Quote Originally Posted by Kel
I like the first one best of all, its more realistic and gritty. The acting is better too.
The second one was good for the same reasons.
The third Rocky film was the most entertaining to watch and I agree that "the eye of the tiger" theme almost made the film along with the training scenes and Mr T of course who was exellent.
Rocky four was cheesy and annoying but Drago was a great character and I would say its Dolph's best film performance next to universal Soldier.
Rocky five, I was having a S*** at the time so I missed a lot of it.

I'd say Rocky numaro uno!!
As a piece of film making Rocky 1 was by far the best. Stallone actually gave an oscar worthy performance, the supporting cast was first rate throughout, all the dialogue throughout the whole film felt real.

The resulting sequels whilst all entertaining in their own way, deterioated into just being some kind of feel good American cheese.

Don't get me wrong, they were all entertaining, even Rocky 5 is watchable but they are now very much in the same category of films as Triple XXX, James Bond or Mr and Mrs Smith, ie bubblegum films for the massses, which is sad considering the first was in my opinion up there with the likes of the Shawshank Redemption or citizen Kane.

Actually the same thing happened to another fine Stallone film, First Blood, an ultra gritty suberbly acted film, probably my favourite action film of all time, with John Rambo a being complex, deeply flawed and disturbing character who was clearly mentally insane. Yet for the follwoing Rambo films he gets remoulded into some kind of cheesy All American super hero