Rocky V was a huge mistake. After four successful, crowd-pleasing movies about Italian-American boxer Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone pressed his luck with a fifth one released in 1990 that everyone hated, mostly thanks to the fact that it was about Rocky training a punk kid nobody liked. (Rocky was also kind of a jerk in the movie, which undercut this charm from the first four films.) For years, that’s how the Rocky franchise sat: a perfect first movie, three beloved sequels, and one universally-despised dumpster fire.

That bothered Stallone. Rocky was his breakthrough character. He had written the screenplay in the 1970s and held out on a deal until a studio agreed for him to play the lead. The film became a hit and went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars. Rocky meant a lot to Stallone and he hated that his signature character might end on such a down-note. So he wrote, directed, and starred in 2006's Rocky Balboa, which saw an aged Rocky prove he’s still got it in one last fight. The movie perfectly hit the mark for fans of the franchise and was clearly meant to be the end of the story.

Few people expected to see Rocky again, especially not as a trainer like in Rocky V , but that’s precisely the position he filled when he returned to the big screen for a whole new franchise which eventually became the Creed trilogy. All three of those films are excellent, and they're all leaving Netflix on August 31, so it’s worth catching them before the bell rings.

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