Having recently decided to watch – for some reason – the Bond Movies starring Roger Moore for the first time in something like twenty years, I can´t help but marvel at how poor they are. It suddenly went, comedy wise and elsewhere, very Benny Hill. At least Connery era was silly in an entertaining way.
Live And Let Die (2 out of 5) is a direct result of Shaft. “Hey, let´s use some black actors! It´s seems to be the thing!”) And JW Pepper is just a terrible character.
The Man With The Golden Gun (3 out of 5) has Christopher Lee, which is good. And the scenery is marvelous. JW Pepper appears again. In one scene he points out he´s a Democrat, which is a redeeming quality.
Today I´ve watched The Spy Who Loved Me (2 out of 5), which holds together even worse than the previous two. Jaws is silly in the wrong way, Stromberg has the charisma of a garden fence and well, it just goes on for a while and then it ends. Parts of the movie is like a more expensive Thunderball.
Moonraker is next. I seem to recall For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy are slightly better, so that´s good. Maybe based on the fact it couldn´t get worse (although then it did).
This made me think: which is the worst Bond movie? For my money Goldfinger is the best. Worst, possibly A View To A Kill, which manages to make Moonraker seem like a hoot. Not a mean feat.
Brosnan deserved better movies and I can´t recall anything from the ones Dalton made. Connery and Craig are favourites. On Her Majesty´s Secret Service is a also favourite, even if there´s no Bond in it.
Yours?
Have you heard the SMERSHPOD podcast? It’s really funny. Recommended.
I think by any rational standard all the Bond films until Casino Royale were shit films, as films. But Bond films aren’t films, they’re Bond films. A genre unto themselves. The writing is generally awful, the cinematography is nothing, the acting is camp and hammy. They’re interesting period pieces, like the Carry Ons, but it’s not like anyone can make a claim for the Carry Ons as actually high quality films.
So it’s Casino Royale for me. I quite enjoy Goldfinger and From Russia With Love but basically they’re a load of old daft balls, and can only really be enjoyed on their own terms.
OOAA and probably about to be get expressed. 😉
Oh. Worst. Probably that one with her out of Starship Troopers in. Her character’s first name was Christmas, just so Bond could say “I thought Christmas only came once a year” with a smug chinny grin.
You´re the third person to recommend SMERSH POD, so I should probably give it a go.
I guess when Bond started, there had never been anything like it before. They were out in the wild when they made the early ones.
As proper movies you´re probably right about the later ones being the best, but, as you also point out, as Bond Movies, we have to judge them differently. Best movie: Casino and Skyfall, best Bond Movie: Goldfinger.
They are all terrible except one, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Goldfinger and From Russia With Love next best. Worst I have seen would be Diamonds are Forever.
Although my responses make me sound like I’ve only been watching Bond films for the last 10 years, Skyfall was the best, closely followed by Casino Royale. Craig is a fantastic Bond,
The worst was Die Another Day. The CGI was the clunkiest I have seen in any film ever and Brosnan was phoning it in. Saw it on the big screen and was dismayed all the way through.
I’ve watched them all and love the older ones. Technically Moore should be my Bond as he’s the one I grew up with but his are far too cheesy to be the best.
I liked the Lazenby one.
On a list of Bonds, Connery would be at the bottom for me.
I haven’t forgotten about Dalton. Might as well though, he’s no one’s favourite, and nor are his two films.
*finds protective gear, awaits a barrage of fury*
Oddly, the chap who helms SMERSHPOD really likes Dalton, and rates License to Kill as one of the best.
I also like Skyfall a good deal. I know it has its knockers (obligatory Roger Moore/Benny Hill gag there) but I like it a lot.
Spectre was absolute SHITE, and Quantum of Solace was Die Another Day-bad. So although I also quite like Craig as Bond, he’s only done two goodish films as him, IMO.
I think Quantum suffered from the Hollywood writers strike at the time.
One other thing though, Daniel Craig has aged a bit going from Casino to as Spectre. Presumably the others were already pushing on when they started…
Die Another Day has one of the funniest opening sequences ever: Madonna solemnly intoning “S-S-Sigmund Freud – I’m going to shut my body down” while we get to watch Brosnan “endure” several months in a North Korean gulag, at the end of which he has a full beard and a belly that a darts pro would be proud of. Thank god they had a dessert trolley in that hell-hole!
And that was the best bit. After that it was the ‘invisible car’, shoehorning references to old Bond films into the plot (it was some kind of anniversary), and Bond smoking cigars.
It was an atrocious movie. It was still better than Spectre.
Spectre’s THE worst James Bond film.
To think I took an afternoon off for that!
Spectre’s basically the worst thing ever. The North Koreans should have just looped it in Brosnan’s cell – he’d have told them everything.
I haven’t seen it since being underwhelmed at the cinema, but it’s surely not as bad as Quantum of Solace?
This is true. It isn’t as bad as Quantum of Solace, which itself isn’t as bad as Die Another Day.
I don’t get the hate for QOS. A *great* opening. The rest of it not too shabby either. And at the very least it has a consistent tone and an internal logic.
Spectre’s just… a mess. It’s embarrassing.
It’s the hectoring, bash you over the head, let’s do a montage, let’s do it in slow motion so it can’t be missed, let’s do it at extreme length just in case not every got it the first twenty effing times we told them, patronising obviousness of it. Plus, an environmental message doesn’t belong in a Bond film anyway. Oh, and no one deserves to bed Gemma Arterton that easily with the possible exception of me.
Tee Hee! I always wondered where they got this sample – now I know it was the young Gatz
Saint Etienne
Album Intro
Lyrics
Album list
News
Related Video
Saint Etienne
Hobart Paving
[intro sample (on the album)：]
Do you think a girl should go to bed with a feller, if she doesn’t love him?
No. [pause]unless it’s me.
No no, in my world Gemma Arterton swoons when she sees me and falls headlong in love. Admittedly it didn’t happen when I saw her on the bill of an evening of Shakespeare recitals at Cadogan Hall last year, but I’m almost certain we had a moment when she made eye contact at the curtain call. That’s what I’d tell the magistrates anyway. Best stop now; I’ve said too much already …
Spectre is the worst of the lot? Have you seen View To A Kill? Or Moonraker? Or Never Say Never? And so on….
I would go with Casino Royale as the best Bond film. I think the Bond producers learned a lot from the Bourne films on how to craft a taught action thriller. Plus you never saw Roger Moore get his bollocks smashed by a huge chain.
View To A Kill. Deleted scenes on the most recent DVD release. Section marked “Outtakes and bloopers”.
*taps nose, ducks into alleyway*
Worst? Diamonds Are Forever is pretty bad, mainly because Connery really didnt want to be there, except to collect his cheque. Roger Moore in the 80s was piss-poor (Octopussy, anyone?).
Pierce Brosnan’s movies I enjoyed actually. Again, i think the Bond producers had to up their game because of another movie (True Lies, in this case)
Goldeneye was pretty good. I don’t remember liking another Brosnan one, though.
I liked Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough. Goldeneye is of course noticable for being yet another “Sean Bean carks it” film.
‘Notable’, not ‘noticable’. For fucks sake…
I once read a reference to Sean Bean as “Walking Spoiler Sean Bean”, which made me giggle for the rest of that particular tube journey…
They’re all a bit of a mystery to me. I enjoyed Moore hamming it up but I avoid the others. The last one I saw was the one with Judie Dench in the Scottish castle, my god it was awful. Bobs Carry On analogy works for me except they insist on keep making the damn things. The Die Hard series for me every time. 1. 4, 3, 2 if you’re interested (5 doesn’t count)
1, 3, 2. Neither 4 nor 5 count. 😉
I understand your reasoning but really enjoyed 4, even the jet fighter bit
I watched the first four back to back last week and was surprised at how much I enjoyed 4, even if it is totally preposterous. In fact, I enjoyed all 4, as being a James Bond superfan I am used to preposterousness in my movies. I’d also rank the Die Hard films 1, 4, 3, 2, 5, with 5 some way behind.
1….. 2, 3, 4………………….5
Choice of two for best:
On Her Majesys Secret Service – maybe its George Lazenby in the role as a one off, but this feels more studied and “dramatic”. And the bit at the end makes you think “maybe he is human after all”
Spy Who Loved Me was the first Bond I saw and remains my favourite
(Alan Patridges description of the opening titles just makes it even better)
Worst? Octopussy was just about OK, but anything with Timothy Dalton knackered the franchise for me.
Things improved with Pierce Brosnan, and improved further with Daniel Craig, but TSWLM remains unsurpassed
My wife hated Skyfall. Watching it she assumed that with Bond responsible for the death of M, he’d be arrested, but go on the run, and that would set up the next film.
So you can imagine how cross she was when he turns up and is hailed as a hero!
I just watched from Russia with love the other night. The scene with Connery walking on the train platform and Robert Shaw shadowing him from the train is masterful.
I am uniquely unqualified to comment here. I have never seen a Bond film. Just never appealed.
Best – From Russia With Love, probably the only one that could stand outside the series and still be viewed as a decent film on it’s own merits
Worst – Diamonds are Forever. Connery phones it in, female lead characterization all over the place (even by Bond standards), Vegas looks like Butlins and a cross dressing Blofeld. Final battle really underwhelming with cheap effects
Goldeneye on N64.
Casino Royale 2 is the best of the movies, but that’s an incredibly low bar. The entire franchise is crying out for Statham.
The N64 thing is, of course, the right answer. Ideally 4-player deathmatch.
Grenade launchers only, in Facility, with Rumble-paks.
Whatever that one is with Grace Jones in it. Because it has Grace Jones in it.
That would be A View To A Kill. Is it your best or your worst?
Best!
That´s brave of you! And worst?
Anything without Grace Jones in it.
Got it. I see the pattern now.
I like all the Connery ones, though they are dated but I don’t really mind as it’s Sean Connery being Bond. I really like “Never say never again” actually. The Moore ones are hopeless as the OP explains. I’m sort of OK with Dalton and Brosnan, Craig is good other than he doesn’t look like I imagine Bond at all, who is never described as a little ginge. But he’s suitably tough.
You people are clearly nuts. 😉 Thunderball is the worst Bond film of them all, and holds the distinction of being the only film I’ve ever fallen asleep to in the cinema (that long fight scene under water…) Bond films are by definition cheesy, which is why Roger Moore is the only watchable Bond.
Well, you did ask! 🙂
Yes, but they shouldn’t look like they’re in the joke! Moore’s Bond is returned the file marked ‘only to be watched on a sunny bank holiday afternoon when you full well that you should be doing something more worthwhile’, and order is restored to the universe.
Personally, I find it more ludicrous when they play it seriously! Also, Moore’s films were the ultimate cinema experiences, audiences joining in the fun – shouting warnings and jokes at the screen (and each other) and cheering and laughing along the way. Spontaneous applauds, whistling – a great time had by all. Didn’t happen with any of the others that I saw.
Agreed. To me Bond films are supposed to be a bit of silly fun rather than serious ‘action’ movies. We’re British for goodness sake, not Americans! I hate the ones with Daniel Craig, the big wooden charisma vacuum.
I just convinced my daughter to try the James Bond films about half an hour ago, as we’ve run out of horror films I am prepared to let her watch. We’re going to start with Casino Royale and the Craig films though, as I think these are going to be most appealing to her.
Myself, I’m a big Bond fan. Just this afternoon I spent far more money than I can afford on the deluxe mini-master set of the latest Rittenhouse James Bond trading card collection. I have all the sets (none of them are complete) in their binders and it’s probably the most valuable thing I own, as there are around 200 autographs of actors (and a couple of directors/crew) amongst them, including a few Bonds and another hero of mine, Christopher Lee. I am hoping that one of the kids will become a mad Bond fan too, so the collection won’t just head for eBay once I shuffle off. I’m starting this week with child number 1!
She actually asked me half an hour ago who my favourite Bond was and I don’t have an answer, as I like them all, even Dalton and Lazenby, who people tend to dislike (this gets my goat a bit, like when people start saying Ringo’s rubbish, just cos he’s not as good as the other three!). My favourite films are scattered across them all. From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, OHMSS, The Spy Who Loved Me, License To Kill (despite the odd scene with Felix Leiter at the end, where he seems to have forgotten the traumatic event he should be grieving about!), Goldeneye, Casino Royale and Skyfall (again despite Bond really failing, big time).
The worst ones are also scattered across the board, but the bad ones usually have things to enjoy within them. I’d say the worst ones are Diamonds Are Forever, Moonraker, A View To A Kill and Die Another Day (far and away THE worst one, even if it does have Avon from Blakes’s Seven in it). But there are big parts of Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, The Man With The Golden Gun and Quantum Of Solace that are a bit rubbish. SPECTRE, whilst not completely poor, was a major letdown and missed opportunity. It was very poorly written, Andrew Scott was woefully underused and Waltz phoned it in (although he suffered from the aforementioned terrible script). It was a big disappointment after the cinematic treat of Skyfall anyway.
I’m hoping that the future will bring Christopher Nolan to the series, with Tom Hardy or Dan Stevens as Bond. I thought Stevens was just another example of what’s wrong with British acting at the moment (all the new actors seem to be from wealthy public school backgrounds), but I saw him in a couple of thrillers and he was really good.
But the short answer to the original question is The Spy Who Loved Me and Die Another Day. Although I fluctuate between TSWLM, Casino Royale and OHMSS as the best.
Please no to Nolan. I’m thinking of setting up a kickstarter to pay him never to make another film.
Andrew Scott was not woefully underused. The fact that he’s ever used as an actor rather than tea-boy is a head-scratcher to me.
Oh and listen to Bob on this one. Casino Royale wins easily, and Die Another Day is just shocking.
Obviously, the worst Bond film is the 1967 Casino Royale with David Niven and Peter Sellers. Best? The Daniel Craig ones seem OK but I don’t have a preference?
Ah, but the 1967 Casino Royale has the best soundtrack. Actually, I’d place it above Die Another Day and Never Say Never Again anyway.
I agree that the original Casino Royale is appalling. Made the mistake of buying it on DVD, only watched it once. The second CR is probably the best.
Goldfinger is a personal favourite – heaven knows how many times I’ve watched it! Last time I had the commentary on, which is well worth a listen. Then we got Thunderball which is piss poor in comparison. I think we are all agreed that From Russia With Love is a cracker of a thriller, but also Dr. No is very watchable still, and was made on a shoestring.
All the Moore films haven’t worn well, and I was never a fan of his Bond. Daniel Craig is great, but I do not understand the love for Skyfall – the ending in Scotland was so obviously written for Connery to appear as the old retainer, but I assume he wouldn’t do it. I actually thought Spectre was better, but general opinion seems otherwise here on that one. Casino Royale was a brilliant reboot, but they lost the plot (in that there wasn’t one) with Quantum of Solace….even the title is crap.
Shame really, on Quantum – there was a writers’ strike during that, I believe, which explains the resultant mess.
I caught the last 20 minutes of the Christopher Walken / Grace Jones one a while ago and was surprised how small and cheap it all was, like an episode of the New Avengers. When did Bond films get small? Mid-Eighties, that’s when. It’s really exceptionally poor, but it’s still better than Spectre. Hard to believe that four films on from the best Bond, Casino Royale, with James rebooted as the troubled, cultured thug, they managed to make such a pig’s ear of it. With people like Sam Mendes and Jez Butterworth on board it ought not to be possible to produce something quite so dreadful, but, fair play to them, they pulled it off.
Best: Live and Let Die, best theme, best Bond girl, best clothes, great plot and Moore before he became totally tongue in cheek.
Worst: Diamonds are Forever. Connery totally disinterested and a nasty streak. Not an ounce of fun.
Soft Spot: A View to a Kill. Only because its a very special film in the history of Mrs ip and me.
By that logic for me it should be The Spy Who Loved Me as Barbara Bach is, ummm, lovely. But it’s a pretty crap film.
Best: You Only Live Twice.
A spaceship that swallows up other spaceships, for god’s sake – bang in the middle of the space race and Cold War.
And a villain’s lair hidden inside a volcano – possibly Ken Adam’s finest hour, and so good that it’s been copied and parodied to death ever since.
Also had the best theme song.
Just a minute! I’ll allow a range of opinion on the films but any fool knows that the best Bond Theme is From Russia With Love. Nominations of either The Man with the Golden Gun or Goldfinger will be treated to a pitying smile and the reply ‘it’s a good answer, but not good enough’.
Surely this is THE Bond theme…
I’ve really liked the most recent ones, hated Roger Moore, and grew up with the Connery ones. Hard to rank them though.
Interestingly when I worked with Peter Jackson, who was a great Bond fan, he reckoned OHMSS was the best as a film. (That was back in the early 90’s though)
As far as the new ones go, I think you should watch ‘Spectre’ again. Its much more like the 60’s Bond than the others.
So many worst votes for Diamonds Are Forever. It’s one of my favourites…
The “named after your father, perhaps?” dialogue being a particular favourite.
Haven’t we done this before ? Maybe it was lost in the great web site purge.
For me, it’s the Craig movies with Skyfall way out in front, Casino in second, Spectre and Quantum a fair way back, followed by the Connerys. Brosnan was a waste of space upstaged by his BMWs and phones, and Moore was a flabby joke upstaged by a Lotus.
Lazenby and Dalton are probably best forgotten. I get it with OHMSS, I just couldn’t believe Diana Rigg (regardless of how much I love her) and the stupidly sped up driving sequence. Then there was Dalton’s AM Vantage on skis…oy. At least with Eva Green I can believe Bond’s motivation (that reminds me – I must watch Sin City 2 again).
Like many here, Moore would have been ‘my’ Bond growing up, and I remember seeing Diamonds are Forever at the local flea pit which it was huge as a child…it’s laughable now even when you ignore the car-in-the-alley-on-two-wheels cock up. That said, I go along with Die Another Day as the worst of the lot, but Octopussy is right in there with a shout.
The thing about Spectre is a) all the call backs to past story lines (the mountain top chalet health retreat etc) and b) Blofeld. Christoph Waltz is pretty awful baddie, the Whitehall mandarin handing over the keys to the kingdom is a ridiculous plot line (then again, how ridiculous is it really – https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy), and Monica Bellucci seemed like woeful tokenism – the gorgeous older woman thing just chews up another 20 minutes of an already very long film. But when I ignore the Blofeld/mandarin threads I quite like the rest of it. Dave Bautista and Lea Seydoux are good. Having just watched it again 3 or 4 times on Netflix over last couple of months my opinions have hardened, and it was telling that I was prepared to go back again.
There’s a long form interview on Nerdist with Daniel Craig post Spectre launch that was very interesting. Might even download that again actually.
The James Bonding podcast (also on Nerdist by Matt Mira with Matt Gourley) was quite amusing while I stuck with it. Each show reviewing one Bond movie (plot, cast, music, clothes), starting with the Last (which was Skyfall at the time), and alternating back and forth, back to the First, up to The Penultimate, back to Second and so on. With comedians. I didn’t make it all the way through though, got a little too train-spotterly.
Do you think that drilling into his brain has any significance? I still can’t understand that bit. He lets himself be captured and tortured and have his brain drilled, and then wanders out again.
I don’t think I’ve seen anything so strange in a blockbuster movie before. It beats For Your Eyes Only’s “I’ll buy you a delicatessen in stainless steel” line into a cocked hat.
Not only that, he basically wanders into the lair shouting ‘Hello? I’m here for my torturing?’ And all for the sort of woman he has a very long history of treating abominably in the other films.
The Spy who Loved Me is in the top three Bond films. Even if you hate Roger Moore (and you’d have to be cruel to do that), it’s a great film.
It seems quite a hip point of view to say the George Lazenby film is the best. I’m sorry, but he’s so bad that it ruins On Her Majesty’s Secret Service for me.
The Living Daylights (Timmy Dalton’s first) is actually a good Bond film, and he’s probably most like the Bond of the novels. His second film, shorn of a Cold War setting, struggles because the film simply doesn’t know what it wants to be. For what it’s worth, Dalton is actually my favourite Bond (yes, I’m aware of the irony of the hipster-denouncing statement of the last paragraph).
Poor old Pierce Brosnan: a good start with Goldeneye, then tosh all the way. It didn’t help that he resembled a Burton’s dummy (with the voice of an Irish Bee Gee), but the scripts were so abject, they’d make a quiche weep. Does anyone remember that surfing scene he did? The audience in the cinema I was in – me included – laughed heartily at the crap CGI.
Am I alone in thinking that Daniel Craig is actually a crap Bond? I think he’s a really good actor in other stuff, but I just don’t like him as Bond. And why was Skyfall so loved? When the villain escaped police custody – from being locked in a secure cell – the script completely failed to tell us how he did it. Bond kidnapped M and, ultimately, got her killed. What rot!
Anyway, best films: Goldfinger, From Russia with Love, The Spy Who Loved Me
Worst: Die Another Day, Diamonds are Forever.
The escape from the secure cell was because when Q and Bond cracked the laptop, it compromised the security system, unlocked all the doors and super baddie killed the guards. He was even doing warm up stretches in the lead up to illustrate he knew what was coming.
What was it I said earlier about ‘train-spotterly’?
Yeah, yeah, yeah…. but WHY did he go to all that bother? The most pointlessly complicated revenge plot of all time. He wanted M dead? Why not just kill her without all the pantomime stuff? Making speeches and getting captured only to escape again, etc etc etc. Terrible film.
That is an excellent question. But that would just negate the whole series.
M is apparently the sort of woman who believes that a stealthy escape involves being led across across a pitch black Scottish moor by a trusty old retainer holding a bloody lamp. They were probably visible from space. An evil mastermind would have to introduce his own challenges to get any fun on pursuing an emy that dim.
I’d defend A View To A Kill to the death. The first Bond film I ever saw in the cinema, my love for it has hardened over the years in the face of the lukewarm critical consensus.
It has all the globetrotting you would expect, some gung ho bonkers stunts and plot twists, a fabulous deranged villain in Walken (check out that chilling scene where he goes crazy with a machine gun), some fantastic humorous lines, and one of the best theme songs (I mean this – it’s spine tingling, and the recurring “dance into the fire” line being used as an instrumental motif at key points like the descent down the fire ladder is just great John Barry score work).
But. All said and done, Casino Royale is just the objectively best film overall. It just is.
Worst? Probably Die Another Day, but Spectre is a close second.
Presume you’re not referring to the David Never version
Or Niven. Bloody spell check
Anyone read the books? I think From Russia With Love is the best of them, and it was also the one that was changed the least when made into a film.
The Spy Who Loved Me is the worst. Fleming changed his style and seemed to be aiming to be taken more seriously. It’s poor, don’t start there.
One of my problems with OHMSS was that it was the one Fleming book I had read and liked. And I think that was one of the closer titles comparing movie to book. But lazenby was teak-like and forgettable…
I read all the books many times plus a bunch of the spinoffs and slightly more off beat ones like Kingsley Amis’s superb critique and his “how to be Bond” guide which is hilarious.
IIRC the novel of The Spy Who Loved Me included the line “all women love semi-rape”. Charming.
I’d add another vote for Die Another Day as the worst, or most laughable. Particularly funny was the catfight in the plane where Rosamund Pike’s character might as well have said “I’m going to kill you, but first I need to strip down to my vest”
1. From Russia With Love (had the best Bond girl by a mile, Daniela Bianchi).
2. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (best Bond soundtrack).
3. Dr. No.
However, I still prefer the first two Harry Palmer films and, of course, Secret Squirrel.
Always worth remembering that Dr No kickstarted a massive boom in glamourous (or at least non-gloomy) spy movies (and TV for that matter) that is effectively still with us… in the days before cheap foreign travel and colour TV, the Bond films were effectively big-screen travelogues, and the epitome of big-budget something-for-everyone blockbuster family entertainment… the rest of the industry caught up by the early 80’s, and it took until the Daniel Craig era to really compete like-for-like once again with the rest of Hollywood, though I personally find DC a bit dour…
Like music, someone’s favourite Bond period is probably a good indicator of their age – as someone in their early-50s, I have nothing but great memories of queueing up at the pictures to see the early Moore Bonds (up to the genuinely terrific The Spy Who Loved Me), which everyone at the time loved to death, and which I still have a big nostalgic soft spot for, though empirically they’re too light (and camp) to compete on a level playing-field with Connery’s output… like many, I think that OHMSS is probably the best Bond except for the Lazenby-shaped semi-vacuum at its centre, otherwise it’s Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, and Skyfall… and I have to say I’ve never seen any of the Dalton or Brosnan movies again after their cinema outings…
Regarding George Lazenby, I’m not sure it matters an awful lot if the guy playing Bond is a ‘good’ actor or not. Bond is, as Ian Fleming said, a blunt instrument. He’s a cipher who merely does the bidding of others, and what meagre personality he has is expressed in the most banal of ways.
I’m not saying Lazenby understood that, but his portrayal certainly embodied it. Added to that, he spent most of film undercover anyway (for which he was dubbed by George Baker). True, he struggles in the third act, and there’s zero chemistry with Diana Rigg, but otherwise I think it’s a perfectly fine performance, and lot more palatable than Craig straining to find depth in a character that was never meant to have any.
Weirdly enough, I thought Dalton got it right. He understood the ‘blunt instrument’ bit but infused it with a smidgen of the self-disgust that Fleming added to the character in the latter half of the series. Twang and other Fleming fans will know that OHMSS is the stage of the books where things start to get a little bit weird and interesting, and it struck me that Dalton thought so too. Shame that he was slightly under-served by the material, and also a tiny bit off.
Best Bond film? The Living Daylights. Because: A-Ha theme song, Maryam d’Abo being gorgeous, Jeroen Krabbe, Joe Don Baker, John Rhys Davies and Art Malik clearly having a splendid time, and the best stunt sequence in any Bond film.
The fight on the cargo netting hanging out of the plane was done for real, no safety lines, just slimline parachutes concealed under the stuntmen’s clothing and a skydiver standing by in case anyone fell off. Spare man was to jump after them, catch them and pull their ripcord in the event that they were incapacitated!
Worst? Skyfall for sheer plot stupidness.
Skyfall for plot stupidness? You must have never seen Spectre. Sheesh!
Isn´t plot stupidness an important part of all Bond movies? You don´t watch Woody Allen for car chases.
And all the villains have the same problem.
– Kill mr Bond, but in a very complicted way so he has an honest chance of escaping.
– Why not just shoot him, sir?
– Noooooooo! I´ve been teaching these cats to fly small combat mopeds with wings for years.
– But I have a pistol.
– Shut up. Send the cats with small flying combat mopeds.
I think it depends. Plot stupidity is more forgivable in the Moore movies, because they were clearly tongue in cheek and consciously fantastical.
It seems to me that the Craig Bond movies are meant to be a little more gritty and realistic. That was certainly the stall that was being set out with Casino Royale, resetting the franchise after the nutzoid exercise in fantasia that was Die Another Day.
In that context, the plot of Skyfall is jarring. Virtually nothing anyone does in that movie makes any sense at all, but they’re all extremely serious and po-faced while doing it. I’ve not seen the film in a while, but from recollection (*SPOILERS*) Bardem’s character passes up an opportunity to kill Judi Dench early on (during a period where security around her is so low that an out of shape Bond is able to sneak into her front room), then deliberately gets himself caught, then escapes with the intention of leading Bond into a trap where he’ll be hit at precisely the right moment by a derailed tube train, and then goes and tries to kill Dench at a parliamentary hearing, which he’d have been able to do even if he hadn’t been captured? The plan (which forms the entire plot of the movie) makes less than zero sense, and that’s without getting into all that nonsense at the end out on the Scottish Moors, where Bond gets his old boss killed, to the enormous delight of his new boss.
I’m not really a fan of the franchise, but I thought Skyfall was a load of old bobbins, even by Bond standards. At least the silly ones are fun – this was just as stupid as much of the Brosnan stuff, but with a grim disposition. Casino Royale, I’ll grant, is a legitimately well made movie which at least makes a degree of sense.
As posted above, what’s needed here is Statham. State of the art action movie star, can do a bit of comedy, English as a cup of tea, a chip on the shoulder and erectile dysfunction, looks believably like a man who has seen and done some horrible shit, and would allow them to turn the corner from this weird combination of affected “realism” and hysterical soap opera and get on to something a bit more enjoyable. Plus, everyone loves Statham, don’t they? Yeah, they do.
You do have a point. If they make Bond serious we will raise our expectations. I enjoyed Skyfall very much, but haven’t seen it for a while. I guess there is Bond logic and logic logic.
For my money, Statham is the wrong kind of silly.
“I once used defibrillators on myself. I put shards of glass in my fucking eye. I’ve jumped from a high-rise building using only a raincoat as a parachute and broke both legs upon landing; I still had to pretend I was in a fucking Cirque du Soleil show! I’ve swallowed enough microchips and shit them back out again to make a computer. This arm has been ripped off completely and re-attached with *this* fucking arm!
I watched the woman I love get tossed from a plane and hit by another plane mid-air. I drove a car off a freeway on top of a train while it was on fire. Not the car, *I* was on fire!”
Great film, Spy. Random quote: “I make a habit out of doing things that people say I can’t do: Walk through fire, waterski blindfolded, take up piano at a late age.”
What about best and worst Bond theme songs?
Best: Nobody Does it Better; We Have All the Time in the World
Worst: Die Another Day; The Man with the Golden Guuuuuurrrrrrrn (as Lulu pronounced it).
This is the best Bond theme.
The answer, as I said above, is From Russia with Love.
Worst is harder to judge, because just as the films should be judged as ‘Bond films’ so the songs are ‘Bond Songs’; I never cared for Living Daylights though.
Going against the flow, my favourite Bond IS Diamond Are Forever. Yes, Connerys too old but plays the part with equal amounts of wry humour and malice. Mr Wint and Mr Kidd are quite creepy and Charles Gray as Blofeld overacts with relish. The soundtrack is excellent, the only one I would repeatedly listen to. Worst, OHMSS. I`ve never watched it but the clips I`ve seen of Lazenby in the frilly shirt and kilt means it will never make my must watch list.
Absolutely. First one I ever saw, as an impressionable eight year old in 1971. Must have seen it numerous times since. It’s amoral, oddly camp and disturbingly sadistic. If you go with the theory that bond films tend to be reactive and reflect the culture at the time they were made then this one completely captures a sense of the 60s having ended and the 70s ushering in an era of decadence and confustion. It features Charles Gray as the campest Blofeld ever (he even drags up for no real reason), a pair of homosexual sadist assassins, another pair of lesbian bodyguards, plastic surgery, las vegas and Connery’s bond with a don’t-give-a-fuck hairy midriff. Plenty of innuendo – “As long as the collars and cuffs match” – and an imcomprehensible plot.
Another Saturday, another Bond. Moonraker (1 out of 5) is Bond at his Benny Hilliest. This movie is just terrible. Drax´s castle is nice, but that´s it. End of message, or as Moore would most likely have it: end of massage.
Well, that post will raise a few eyebrows.
Or maybe just the one.
Slightly.
Fantastic FX by Derek Meddings – but the product placement was well out of control, and they would have to go and bring Richard Kiel back.
For Your Eyes Only (3 out of 5) is quite a step in the right direction. They cut down on the silliness for the most part, and it manages to be entertaining and the plot holds together pretty well for the most part.
The mountain climbing outstays its welcome though. And I´m not sure why that young blonde skate girl is so attracted to a man in his mid-fifties, or why she has to be so annoying in general.
Nice ski chase, credit to the stunt people, and a pretty decent car chase too – although occassionally I can hear the Benny Hill theme play in the background. And possibly even a decent oneliner or two from Mr Eyebrow.
Another Bond girl played by a French actress. Well, French woman is international code for there will be sexy.
And whoever decided to give the Bond theme a disco remake should be forced to watch Moonraker once a day for a week or two.