Worst decade for Bond films?
GiveMeMooreBond
Posts: 16MI6 Agent
In your opinion, what was the worst decade for Bond films; in terms of quality and hype surrounding 007 movies?
1960s: perfection, not a bad movie in the decade
1970s: Started off with a stinker from an aged, bored Connery, Bond himself became more of a playboy superhero and the movies became more light hearted. The Spy Who Loved Me saved this decade
1980s: We got 5 movies, every other year, but the quality wasn't really there. I wasn't alive in the 80's, but it seems like excitement for Bond hit a lull. In 1989, LTK was an after thought compared to Batman and some other big name films.
1990s: After a long hiatus, Goldeneye resurrected the franchise. The follow up movies were meh, but Bond stayed very popular.
2000s: After a reboot, Bond was back with Craig's gritty version of Bond. People loved it.
2010s: Somehow only got 2 movies in this decade, but both did well at the box office. Skyfall did over a billion.
2020s: No Time to Die, hope its not the only movie this decade lol.
To me, it has to the 1980s. We got five movies but none were memorable to the average movie watcher. Moore was too old and Dalton was too serious. Seems to me like the movies during the decade were afterthoughts to the average movie-goer. Bond was sort of just there. Runner up would the the 1990s with Bond sort of just being there again by the late 1990s.
Comments
I know we're nearly halfway through but it seems a bit unfair to judge a decade on one film, so I won't go for the 20s!
I think I'd have to go for the 70s to be honest. Spy and Moon make up for it, but three Hamiltons in a row made for a fairly uninspiring run and the series began to go off course under him I'd say.
From worst to best
20’s - 90’s - 10’s - 00’s - 80’s - 70’s - 60’s
Have to agree - as one who thinks the 'classic' era of Bond was the first 25 years and it went off the boil when Roger Moore left the role. Now, I never thought that would happen at the time; I was one of those who - having read Fleming's books - always wanted the films to be more serious again, I bought into the whole idea that Moore's films while highly enjoyable were also a bit too silly. Well, we got Dalton and there weren't any laughs in his films. There weren't that many in Brosnan's films either, because the jokes just weren't any good, thanks to the new producers' tendency to leave the screenplay to the last minute, so the jokes were the last consideration.
So, it's diminishing returns all the way imo - I liked TWINE and Spectre from Brosnan and Craig's era but that's all. What's odd is that just as things went off the boil with Moore leaving, Hollywood itself moved into the space left and began knocking out Bond-style movies like Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, Commando, Total Recall, Indy's Last Crusade, Batman then into the 90s True Lies, Pulp Fiction, Mission Impossible, Face/Off, Kill Bill Vol 1 and so on, these gave me more Bond-style thrills than the actual Bonds who struggled to reassert themselves, they made heavy weather of it all.
I'd take the first 25 years - shame about NSNA again, of course - and could happily ditch the remainder.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I have to agree on the 80's as the least good decade, even though I've always enjoyed Dalton's movies a lot. In my opinion LTK is one of the best plotted Bond movies, and the villain is also one of the best.
Might be interesting to score each film from each decade from 1-5 (1 being poor*, 5 being excellent). So for example below and just my opinion;
60s: DN - 3, FRWL - 5, GF - 4, TB - 4, YOLT - 2, OHMSS - 5 = Total Score of 23
70s: DAF - 1, LALD - 4, TMWTGG - 2, TSWLM - 5, MR - 3, ZZ - 2.5 = Total Score of 17.5
80s: FYEO - 4, OP - 3, AVTAK - 2, TLD - 3, LTK - 3, ZZ - 2.5, ZZ - 2.5 = Total Score of 20
90s: GE - 3, TND - 3, TWINE - 3, ZZ - 2.5, ZZ - 2.5, ZZ - 2.5 = Total Score of 16.5
00s: DAD - 1, CR - 5, QoS - 3, SF - 4, SP - 2, NTTD - 2 = Total Score of 17
To even things up, I've shown 6 films for each decade by adding a missing film (with a generic ZZ abbreviation) and giving it an average score of 2.5. Had there actually been an extra film in that decade, it may have scored 1, it may have scored 5, so 2.5 is probably fair.
*poor in the loosest sense of the word. A Bond film is still a Bond film! 😊
Yes I agree, I always think LTK has one of the best plots of a Bond film: the way that the whole film hinges around an action scene -the seaplane waterskiing- is the sort of thing any action film should really make sure it does. Action scenes should be part of the story rather than just stuck on, and that one changes the direction of the film and has repercussions all the way through. I don't think it's one of the best Bond films as there's more to a film than just the plot, but it is a well worked-out one.
As Bond movie fans I expected us to rate the Bond films from each decade. Perhaps I should have worded it, worst decade for Bond movie relevance? It factor? Being relevant? I always thought the 80s were the low point for Bond film excitement, the movies were always just there and blended into the background a bit. For anyone who went through the 80s, what was the hype for Bond movies then?
Well, Roger Moore was the real deal as James Bond then, and Connery - in the UK anyway - was yesterday's man, loved mainly by hardcore fans but forgotten by a lot of the modern cinemagoing public. That made NSNA a hard sell in the UK and so it proved - it came out second in cinemas to Jaws 3D, at a time when local fleapits only had one really big screen.
There were very few big adventure movies then and they tended to be once every few years - sure the big ones were big, but Raiders was just 81 and there were only two in the rest of the decade, same kind of thing with Star Wars. So Bond was very much, okay, the circus is coming to town, what do they have to give us this time? And they would deliver, often they coincided with the summer holidays so as a kid/teenager they had that freedom and sunshine vibe.
Also, folk were catching up on what Moore had done as video and DVD didn't exist so many of us only knew Live and Let Die existed when it came on telly around 1980, then you had Golden Gun. Moore seemed like a new brand and his increasingly big hair matched the 1980s style too, it was all a bit Dynasty.
I suppose the appeal was much the same as Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible films now I guess. But they had a bit more - John Barry soundtrack, or a top song.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I feel like there was quite a lot of hype for TLD and the new Bond; I was pretty young but I remember lots of promo stuff.
Yeah, there was - though many of the cinemas went with the relatively duff poster of just Bond with a blue gun barrel and none of the other stuff around it.
Top 10 hit song, not bad!
Dropped the ball with the follow-up, it felt like it wasn't even being made at the time, no great hype or fanfare.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Judge the decades in terms of quality and hype together is difficult, since quality is entirely subjective, whereas hype can be gauged by box office. That said, the 1960s are a shoe-in for the best decade in both. I'm not going to include the 2020s since the decade isn't over.
Judging by quality, in second place I'd name the 80s (five good films and only one stinker). After that every decade is tied in its ratio of good to bad. The 2000s have CR but also DAD, along with the above-average but flawed QoS. The 70s are mediocre aside from TSWLM, just as the 90s are mediocre aside from GE. And the 2010s boast the high of SF and low of Spectre.
As for hype, after the 60s there's a tie between the (late) 70s and 2010s (Skyfall, MR and TSWLM all being mega-grossers), then the 2000s, the 1990s, and the 1980s (a decade of falling BO).
Good Points NP. Growing up in the late 70s/80s Roger was and will always be my Bond. He was THE James Bond in my eyes, no one else. Whenever a Bond film would be shown on Bank Holiday Monday or at Christmas if it was a Roger one I would be ecstatic. If it came on and I saw the Connery (Simmons) gun barrel and the opening scene which looked old fashioned 60s, I would be very disappointed.
The biggest film events for me as a child, as I'm sure for many kids of my era were; James Bond, Star Wars, Superman, Indiana Jones.
I don't think I really minded which Bond it was, but I agree that a Roger gunbarrel was a bit more of a promise of two hours of an expensive big screen epic on the way.
The first Bond I saw was OHMSS and I thought Lazenby was the real deal as Bond - for years I would tune in with happy expectation to a new Bond film on telly only to be disappointed when it turned out to be Sean Connery or Roger Moore.
I was in my mid 20s until someone told me that Lazenby only did the one film.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
1960s: Flawless, culminating in the greatest Bond film of all time.
1970s: Patchy: two excellent films (Live And Let Die and The Spy Who Loved Me), two mediocre ones (Diamonds Are Forever and The Man With The Golden Gun) and one complete turkey (Moonraker).
1980s: Much better than its reputation would suggest: four fine films and only one that's fairly poor (A View To A Kill).
1990s: Oh dear. One fairly good film (The World Is Not Enough), one that's hugely overrated (GoldenEye) and one absolute stinker (Tomorrow Never Dies).
2000s: Very mixed. One great film (Casino Royale), one that's adequate (Quantum Of Solace) and one that's fairly poor (Die Another Day).
2010s: Not bad: I rate Skyfall highly and consider Spectre to be reasonably good if far from great.
2020s: Just the one film so far, and it was a good one.
Here's how I rank them, from best to worst:
1980s: Probably my favourite decade, with 4 out of 5 of this decade's films - TLD (04), OP (05), FYEO (07), and LtK (10) - in my top 10. John Glen really knew how to make great Bond films.
1990s: Another great decade, with 2 out of 3 of the films - GE (03) and TND (09) in my top 10. I want to like TWiNE (21), but find it's tone very schizophrenic and the story hard to follow.
1960s: A great decade with two of my favourite films - OHMSS (02) and FRwL (06) - as well as the classic GF (15). That said, as much as I enjoy them, it also has two mid-tier films - the fun YOLT (18) and the vanilla DN (19) - as well as the slow-paced, tensionless TB (22).
2010s: Although it contains one of the better films in the series, SF (11), it also contains the controversial SP (20), which I like more than most, but has some pacing issues and questionable choices.
2020s: With only one film so far, it's hard to tell how to rate this decade. NTtD (14) sits in the middle of the pack for me, with a lot of good, but also some questionable elements.
2000s: Potentially the worst decade given it has two of the weakest films in the series: DAD (23) and QoS (24). But it also contains my favourite film in the series - CR (01), which balances it out for me.
1970s: Probably the weakest decade in terms of quality, with TSWLM (08) being the obvious best and the rest being all over the place. That said, I'm a big fan of TMwtGG (12), and enjoy the mid-tier films MR (16) and LaLD (17), but find DaF (25) to be the worst in the official series.
8. TMwtGG 9. AVtaK 10. TSWLM 11. SF 12. LtK 13. TND 14. YOLT
15. NTtD 16. MR 17. LaLD 18. GF 19. SP 20. DN 21. TB
22. TWiNE 23. DAD 24. QoS 25. DaF
2010s
For me the worst decade because, after the sterling and rapid start made to the Craig era with a classic [CR] and an underrated 'divider' [QOS] [this last for me has gotten much better over the years compared to what followed] both SF and SP are slow, almost art-house pieces that lacked the necessary vim and vigour I expect in a Bond film. However, if there are no more films this decade, it will surely be the 2020s.
I'd have to choose a decade from the 21st century. It's difficult to place NTTD in the 20s since it was filmed in 2019. I'd give it to the 2010s, especially is NTTD is counted in that decade, but the 2000s isn't far behind.