Tier List
Rocky and Creed Movies Tier List: All 9 Films Ranked (2026)
All 9 films in one continuous story, from 1976's Rocky through Rocky Balboa to Creed III, ranked from S-tier to D-tier. Then settle the Rockys against the Creeds yourself with head-to-head comparisons.
The Complete Rocky and Creed Tier List
Forty-seven years, nine films, one character in every one of them except the last. Ranking the Rockys and the Creeds separately is the standard move and it is the wrong one: Creed is a direct sequel to Rocky Balboa, Stallone is in two of the three, and the only honest way to rank Creed is against the film it is deliberately remaking. Do that and the shape of the series gets much clearer, because the two best entries are forty years apart and both of them are about a man with nothing to prove to anyone but himself. Here is every Rocky and Creed film ranked into classic S/A/B/C/D tiers. Think Rocky IV is being punished for being fun, or that Creed belongs above the 1976 original? Settle it yourself in minutes with Shortlist.
Rocky
(1976)Best Picture, and the only film here that is not about boxing at all. John G. Avildsen shoots a cold, half-empty Philadelphia and a man who collects debts for a loan shark and cannot get a word out in front of the girl at the pet shop, and the fight is an afterthought the plot hands him in the last act. Stallone wrote it in three days and refused to sell it unless he starred, which is the most Rocky fact in existence. The famous part is the training montage. The good part is Rocky telling Adrian he only wants to go the distance, because nobody ever has, and then losing.
Creed
(2015)The best film anyone has made in this series since 1976, and the only sequel that understood what the original was doing. Ryan Coogler takes Apollo's son, gives him money and a name he refuses to use, and builds the drama out of inheritance rather than out of a belt. Michael B. Jordan is magnetic, Tessa Thompson is written as a person with her own career rather than as a girlfriend, and the one-take Conlan fight is a genuine piece of filmmaking. And it gives Stallone the best acting he has ever done: an old man in a diner, sick, being told to fight.
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Rocky II
(1979)The rematch, and a much better film than the sequel-to-a-Best-Picture-winner had any right to be. Stallone directs it himself and spends most of the runtime on the part nobody else would have kept: Rocky is famous, illiterate, unemployable outside a ring, doing a commercial he cannot read the cue cards for, watching Adrian go back to work. The fight is the best-staged in the series and the double knockdown ending still works. It is the last time the series is interested in what happens between the fights.
Rocky Balboa
(2006)Sixteen years after the series died, Stallone came back at sixty and made the apology. A widower running a restaurant, telling the same stories to customers who are bored of them, with a son who is embarrassed by the name. The exhibition-fight plot is thin and the film knows it, which is why it spends its time on grief instead. The speech to his son about how hard life hits is quoted by people who have never seen the film. It earns its ending by not winning.
Rocky III
(1982)The one that turned the series into pop culture, and the trade is honest: it loses the realism and gains Mr. T, Eye of the Tiger, Hulk Hogan and the beach. Clubber Lang is the best villain in the franchise because he is right about everything, and Mickey's death is the last real emotional beat the original run manages. It is also the film where Rocky stops being a man who might lose. Enormously entertaining, and the exact moment the ground shifts under the whole thing.
Creed II
(2018)The competent one. Steven Caple Jr. inherits Coogler's cast and does the sequel everybody expected, which means the son of Drago against the son of Apollo, and the surprise is how much sympathy it finds for the Dragos. Ivan is a broken man in a cold country who lost everything for a fight he was ordered into, and Dolph Lundgren plays it beautifully. What it lacks is a reason of its own to exist. Everything good in it is inherited, and the two best scenes are about 1985.
Rocky IV
(1985)The most fun and the least film. Ninety-one minutes, four montages, a robot butler, Apollo Creed killed off in an exhibition bout, and a fight in Moscow that ends the Cold War with a speech. It is the highest-grossing entry and the one most people remember, and none of that makes it a good picture: it is a music video with a plot summary attached. Stallone's 2021 director's cut cuts the robot and adds forty minutes of Apollo, which is a real improvement and still cannot make it a drama.
Creed III
(2023)Michael B. Jordan directs, and he can clearly direct: the anime-influenced final fight where the crowd disappears is the most visually ambitious thing in the entire franchise. Jonathan Majors is genuinely frightening as a childhood friend who took the fall. But it is the first film in the series with no Rocky in it and you feel the hole, the childhood-secret plot is thinner than the performances carrying it, and Adonis has no want left. A strong debut for a director and the weakest of the three Creeds.
Rocky V
(1990)Brain damage, bankruptcy, a street fight, and a film that spends two hours taking everything away from a character people love and gives nothing back. Avildsen returns from the first film and the intention is real: strip Rocky of the money and put him back in the old neighbourhood. What arrives is a sour, badly paced picture about a protege who betrays him, ending in a brawl on a pavement because the studio would not pay for a ring. Stallone has publicly called it the worst. He is right.
How to Build Your Own Rocky Tier List
You just built one. The card above took your taps and nothing else, no star ratings, which matters more on this franchise than on most: a series this long is ranked with nostalgia, and a number invites you to justify the score you already decided on. A head-to-head does not. Asking yourself whether you would honestly rather rewatch Rocky IV or Creed II produces an answer in about a second, and it is frequently not the one your list would have predicted.
There are nine, and the four the card leaves out are where a Rocky ranking gets argumentative. Shortlist ranks the full run head-to-head, keeps the list current as the Creeds keep arriving, and gives every ranking a share link for whoever still insists Rocky V is misunderstood.
Read more about the comparison-based approach in our movie tier list guide.
What Order Should You Watch the Rocky and Creed Movies In?
Release order, and there is no argument to have. Rocky (1976), Rocky II (1979), Rocky III (1982), Rocky IV (1985), Rocky V (1990), Rocky Balboa (2006), Creed (2015), Creed II (2018), Creed III (2023). Every film picks up directly from the one before it, often in the same week of story time, so release order and chronological order are the same order. This is one of the very few franchises where nobody has ever needed a chart.
The short version, if you want four. Rocky, Rocky III, Rocky Balboa, Creed. That gives you the original, the pop-culture peak, the apology and the reinvention, and you can follow all of Creed knowing only that Apollo Creed fought Rocky twice and died in the ring.
The Creed-only route, which does work. Start at Creed (2015). It is written for someone who has never seen a Rocky film: it explains Apollo, it explains Rocky, and the emotional weight lands even if the 1976 film is only a story you have heard. You will lose the diner scene, though. Watching Stallone play the ending of that character after six films is most of why it hits.
Rocky and Creed Tier List FAQ
What is the best Rocky movie?
Rocky (1976), and it is not really close. It won Best Picture, it is barely a boxing film, and everything the series did afterwards is a variation on it. The best film in the wider run since then is Creed (2015), which is the only sequel that understood the original was about a man who wanted to prove he was not a bum rather than about a man who wanted a belt.
How many Rocky and Creed movies are there?
There are 9 released films: six Rocky pictures from 1976 to 2006, and three Creed pictures from 2015 to 2023. A fourth Creed is in development with Michael B. Jordan attached, but it has no release date, so it is not ranked above.
Is Creed part of the Rocky series?
Yes, directly. Creed is a sequel to Rocky Balboa with the same Rocky in it, played by the same actor, training the son of the man he fought in the first two films. Stallone appears in Creed and Creed II and won a Golden Globe for the first one. That is why they are ranked together here rather than on a separate list.
Do you need to watch Rocky before Creed?
No. Creed is written to work cold and explains everything a newcomer needs about Apollo and about Rocky. What you lose is the weight: Stallone playing that character old and sick lands very differently if you have watched him for six films first. If you only have time for one, watch Rocky (1976) before Creed.
Why is Rocky V ranked last?
Because it takes everything away from the character and gives nothing back. Brain damage, bankruptcy, a protege who turns on him, and a climax that happens on a pavement rather than in a ring. Stallone himself has repeatedly called it the worst film in the series, and the studio effectively erased it: Rocky Balboa exists because he wanted a real ending instead of that one.
Is Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago a different movie?
No. It is Stallone's 2021 director's cut of Rocky IV (1985), not a tenth film, so it is ranked as that film above. It is a genuine improvement: the robot is gone, Apollo gets around forty minutes of new material, and the Cold War framing is dialled down. It is still a ninety-minute idea with four montages in it.
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