Creed II: The Rocky films ranked from worst to best

“This is probably my last rodeo,” Sylvester Stallone announced this week, suggesting new film Creed II will be the final time we ever see play him pull on the gloves as cinema’s most iconic boxer Rocky Balboa.

You can hardly blame him — the actor, who stars alongside Michael B Jordan in the new film out this week, has carried the sports film franchise for an incredible 42 years, bringing the Italian Stallion to life in seven movies.

While you wouldn't bet against Stallone returning for one final round in the future — you can never keep Rocky down after all — film fans should appreciate the iconic character in action while they have the chance.

From the 1976 original, all the way up until Rocky Balboa and Creed, these are all the Rocky movies ranked from worst to best.

Meant to be the original conclusion to the Rocky saga, V can just about be enjoyed by those with a soft spot for the overblown silliness that marks III and IV, but it’s nearly impossible to love otherwise. Stallone himself admitted himself as much in 2010, telling the Sun he’d made it out of greed, adding: “I fell into a sense of self-parody."

Self-parody is right. Rocky loses his millions, suffers brain damage (Drago won in the end, then) and can no longer legally fight – not that this stops him training up young puncher Tommy ‘The Machine’ Gunn. Gunn turns on Rocky after much encouragement from his cut-price Don King promoter and so, in the end, the two scrap it out in a street fight to determine the ‘real’ champion.

It’s a slow old thing, Rocky’s son is a sullen bore, Adrian is reduced to a shrill and nagging nothing and the idea that Rocky’s will to win is powerful enough to overcome brain damage is just too much. True, it’s fun to watch Tommy Morrison fight as Gunn – but Morrison was a terrific boxer who won world titles in real life, so there’s no need to suffer through V just for the fight scenes. Touches of 80s excess lighten the mood from time to time, but never has Rocky been so earnest, or so dislikeable.

The joy of the original Rocky is lost in its first sequel, which pitches for sincerity but achieves little more than dullness.

The film takes much from its predecessor but as it's all happened before, things rather lose their edge. This is compounded by a rather fatal oversight from Stallone: the original conceit is a nobody becoming somebody, but at the start of II, Rocky is already a somebody – he’s a world-class boxer beloved as America’s underdog. It’s hard to root for him the same way. Even his training sequence sees him followed by practically an entire school of cheering children – incidentally, is Rocky training hard enough if a bunch of little kids can tag along?

While there’s none of the bombast that makes the others so entertaining, II does at least have a hell of a fight at the end. The only problem is that we’ve seen it all before – Stallone beat himself to the punch.

While the franchise had moved far from its roots by the time Rocky III was released in 1982, the movie found a middle ground between the serious character drama of the original and the overblown spectacle of Rocky IV.

The film, which sees sworn enemies Rocky and Apollo Creed become close friends and training partners, takes itself seriously, while having just the right level of 80s cheese thrown in to make for a really entertaining watch. Special mention has to go to the fantastic slow-motion training sequence which takes place between Rocky and Apollo on the beach – like Baywatch for boxers.

There’s a fantastic physical performance from Mr T as Clubber Lang, playing the ferocious fighter Rocky faces off against against twice. III is also responsible for one of the franchise's most touching sequences, in which trainer Mickey Goldmill loses his life following Rocky’s first clash with Lang. Heartbreaking stuff.

Cold war tensions added a new dynamic to the franchise in the bombastic and frequently ridiculous Rocky IV, while the terrifying Ivan Drago — played by man-mountain Dolph Lundgren — is arguably the series’ definitive adversary.

While the plot rattles along happily enough, the film is really remarkable for its training sequences, which represent some of the most incredible training montages of all time. Rocky is more spurred on than ever following the death of his old friend and trainer Apollo Creed, and as a result the viewer is treated to what is, unquestionably, the most epic boxing training sequence of all time. While Drago trains with cutting edge fitness technology, we see Rocky run in the snow, chop wood, lift old wooden carts in a barn and climb a mountain in a big sheepskin coat in pursuit of victory — it’s a great watch, and one of the most enjoyable moments of the franchise.

“Going in one more round when you don’t think you can. That’s what makes all the difference in your life.”

Was Stallone watching his own film when he thought up Balboa? Though V seemed to put the series out for the count, Stallone seemed to have the above line (from IV) in mind when he revived the series. Once again, Rocky is meant to have hung up his gloves – true so often, it’s a wonder he ever picked them up in the first place – but after watching a simulation on TV, finds himself drawn away from his restaurant (sweetly called Adrian’s) and back into the gym.

Now in his late 50s, Rocky goes toe-to-toe with Mason "The Line" Dixon, 30 years or so his junior. Fortunately, there are enough nods to the old films and the old cast to stop the implausibility of it all from overshadowing things. The fight is classic Rocky; never one for delicate footwork or lightning hand speed, the old bull does what he does best: takes every hit and keeps on going. It has that most Rocky of qualities – it’s uplifting. Sentimental, too: the final scene, at a graveyard, hits like an uppercut. Ideal – the films were never really about the fighting, anyway.

Michael B Jordan emerged as one of the leading men of his generation in 2015’s Creed with an all-encompassing performance as Adonis “Donnie” Johnson, the son of Apollo Creed. Thankfully, the film saw Rocky step out of the ring and take his place in the corner as trainer, relaying his wealth of expertise and motivation at every turn. Just as well really – film fans didn't have the heart to see a 70-year-old Stallone take another beating on the big-screen.

As well as encompassing the traditional ‘guts and glory’ nature of conventional boxing movies, the film’s biggest achievement was in convincingly capturing the atmosphere of modern professional boxing. Along with the training sequences, the film’s depiction of promotional campaigns and face-offs were all realistic and well executed, and the performance from Tony Bellew was memorable and surprisingly assured.

Importantly, the film reignited the series in the best possible way, set up Rocky franchise for a new generation and proved one of the most finely-executed boxing movies of recent times.

While it kick-started a hugely successful and exhaustive film franchise, the original Rocky film – written in just three-and-a-half days is a different beast to the rest of the movies that followed. A character drama rooted in the realities of domesticity and struggle in the slums of Philadelphia, the film eschews the levels of glamour and excess that the sequels would come to embody, proving an absorbing cinematic experience.

The film follows the blue collar hero as he steps up at short notice to fight world champion Apollo Creed and defies all expectations. However, it’s the central relationship between Rocky and Talia Shire’s Adrian that provided the compelling emotional heart of the film, with Shire delivering a performance just as heavyweight as Stallone's.

Granted, it’s an archetype rags to riches tale, combining grim reality with superhuman reliance to create a powerful underdog story and the definitive boxing film, but its the human relationships and subjects at its centre that make this film what it is – a true classic of its kind.