The slippery slope

Rocky one remains a classic and a deserving 5 star Oscar winner, then things start to go pear shaped. Having started with the entirely realistic underdog story, somebodies ego took over and Balboa undergoes a less than believable transformation changing from Wepner to Ali, he just had to become champ then over the next volumes manages in the most unlikely of ways to do an implausible Ali impression. losing the title and winning it back. Not by dint of boxing skills, but with the novel tactic of repeatedly hammering the opponents fists with his face until they get tired, then winning at the last moment with a Hail Mary style knock-out.
If you're a Rocky completist and you don't already have the set, then here it is in a box. If you've already got them, then this set doesn't offer any particular reason to add it to your collection. If you're just a film fan then make do with R1 and maybe R2, the others really aren't in the same class.

a very good set of films of rocky.

all i have to say is that if you don't own any of the rocky films this would be a great set to get of these great films. i agree maybe it has been overpackaged way too many times. but then so has star wars.

any case this would be a great set to own.

An enormous rip-off.

When I saw that the Rocky Anthology - which originally came out in 2004 (look it up on Amazon, it is still available for order) - was being re-released, I was excited because I figured it would finally include special features for all the films. You see, this is the THIRD time they have packaged the entire series together - first in 2000 when the original Special Edition of the first film came out, then again in 2004 when the entire series was re-released with hi-def picture, and now again.

But guess what? There are no special features on the discs.

Which wouldn't bother me on the sequels - but when ROCKY: SPECIAL EDITION has just come out (with two discs and a free ticket to see Rocky Balboa), I consider it a major rip-off to find out the box set doesn't include any of the bonus material from this two-disc edition. They both came out on the same day, yet this Anthology was created without the inclusion of any of the other edition's extra features.

Essentially this is the EXACT same box set as the one from 2004, with identical artwork (the tagline on the back of the box is even the same), only this newer 2006 edition has smaller cases inside (those new, tacky, plastic snap-cases that TV shows are often issued with).

So, if you bought the last Anthology box set, skip this and just buy the Special Edition of the first film, which is also available now and has far better packaging and bonus features.

If you don't own the anthology already, I'd still recommend waiting for the price to drop and just get the Special Edition of Rocky.