Rocky Movies Ranked: All Nine Rocky and Creed Films, Best to Worst

I rank the Rocky movies, and the three Creed films alongside them, on how well each story is built, how the fights were physically made, what the film adds to the saga and how it plays on a rewatch. Box office does not set the order (popularity gets its own section), because a film can earn a fortune and still be the weaker piece of storytelling. All of this is my opinion, backed by what the films did and how they were made.

Nine films share one list because Creed (2015) continues Rocky Balboa's story directly: Adonis Johnson, the son of Apollo Creed, moves to Philadelphia and asks Rocky to train him. The six Rocky films run from Rocky (1976), directed by John G. Avildsen, to Rocky Balboa (2006), directed by Sylvester Stallone, and the three Creed films run from 2015 to 2023. If you want the sequence rather than the verdicts, the guide to rocky movies in order has it, and the hub for rocky movies links every film.

The best entries tie the fight to a problem outside the ring. Rocky (1976) sets a small time club boxer, who also collects debts for a loan shark, against a heavyweight champion looking for a publicity angle, and the bout pays off a love story with Adrian and a mentor story with Mickey Goldmill. Rocky 2 puts the same man at the kitchen table, with a doctor warning that an eye injury could cost him his sight and a wife who is expecting a baby. Creed (2015), directed by Ryan Coogler, gives Adonis Johnson a name he did not choose and a trainer who doubles as a link to his father.

The second test is craft, and I lean toward practical work. Tony Bellew, who plays 'Pretty' Ricky Conlan in Creed, has described the Goodison Park crowd shoot in an interview with Sky Sports, and the film put professional boxers in the ring as opponents, Bellew and Andre Ward among them. Rocky Balboa began its fight photography on December 4 in Las Vegas, after Stallone broke a foot, and was shot to look like an HD television broadcast, according to ESPN. Stallone has said the punch Dolph Lundgren landed during Rocky 4 put him in the hospital for four days, which is the sort of cost you can feel on screen.

The middle of my list is crowded, and the gaps are small. Creed III (2023), directed by Michael B. Jordan, is fifth because it gives Adonis a villain from his own past in Jonathan Majors's Dame Anderson, and because Stallone stays off screen and lets the Creed family carry the story. Rocky 3 (1982), directed by Stallone, is sixth: Mr. T's Clubber Lang is a hungry challenger, and Mickey's admission that he quietly picked soft opponents for Rocky gives the film a real nerve, but the story has less texture than the first two. Creed 2 (2018), directed by Steven Caple Jr. after Coogler moved to executive producer, is seventh. Bringing back Ivan Drago and his son Viktor is a strong hook, though, in my opinion, the film leans on the weight of Rocky IV rather than building its own.

Ranked by worldwide gross, Rocky IV comes first at about $300 million, well above where it sits in my order. These totals come from The Numbers and Box Office Mojo, and they are raw figures that are not adjusted for ticket prices, so they could flatter the newer films a little.

The original made about $225 million on a $1 million budget, by far the best return of any film in the saga whose budget is on record. As for Rocky IV, at 91 minutes it is the shortest film in the saga, and it trades the character work of the first two films for spectacle, with Living in America by James Brown and Burning Heart by Survivor doing a good deal of the emotional lifting. It is more fun than Rocky V, but it is not a better film than the seven that sit above it.

Rocky V (1990), directed by Avildsen, who also made the original, ranks ninth, and it has the lowest worldwide gross of the nine films. Rocky leaves his Moscow fight with Ivan Drago with a brain condition that forces him to retire, learns that his accountant has stolen his money, and returns to his old neighborhood to train a young fighter named Tommy Gunn. There is real feeling in the scenes between Rocky and his son, played by Sage Stallone, but the film never recovers from its ending: Avildsen said Rocky was meant to die, and the studio changed the ending about two weeks into filming, according to CBS Philadelphia. That is a hard thing to repair mid shoot, and it shows. I would not call it a disaster so much as the one film in the saga that lost its argument with itself.

If you only have one evening, watch Rocky (1976), and if you have a second, make it Creed (2015), because it shows what the saga becomes. After that, follow the rocky movies in order guide, or check where to watch Rocky for the service that carries each film in your country.