Rocky: Worst to Best

There are five important ingredients to making a great Rocky film. A training montage, an iconic theme, well-acted characters, a director who knows the material, and of course, Sylvester Stallone, who's been responsible for this franchise from day one.

Over the past forty years, he's helped create some of the most recognizable characters, settings, music, and scenes in cinema. Unfortunately, the franchise has hit a few low points with some of its installments. Only recently has the franchise found its footing once again and hopefully it'll continue that way with the planned continuation. For now, I'm here to rank the seven current Rocky films from worst to best and I encourage you to share your personal list in the comments section below. Now, lets see which of these films are gonna fly now and which of them didn't have the eye of the tiger. Get ready to be shell-shocked.

7. Rocky IV

This is where things started to get old. Rocky IV was hugely disappointing. I knew it was gonna be bad, but I wasn't prepared for how bad it got. One of the film's key flaws is that it's stuck in the 80s.

Where the other Rocky films are able to be timeless no matter what era the film is set in, everything about this installment is excessive with the 80s time period which prevents it from being enjoyable in the slightest. Whether it's Rocky's speech to the Russian audience at the end, or the Balboa's owning a robot, there's no denying that Rocky IV's incredibly dated. It's separated from everything else because the film is so stuck in the time period it was made in. The whole USA versus Russian subplot, where the two sides are arguing about which county has the better fighter, got tiring really fast. It feels like the whole subplot was done for an entirely different time and audience and it doesn't hold up to today.

My second complaint is that Apollo Creed's death was rushed through without any time to let it sink in more. For a death of an character that's supposed to serve several consequences for the franchise, it did not go the way I thought it'd be. The death of an important character, let alone any character, has to be handled with care and respect. Apollo got neither and I wished the character and his death had the same amount of care the one Mickey got just one film earlier. It's not even shown through Stallone's acting that the filmmakers cared. With Mickey, he was weeping all over the place, but with Apollo, Stallone's looking off in the distance not even breaking a tear.

Even though the films on the bottom of this list fail, I usually find the training montages to be the highlights. The problem with this training montage isn't that it isn't as iconic as the other ones, but that there's nothing particularly inspiring or exciting about it. The song used does nothing, but adds proof that the film is stuck in the 80s. This time, the montage felt like a requirement to do than something that Sylvester Stallone and company wanted to do.

The score was still iconic, the boxing sequences were still as brutal and as fun as they've ever been, and some of the performances were good, but there was nothing new about the story. It followed the same old formula that the previous films did and I wished that Rocky got a better, and more creative, fourth installment.

6. Rocky V

In my opinion, I like this film better than most people give it credit. Although it did have a few elements of Rocky II in it, at least it tried to do something new with Rocky, unlike most of the later sequels.

However, some of the major plot points are borrowed not only from the earlier Rocky films, but other films in general. Training the unlikeable, aspiring boxer plot line was poorly done and the father/son relationship between Rocky and his son, Robert, felt very forced and took up screen time that could've been better used elsewhere.

There's even a line in the beginning of the film where, after a wrestler challenges Rocky to a fight, a reporter says "Really, dude? The man just got off the plane." To me, that outlined how old and tiring the franchise had gotten at that point.

The cast is one-note and very dull with nothing new being done with the established characters. Even Sylvester Stallone himself, looked like he was tired of the franchise at that point. The villains are pretty weak with the main villain being a manipulating and egotistical businessman that hates Rocky, because he won't agree to fight.

Rocky V has no training montage, but luckily, the scenes where Rocky is reminiscing about his good old times with Mickey, kept me entertained. The fight scenes are a bit refreshing. Sylvester Stallone continued to prove that he could still throw punches at his opponents. It is given a new take with most it taking place outside the ring. Originally, the franchise was supposed to end with Rocky V, but because this was poorly received, the franchise continued sixteen years later.

5. Rocky Balboa

To tell the truth, I didn't find this much better than Rocky V. When watching the film, I didn't understand how this was any better than its predecessor. It wasn't any different from the previous films.

What was again to be an attempt to end the franchise, turned out to be a very uninteresting story. Rocky's now a widow and owns a restaurant named after his late wife, Paulie still being a jerk, and the current champion is a surprisingly thin boxer named Mason Dixon. Honestly, he looks so thin compared to the other boxers that Rocky has faced, that Sylvester Stallone looks like he could break him easily.

The whole plot revolves around Rocky being pressured by the public to fight Mason simply because the public hates Mason and wants to see him fight Rocky. It shows that the real bad guys in this franchise are not just the opponents, but the managers, reporters, and audiences who pressure the boxers into fighting.

The film is a giant nostalgia trip. In fact, there's a conversation in the film that goes exactly like this: "You wanna call it nostalgia whatever you want, but people can relate to that stuff. A no-lose for everybody. It's all good." It was at that point where my opinion of the film was confirmed. It's exactly what the line suggests: a nostalgia trip. It doesn't do anything different, but unsurprisingly, it's also because of some of that nostalgia that gets this a spot higher above Rocky V. There's even a returning character in this film who was a kid in the first one and Rocky and her reminisce about things back in the day.

They bring back the "Gonna Fly Now" montage. It automatically was the best scene in the film due to the way the scene is filmed and the also the bits of nostalgia of Rocky once again running up the iconic steps in Philadelphia.

Other than a few great scenes, Rocky Balboa was a blatant nostalgia trip that didn't really need to be made. Although, if it wasn't for this film, we probably wouldn't have had the fantastic Creed almost a decade later.

4. Rocky III

This is where things start to get good. If we discount IV, V, and Balboa, the initial trilogy, along with Creed represent the franchise incredibly well.

The pros definitely outweigh the cons here though and nothing can vouch for how good this film is than two things. One being Mickey's death. I mentioned earlier that Apollo's death was disappointing. Mickey's death was a great example of not only on how Apollo's death should've been, but on how to do the death of an important character. Ripping away one of Rocky's most important supporters, a guy who has been the guy's moral support for the earlier films, was a smart move on Stallone's part and anyone else who made the decision. As Rocky, Sylvester Stallone's reaction couldn't have been better and although it didn't make me yell in sadness, it did manage to make me cry.

The second example on what makes this movie so good is of course the new song they bring in to motivate Rocky and the audience, Survivor's Eye of the Tiger. This song, along with Creed's theme, have been the only ones to really challenge Gonna Fly Now's dominance as the best song from the Rocky movies. The song not only gets your blood pumping, but perfectly encapsulates where Rocky, as a character, is at in this point of the franchise. As a bonus, the photograph on the right is be back in June 2009 preforming the moves to Eye of the Tiger at a school assembly in Australia.

It kinda goes without saying that all the cast members do a great job. I already mentioned Stallone and while he really did a great job, so did Talia Shire and Carl Weathers whose Apollo Creed is able to train Rocky for this new film. Seeing them work together just warms your heart. After seeing them fight each other, you get to see them as friends and that was by far another one of the highlights from this film.

3. Rocky

The reason why I said "Get ready to be shell-shocked" at the end of my intro was primarily because of this. Not just because it made for a great ending to the intro, but because I can possibly see long-time Rocky fans getting mildly perturbed by this decision.

I know that Rocky is a Best Picture winning film. I know it was the primary film to kick off Sylvester Stallone's career. I know that most, if not all, people regard it as the best film of the series, so seeing me divert from it is likely puzzling, I'm sure. My putting it here isn't that the original Rocky is lacking in any way, but rather a testament to both how far the franchise eventually flew and how short-sided the Academy was when it came to giving awards to the top two films.

It would eventually become an old and cliche plot device, but a down-on-his-luck boxer getting his own chance to prove himself and become famous, is one of the most inspiring things to make a film about and the way Rocky does it practically makes the film the best example of how to do it.

It's also because of the incredible cast, that makes this such a classic. Obviously, Sylvester Stallone is fantastic, but I can't believe that he didn't win the Oscar. There's so many things that make me question what made the Academy not want to give it Stallone. The actor's so darn likable and that likability carries on to his performance here, but in the follow-ups to come. The movie works not just with the boxing, but with the romance between Rocky and Adrian. The two actors have an incredible amount of charisma between them and its incredible to see that on screen.

Side characters like Carl Weathers as Apollo and Burgess Meredith as Mickey also made great performances with the first film and would go onto to be even better in the sequel. As for Burt Young's Paulie, he's not a very likable character and seeing as that's kind of the point, Burt Young does it well and he even got an Oscar nomination for playing it the way he did. So did Burgess Meredith.

When watching the film for the first time, I was surprised at how the big boxing match took place at the last half hour of the film. I expected to see it halfway into the film and have it take up the rest of the runtime, but the movie surprised me like it did most people when, against all odds, it took Best Picture.

Stallone's script was incredibly sharp and full of intelligible lines, the Gonna Fly Now montage is iconic and epic, and the boxing is filmed with great care and is shown at a different, but exciting, angle. True Rocky fans, please don't get upset.

2. Creed

An argument can be made that the entire Rocky franchise owes itself to the first film, but I disagree. I marathoned through all seven films and the two that I put above it, felt like the right move.

For me, Creed had a lot to do. After watching Rocky IV, V, and Balboa, I looked to reviews and responses from other critics for a sign if Creed was gonna turn things around. When I was done, it seemed like things were gonna get better with Creed, but people said things had already turned around with Rocky Balboa and I didn't enjoy that much. So I went into Creed cautiously optimistic. Luckily, my hope was well-used and I quickly learned while watching Creed and after watching Creed, that things had truly gotten better and its that feeling of accomplishment that Creed has, that puts it above the original Rocky. It's also just so darn good.

For the first time, in a long time, the Rocky films found a way to get free of the formula that had plagued it for so long and actually do something original since Rocky II. Rather than ignore them and pretend they never happened, which is what other franchises normally do, Creed had the guts to build on the three lackluster films and craft a story that plays off of all of them. Not just those three, but all of it. The idea of making a story around Apollo's estranged son was a brilliant move and they cast the right actor for the job. I would also give some credit to Ryan Coogler, whose new style of directing brought something fresh to a franchise that had been the same-old for so long. It also got me excited for Ryan Coogler's next film, Black Panther.

This was not only a fantastic rebound for the franchise at large, but for the actors involved. Michael B. Jordon, whose last role was as the Human Torch in the dismal 2015 Fantastic Four film, came back  from that like it never happened. It was astounding to see him in this role owning every scene he was in. Talk about being shell-shocked, that's how I felt when watching him in this movie.

Sylvester Stallone, who had wandered in Hollywood staring in one bad film after another since the last Rocky, came back with a sense of new life in Creed and he did manage to make a great return-to-form in the film. His performance here actually marked his next Oscar nomination since the 1976 original. Once again, it's a shame that the Academy snubbed him. I'm curious though as to how many rounds he has left in this franchise and if he'll come back for the planned next installment..

I would be amiss if I didn't mention the great score. Meek Mill, Jhené Aiko, and Ludwig Grandson did a fantastic job and so did Maryse Alberti with the cinematography who gave the boxing matches and overall feel of the film, a new take, while simultaneously going back to the more grounded roots of the earlier films. Creed almost made the number one spot, but it doesn't get much better than what I chose for the number one film.

1. Rocky II

Sequels are rarely better than the original. While there are exceptions, it's surprising that Rocky II isn't one of them and I feel that it should be, because it's a more-than-worthy sequel. After marathoning all films, I strongly feel that this is the best out of all of them and here's why.

It's much more of a character study. Each character is more properly fleshed out and taken in new directions. It's a much more deep and personal film with these characters. Particularly for Sylvester Stallone's Rocky.

After having the draw with Apollo, we get to see Rocky go through the hurtles of having to revert back to a sense of normalcy. He ends up marrying Adrian, has his first kid, tries to get a sustainable job, and eventually, Adrian slips into a coma. The story throws all sorts of emotional pushes at Rocky and we get to see the character react to it through Sylvester Stallone's acting. It's absolutely amazing. There's also the added layer that if Rocky chooses to fight again, he may not come back, but he soon realizes that fighting Apollo once more, is his only option. It's a lot of deep stuff with the sequel and I appreciate the film's willingness to go there and do these sorts of things with these characters.

Of course he wins, but there's still tension and suspense in the fight with each character not giving up. Much to my amazement, Rocky sustained more injuries here than his fight with the Russian guy who could throw a 2,000 pound psi punch. That fact alone makes Rocky winning more of a bigger payoff. It's another reason why this ranks above the first film. We actually get to see the once-unknown Italian Stallion actually beat Apollo and win the championship title. That's immediately followed by Rocky's cry "Yo Adrian, I did it!" Along with that, there many other quotable lines in the movie. "I feel like a Kentucky Fried Idiot" and "I won, but I didn't beat him."

When the franchise is known for having retread many of the same elements as the last, it's nice to see this installment not only break from it, but do the best of all the tropes. Including the training montage, the boxing matches, and Bill Conti's score. It's completely the best that the Rocky franchises brings in terms of entertainment.

Conclusion

So that's my ranking of the Rocky franchise, I'm curious to hear about yours. Do you think the original Rocky is still the king, or does another follow-up surpass it for you? Let me know those thoughts in the comments section below as well as what franchise you want me to rank next and share this with your friends. Thanks for reading, I'm the Film Fanatic, bye-bye.