Best and worst of Bond
NYBrit
Posts: 7MI6 Agent
{[]Hi I'm a newcomer to the forum here but have been big fan of the movies since I was a kid.
I don't know if this has been done before but thought it'd be fun to see what you're top 5 Bond movies are followed by your worst 5.
Here are mine to start things off!
Top 5:
1. The Living Daylights
2. The Spy Who Loved Me
3. Goldeneye
4. From Russia With Love
5. Live and Let Die
Worst 5:
1. Licence To Kill
2. Thunderball
3. Moonraker
4. Die Another Day
5. Tomorrow Never Dies
The Man With The Golden Gun WOULD have been in the list but for that one amazing stunt with the bridge jump!
Moonraker is in the worst list because of the whole stupid battle in space part and the way they ruined Jaws.
{[]
I don't know if this has been done before but thought it'd be fun to see what you're top 5 Bond movies are followed by your worst 5.
Here are mine to start things off!
Top 5:
1. The Living Daylights
2. The Spy Who Loved Me
3. Goldeneye
4. From Russia With Love
5. Live and Let Die
Worst 5:
1. Licence To Kill
2. Thunderball
3. Moonraker
4. Die Another Day
5. Tomorrow Never Dies
The Man With The Golden Gun WOULD have been in the list but for that one amazing stunt with the bridge jump!
Moonraker is in the worst list because of the whole stupid battle in space part and the way they ruined Jaws.
{[]
Comments
1. Casino Royale
2. From Russia With Love
3. Goldfinger
4. The Living Daylights
5. GoldenEye
Bottom-5 (W/out NSNA)
1. Moonraker
2. A View To A Kill
3. Diamonds Are Forever
4. Die Another Day
5. Octopussy
Bottom-5 (W/ NSNA)
1. Never Say Never Again
2. Moonraker
3. A View To A Kill
4. Diamonds Are Forever
5. Die Another Day
1. FRWL (nothing beats the classics)
2. CR (2006){It's good}
3. Goldfinger (Oddjob and Goldfinger won it)
4. YOLT (Blofeld and Hans) [Im obsesed with minor but named villains]
5. FYEO (Blofeld's demise, Eric Kriegler and Apostis.)
and the worst
5. DAF (Charles Gray's Blofeld was awful Wint and Kidd made up for it though)
4 LTK (sorry Dalton fans I like the villains but not Dalton)
3. TND (Carver was a twit)
2. DAD (No comment)
1. Moonraker (Jaws is a great villain but Drax was just a $#@%&;*^!!)
1)Goldfinger
2)From Russia With Love
3)Thunderball
4)Dr. No
5)You Only Live Twice (I am considering replacing this film with The Spy Who Loved Me)
Bottom 5:
1)A View To A Kill
2)The Living Daylights
3)Die Another Day
4)Licence To Kill
5)Never Say Never Again (among official films, Moonraker is at number 5)
1- OHMSS
2- From Russia With Love
3- Goldfinger
4- The Spy Who Loved Me
5- Casino Royale
Bottom:
1- Thunderball (a lot of good moments but those underwater scenes are SO long and dull, imho)
2- A View To A Kill (again, enjoyable bits but duff ones too)
3- Die Another Day (yeah, I think it's duff too- I watched it the other day and I have to say, after the first half hour I think it's rubbish...)
4- Moonraker
5- The Man With The Golden Gun (bottom of the barrel)
1. Goldfinger (the seduction of Miss Galore)
2. Casino Royale (the battle in the sinking house was a trifle confusing)
3. On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Tracy's suicide attempt wasn't really explained)
4. From Russia With Love (can't think of one right now)
5. Thunderball (as Steed has mentioned, the slow underwater sequences)
My Bottom 5 (with one redeeming factor each):
17. Tomorrow Never Dies (the idea of a media mogul villain is a great one at least)
18. Die Another Day (Halle Berry looks great)
19. A View to a Kill (Patrick MacNee)
20. Moonraker (one of the best PTSs)
21. The Man With the Golden Gun (Christopher Lee)
1.OHMSS(great story, good Bond, great movie)
2.YOLT(IMO, Connery's best)
3.CR(Daniel Craig IS James Bond)
4.GF(always been a favorite of mine)
5.LALD(very exciting; Moore's best Bond film)
My bottom five Bond movies(starting with worst):
1.MR(not just a terrible Bond movie...just terrible movie period!)
2.TWINE(plain stupid)
3.DAF(kinda...boring)
4.DAD(another stupid Brosnan Bond)
5.AVTAK(Moore is WAY too old for Bond now)
Goldeneye- (Everything I could want out of Bond, I got.)
Goldfinger-(The movie that shows how cool Bond could be."
Casino Royal-(giving Bond a shot of adrenaline before the series wanes again.)
TSHLM-(A bit campy, cheesy, and convoluted. Fun to watch.)
OHMSS- (How could someone hate this movie?)
Worst:
Octopussy-(What the hell was this about?)
TMWTGG-(Good plot, bad movie)
YOLT- (Bond turning Japanese was a really bad idea. Great villain though.)
Thunderball-( was what a bond movie shouldn't be, boring. Capped off with a lame underwater fight scene.)
TND-some good stuff in there, but a really bad plot.
Numbers 3-5 are also among my five worst although instead of Goldfinger and Dr. No I have Moonraker and A View to a Kill. Since your numbers 1 and 2 for the worst Bonds are generally well-regarded by fans and critics, what don't you like about them? Any particulars you'd like to share? I'm not picking a fight; opinions are so subjective. Just curious.
1. Octopussy (love the locations, and the villains)
2. The Spy Who Loved Me (I can't think of any specific reasons that I like this, but I do)
3. For Your Eyes Only (Moore's best performance imo)
4. Casino Royale (DC is an amazing Bond)
5. Tomorrow Never Dies (It's just so fun to watch)
WORST:
1. Die Another Day (I can't take the horrible script)
2. Moonraker (Jaws is a joke, and the space scenes are pretty lame)
3. Diamonds Are Forever (Jill St. John is horrible, Charles Grey is horrible, the Felix Leiter is pretty bad)
4. On Her Majesty's Secret Service (I think Lazenby is a pretty good Bond, but this movie is pretty boring until the ski chase)
5. You Only Live Twice (I'm starting to enjoy this movie more. It used to be dead last. My main problems with it are that it's extremely boring when Bond's turning Japanese and getting "married," and Aki is absolutely unbearable.
I actually do enjoy my five worst bond movies though. I even watched YOLT the other day. It's just that compared to the others they are bad.
I'm surprised, too.
Seriously, you do make valid points. Several days ago I complained about YOLT for setting the precedent for outlandish plots and villains but GF did it first. Sure enough, when most people think about what a James Bond film is like, they imagine the glossy absurdities dating from GF, imitated by the makers of the Matt Helm and Derek Flint spy spoofs. Why GF is still at the top of my list is because it's so damn fun and just because the formula degenerated with repetition or rip-off doesn't make the starting point a bad film in my opinion. I generally prefer a grittier story than what we have in GF but I don't find any other in the series to be more entertaining.
There is definitely an uneveness to DN that keeps it out of my top 5 but it's still in my top 10.
1. From Russia With Love
Perfect. Connery's acting was perfect, the script was brilliant, the storyline was sensational (although I prefer the book), and the fight scene was one of the best I've seen in any movie - the sheer ruthlessness of hand to hand combat was what epitomised Bond, IMO.
2. Goldfinger
Despite the fact that this is the first Bond film to deviate from the book somewhat, I think it is very well made. The characters of Goldfinger and Oddjob have been written well, as Fleming himself wrote them in the book. I do indeed have reservations about the introduction of gadgets to the James Bond franchise, but in this film I believe that the gadgets worked well and complemented rather than dominated the story.
3. Dr No
Very faithful to Ian Fleming's book, with one major exception - in the book, Dr No's major project was making money from the sale of guano, whereas the side story was his toppling of American missles. Aside from that, it was a fairly faithful adaptation of the novel to the big screen. Sean Connery was still finding his feet as Bond but to me, this was quite a convincing act. I loved the scene when he was booby trapping his hotel room with his hair and with talcum powder - things that Fleming's Bond would definitely have done.
4. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Great performance by Lazenby, brilliant story derived faithfully from Fleming's novel.
5. Thunderball
A lot of people didn't like this film from what I have read so far in these pages, but I found it to be very entertaining. The pre-credits fight sequence was among the best of any Bond movie, and the story was pretty much on the mark of the original novel. I do admit, however, that there are parts of the movie that seemed a little slow-paced and could be improved, however.
Worst:
1. Die Another Day
Worst Bond movie ever made. Plot was non-existant, characters were wooden, the James Bond that was imprisoned for 14 months to me wasn't the James Bond that Fleming wrote in the books. They removed all dignity from Bond that they might as well have killed him - it would've been less painful to watch. On top of that, the gadgets were far too over the top, with that invisible car and all. If I were to include non-offical Bonds to this list, then to me this film is worse even than Never Say Never Again.
2. GoldenEye
I'll admit that perhaps I'm a little prejudiced here. With a few exceptions, I don't care much for modern Bond films that seem to have toyed around with Fleming's concept too much. This was arguably the first of the "new era" Bonds, and I did not like the casting of a woman, Dame Judi Dench as M, nor did I like her performance in this film, either. To me, the idea of a 00 betraying his own is too far fetched. Brosnan's performance as Bond wasn't too bad, but this film was a little too cheesy for my tastes.
3. The Spy Who Loved Me
I see that a lot of people loved this film, and most say that it was the best of Roger Moore's era. Fair enough, but the movie had no resemblance to the book whatsoever. At the very least I felt that they could've written the character of Vivien Michel in as the Bond girl in this film, but they made the leading girl a foreign secret agent. We all know that Bond loves working alone, and in the book Casino Royale and For Your Eyes Only, Bond cursed M for being teamed up with a woman, albeit a woman who was on his side. How much more would he despise being teamed up with a female foreign secret agent? I think that aspect of it ruined the entire film, I do not believe that Fleming's Bond would've fallen for XXX the way he did in the film. On that subject - XXX - is that the most generic spy code I have ever seen? Do the writers have no creativity?
4. A View To A Kill
I echo what most of you said here - Roger Moore was too old by the time he made that film, and it shows. The film itself wasn't too bad, but a 58-year-old Bond just isn't right.
5. Moonraker
Far too over-the-top. Bond going to outer space? Lasers firing? Come on, is this James Bond or some B-grade sci-fi? And it doesn't do its novel namesake any justice - Moonraker was one of Fleming's finest works, a delight to read over and over again, Moonraker the film sits gathering dust where it belongs.
Top 5
1. Casino Royale (Daniel Craig was phenomenal . . . Finally, a Bond who comes across as a truly lethal individual).
2. The Living Daylights (I loved Roger Moore, but Dalton's attempt to return Bond to his literary roots was refreshing).
3. On Her Majesty's Secret Service (I enjoyed Lazenby's take on the character and the story had an emotional depth to it that the other films, up until CR, lacked).
4. The Spy Who Loved Me (Moore's best outing as 007 . . . fun villains and great action).
5. Goldeneye (the best of the Brosnan films before they became overrun with gadgets and lame sexual puns).
Worst 5
1. Moonraker (too many reasons to list. Without doubt, MR is Fleming's greatest book . . . the movie, however, butchered that great literary work of art. No Bond should ever go into space . . . )
2. The World is Not Enough (this simply came across, at least to me, as a parody of a Bond film. The scene in the PTS where he sends the speed boat under water and straightens his tie makes me cringe every time I see it. Denise Jones as a nuclear physicist was horrible casting).
3. Diamonds are Forever (an out-of-shape Connery in a bad hair piece).
4. A View to a Kill (James Bond would never bake a keish . . . Tanya Roberts' endless screaming gets tiresome pretty quickly).
5. Die Another Day (Without a doubt, one of the most convoluted plots out there).
-FRWL
-GF
-OHMSS
-LTK
-CR
The worst:
-Moonraker
-Octopussy
-AVTAK
-NSNA
-DAD
1. Goldfinger
2. Casino Royale
3. Living Daylights
4. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
5. Dr No
Worst 5 (1 being the worst)
1. Moonraker
2. Diamonds are Forever
3. The Man with the Golden Gun
4. License to Kill
5. Die Another Day
My Faves are:
1) Goldfinger - It's just always been my favorite Bond film. Great theme song (I love a good theme song) OddJob is awesome and the Aston-Martin is killer.
2) The Spy Who Loved Me - Just a fun Bond film with a slight bit of preposterousness with a great theme song, cool gadgetry, one of the best villains (Jaws), a hot Bond babe and the coolest car (the underwater Lotus) besides the DB5 from Goldfinger
3)Casino Royal – I enjoyed CR but it didn’t really feel like a Bond movie to me. It had the worst theme song of all and the Bond babe wasn’t that hot.
Honorable Mention: I liked, Dr. No (how can you argue with Ursula Andress), Thunderball, Octopussy (I love when the Hot-Babe Assassin Squad kicks into action near the end), On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and Goldeneye (cool opening sequence but dopey scene with tank) as well as bits and pieces of some of the others.
The ones I really don’t like are A View To A Kill, From Russia With Love (not that I don't like it but wasn't my type of Bond film), Moonraker, and License To Kill, Die Another Day (Halle Berry was pretty awful)
I completley disagree on your GF comment.