this movie, we finally learn who won Rocky and Apollo's fight in Rocky III. Turns out it was Apollo. This is definitely an awesome moment for those who'd been dying to know the outcome of that match for nearly forty years.

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