10 Movie Sequels With Massively Improved Rotten Tomatoes Scores

5. Rocky V (27%) To Rocky Balboa (76%)

Rocky Balboa
MGM

Score Difference: 49%

1990's Rocky V is easily the worst sequel in the long-running franchise, carrying Rocky's lowest Rotten Tomatoes score as proof.

The series had been pumping out movies every couple of years up until this point, but after the overwhelmingly negative response to the fifth instalment, Rocky went on hiatus for the next sixteen years while star-man Stallone assessed what had gone wrong, with each movie seemingly getting progressively worse.

Fortunately, he rebounded in a big way with 2006's Rocky Balboa, which managed to recapture the spirit of the first film without outright replicating it.

The movie depicted an older, much more different Rocky than we'd ever seen before, and it was really easy to sympathise with the character's declining physical state, and his frustration at that fact. This sixth entry also placed more of an emphasis on compelling human drama rather than the fighting and punching, an improvement on several other entries which seemed to think that glitzy boxing action would be enough to keep people interested.

As a result, Rocky Balboa might be the most heartfelt entry in the series, and its touching conclusion will almost certainly get those tears flowing.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!