Ed Ranks James Bond Films

Non-Eon films don't count. Obviously.

Why?

24. Moonraker - Star Wars came out in 1977, so logically it made sense that in 1979 James Bond should have a space battle with an industrialist who wants to repopulate the world with the Aryan race. Logically.

23. Octopussy - The worst named movie is also the second worst overall. This is a story that involves Fabergé eggs, sound samples from an old Tarzan movie, and has the entire climax featuring James Bond dressed up as a clown. This movie is absolutely not an all time high.

22. A View to a Kill - Noticing a pattern yet? Yes, Roger Moore is horrible. And by the time this movie came out, I'm pretty sure he was already 89 years old. The scenes of him trying to woo young Bond girls in this movie comes off more like Herbert the whistling pedophile from Family Guy trying to get Chris into his house. This movie could easily be the worst but, hey, Chris Walken!

So... who knew Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman was such a babe?

21. Live and Let Die - Just so terrible. Did we really need a James Bond remix with a Blaxploitation film? Was anyone convinced by the Mr. Big disguise that Dr. Kananga was going with? He just looked like Kananga with leprosy. And was the racist Southern cop really an interesting enough character that they needed to invite him back for a second film after this? This is clearly a rhetorical question because we all know the answer is “no”.

20. The Man with the Golden Gun - The general concept of Christopher Lee being an amazing assassin with a golden gun (that he can transform into everyday objects to sneak through security with) is great. The concept of him wanting to kill James Bond is okay. Although, I can never figure out why James Bond is world famous when he's also supposed to be a secret spy. The way this entire movie is written and pulled off... is not okay.

19. Die Another Day - Hooray! A Pierce Brosnan movie finally terrible enough to be worse than a Roger Moore movie. Wait. Why are we celebrating this terrible thing? This one was so bad it ended Pierce Brosnan's time as Bond. Yes, we can all agree that Halle Berry is nice to look at coming out of the water. But a Korean villain in whiteface? An invisible car? And OH MY GOD that horrible ice tsunami surfing scene with special effects that are neither special nor effective. 

18. The World is Not Enough - Sophie Marceau is great, and I have no problem with the twist where they made her the villain (sorry if that was a spoiler, but the film came out in 1999, so by now it's your own fault). But I have six damning words which will mean that this movie has no way of redemption: Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist.


 

Didn't I tell you not to trust anyone, Dr. Jones?

17. For Your Eyes Only - Julian Glover (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Game of Thrones, The Empire Strikes Back, Doctor Who) is a great villain. But watching Julian Glover feud with a Mediterranean smuggler and coach a jailbait ice skater is not the epitome of a great film.

16. Tomorrow Never Dies - Some people rank this one a lot lower. And Jonathan Pryce is absolutely hamming it up in this film, almost as a parody of a Bond villain more than an actual Bond villain. This movie is instantly date-able to the 90s with its fascination with the rise of cable breaking news and it's casting of Teri Hatcher. Remember when Teri Hatcher was a thing?

15. The Spy Who Loved Me - Time Out Magazine called this the 5th best bond film, and Rotten Tomatoes names it as the 8th "freshest." I don't care. This is as high as Roger Moore is going to get in my rankings. There is no Roger Moore film that is as good as a Connery, Craig, or even Dalton film. The Spy Who Loved Me is the best Roger Moore Bond film, and that seabase thing is pretty cool. But other than that, it's still just Roger Moore.

Essentially, the good guys in TLD. Oops!

14. The Living Daylights - More simply forgettable than terrible, The Living Daylights features the Afghan mujahideen as the good guys. You know, the guys who would eventually transform into the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20! Still, that milkman with the exploding bottles was pretty cool, huh? And that cargo aircraft scene at the end? And what about that Czech cellist?

13. Diamonds are Forever - This is the worst Sean Connery film (Never Say Never Again is non-Eon and doesn't count), but it's still better than the best Roger Moore film. I don't care about diamonds, I don't care about Mr. Crunch and Mr. Munch (or whatever their names were), I don't care about Las Vegas, and I don't care about the Jimmy Dean Sausage guy pretending to be Howard Hughes. And why is the villain Blofeld? This guy is nothing like Blofeld. Can't we just give him another name and not make him Blofeld?

12. SPECTRE - SPECTRE is a giant bag of wasted possibility. After decades of an inability to use the SPECTRE organization or its characters due to complicated legal issues, Eon Productions finally secured the rights back. There was no way this couldn't kick ass, right? Wrong. We all knew Christoph Waltz was going to be Blofeld, so why even bother to hide it? And the "I want to kill James Bond because I was jealous of him as a child" just went and destroyed everything that might have been interesting - almost undermining the entire Craig reboot. There were two good things about this movie - the opening in Mexico and that car chase with Mr. Hinx.

11. License to Kill - Timothy Dalton did a pretty respectable job as Bond. But he was only given two chances and he can only soar as high as #11. A villain who refreshingly didn't want to take over the world or steal nuclear weapons, Sanchez just wants to be a billionaire drug lord. In a way this movie wanted to be Miami Vice or Scarface, but it works enough to still be enjoyable. With another actor this could have been near the bottom, but Dalton and Law and Order girl elevate it.

"I think he got the point."

10. Thunderball - This one isn't even all that amazing, so I'm not sure why they made it twice. Still, it's got underwater action scenes, pools with sharks, beautiful island locations, and all that good stuff. Sean Connery kicks enough ass to move this one up the ranks, and the whole "facial surgery to look like someone else" plot that begins the story is okay enough. When TBS used to do James Bond marathons all the time, the scene from this film with Bond using the spear gun on the guy on the beach was in every single commercial they ran, and it is a pretty iconic scene. But overall, it's not as successful as others because it seems like we're just having another SPECRTE mid-management villain thrown at us, when all we really want by this time is a Blofeld reveal. Which we will get in the very next film.

 

Nice jabot, Australian Pirate Bond.

9. On Her Majesty's Secret Service - OHMSS is just weird. An Australian James Bond is weird. The fact that Blofeld and Bond just ignore continuity and and appear not to know each other in this film is weird. The fact that Lazenby jokes about "that other one," acknowledging an actor replacement, is weird. And this film is at the height of the trippy, psychedelic late 1960s. This is almost an Austin Powers film. The "joke" of Austin Powers was Mike Myers essentially over-doing all of the clichés of James Bond - but he didn't even need to. An overly-clichéd 1960s free love trippy James Bond-esque film already existed - and it was this one.  Still, Diana Rigg is great. Telly Savalas is great. So this one's still good.

8. Goldeneye - Pierce Brosnan knocked the ball out of the park with his first James Bond outing. It had been the longest stretch in history without a new Bond film, and the Cold War had ended in the middle of that. Goldeneye had to reinvent James Bond for the post-Cold War world and prove that a James Bond film series could still be relevant and interesting without it. Goldeneye did that, becoming one of the best Bond films there was. And how about that video game, huh? Each one of Brosnan's repeat appearances got progressively worse though.

7. Quantum of Solace - This will absolutely be my most controversial ranking. I didn't even necessarily love Quantum of Solace when it first came out. But if you marathon the Daniel Craig movies all in a row, and watch this directly after watching Casino Royale, it's a great and logical follow-up. I know water rights in Latin America don't sound as sexy as they could be, but this is not a bad or boring bond film. It's 65% rating on Rotten Tomatoes is an absolute farce. The film had great action and was gritty, psychological, and dark, which was everything that made Casino Royale great. So the name of the film isn't great? So what! The villain is kind of boring? Pfft. Like Le Chiffre the banker/card player was such a super badass. 

There was a time when it was OK for a movie poster to feature a man being
scrubbed down erotically by Japanese girls. That time was 1967.

6. You Only Live Twice - I really like this one, although it shall not be winning any awards for cultural sensitivity. Let's put some tape on Sean Connery's eyes to make them slanted. BY GOD! What happened? Where did James Bond go and how did this Japanese man magically appear here? But beyond that, James Bond being killed at the beginning was amazing, Donald Pleasence's version of Blofeld is THE DEFINITIVE Blofeld. The evil secret lair in the volcano is super iconic and often-copied, and the "let's pit the Soviet Union and United States up against each other and cause war!" is SPECTRE at the height of their awesome SPECTRE-ness. If the SPECTRE film was just an obvious remake of this with a little politically correct updating of the Hong Kong and Japan stuff, and with Daniel Craig's grittiness and realism added, then it would have been the greatest Bond film ever.

5. Skyfall - When Skyfall came out, everyone was immediately like "Greatest Bond film of all time!" No, it's not. It's pretty damn amazing, but it's not the greatest. For one, we have the all-too-convenient "the bad guy wanted to get himself caught!" plot device, which is just the worst and became so over-used. For some reason, every single screenwriter of this era added it to their movies and audiences and critics ate it up. The Joker wanted to get caught in The Dark Knight. Loki wanted to get caught in The Avengers. Khan Wanted to get caught in Star Trek into Darkness. Look, I'm not saying that these films are bad (okay, Star Trek into Darkness is bad), but enough is enough. Other than that - great film with great acting, a great villain, great imagery, and great everything. Bond on the boat to Macau is iconic. The whole Scotland fight is iconic. The ending of the movie transforming so that James Bond walks into the 1960s Sean Connery films is iconic. It's iconic.

4. Dr. No - You've got to start a series somewhere, and this was a good start. Things weren't quite 100% James Bond yet, but Sean Connery needed to ease into the role with this film first before he really mastered it over the next several films. Still, even not at 100% Bond, this was still Sean Connery at a solid 97% Bond. Everything iconic about the film series started with this film and was because of this film. If it had been any other actor, it would never have been as popular and the legacy would have not lasted beyond a few forgettable 1960s spy films. All adaptations of Bond which came after were based on this portrayal. Nobody wants to play the James Bond as written in the Ian Fleming book series. They all want to play the suave "Bond, James Bond" motherfucker from this film. SPECTRE isn't even in the novels, its first mention is here. Bond's introduction in this film is both a seminal moment in the history of cinema and a seminal moment in the history of pop culture in the UK, US, and around the globe. Just as the British empire was waning, this dude came along and proved that the UK had its shit together. Once we realized that we had James Bond on our side, it was a given that the West would win the Cold War.

Honestly not the worst way to go.

3. Goldfinger - Goldfinger is a great and iconic James Bond film. There is no argument there. Look how high it is ranked! If someone asks you to name a James Bond film, this might be the first one you say. It's the one with Goldfinger and Goldfinger's awesome Rolls-Royce Phantom III. It's the one which introduced Bond's Aston Martin DB5 (the most famous Bond car, by far). It's the one with the lil' Asian guy who throws the hat that kills people. It's the one with "Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond! I expect you to die!" It's the one with breaking into Fort Knox. It's the one where they kill the girl by painting her gold. It's the one with Pussy Galore (the most famous Bond girl, by far). So why isn't it ranked #1? Okay, it's got a couple of problems - the main one of which is that we are starting to leave behind some of the "realness" of past films like Dr. No and From Russia With Love and venture into a realm where James Bond villains get plans that are a little cartoony. Contemporary reviews of the film included terms to describe it such as, "preposterous," "hokum," "absurd," "garbage," and "impossible." And those all came from POSITIVE reviews of the film, because it did get overwhelmingly positive reviews and still holds up as a great and well-paced action film. Nobody can honestly say though that the twist at the end where all the soldiers "wake up" because the nerve gas was fake makes any damn sense at all.

2. From Russia With Love - In the second Bond film, Sean Connery has already mastered who James Bond is and will be for the rest of time. From Russia With Love is the greatest Cold War film of all time (sorry Dr. Strangelove) and has everything a great Cold War film should have. Although SPECTRE is mentioned and supports the backstory of Dr. No, they finally show up for real here and everything about them is iconic. We get the unseen Blofeld stroking his cat, and devious henchmen including Rosa Klebb and Quint from Jaws. It's hard to imagine in today's day and age filmmakers having the patience to slowly pay off a Blofeld reveal like they did starting here. Blofeld appears in this film but we never get to see his face, and we also have to sit through all of Goldfinger and Thunderball before finally getting a reveal in You Only Live Twice. That's a four film arc. The new SPECTRE film couldn't even hold off on a Blofeld reveal for the duration of the movie, and even then messed it up because the name carried no weight comes in a continuity where the name means nothing to Bond (just like Khan in Star Trek into Darkness, which, did I mention, was terrible?). It's also relatively gritty and real, and avoids the comic book-ish villains, action scenes, and gadgets that would show up later (although Q does finally show up here - so we have some gadgets - and an appropriate level of subversive Connery humor is added). Did I forget to mention that the whole James Bond pre-title sequence thing comes from this film? Because that didn't exist yet in Dr. No.

1. Casino Royale - After every single Pierce Brosnan film got progressively worse, it was time for a fresh start. And in this case, it really was a fresh start. While every Bond actor up to the this point was seemingly playing the character in the same continuity (with no explanation of why his face changed and why he wasn't 80 years old yet), Casino Royale left no doubt in our minds that this was a 100% reboot of the franchise and all continuity from before could be thrown out. This angered a lot of people, while others were just enraged that Bond would be blonde. Such supposed blasphemy could have made the film go wrong in a lot of ways, but it didn't. It went so right. Sean Connery might be the best Bond, but Daniel Craig has the best film and is at least in Sean Connery's league. The over-reliance on gadgets, ludicrous plot devices, and unbelievable action scenes featuring computer graphics is all wiped away for the most gritty, real Bond film ever. Just because it's gritty doesn't mean that they wiped away the humor. There are still a lot of fun, charming things in the film... but they didn't need to go cranking the volume to 11 with cheesy puns and gags. No, a bunch of assholes playing a poker game isn't quite the same as a cackling maniac stealing nuclear weapons to hold the world ransom. But it purposefully wasn't supposed to be. The way the film opens with Bond getting his first kills to become a 00 is incredible, and if Craig hadn't won you over by then - the way he asks for his martini absolutely should have won you over. If you saw that scene and didn't think it was the most awesome thing that ever happened in a James Bond movie, then you are a tool. And I'd rather watch that realistic Madagascar parkour chase scene 100 times over than any stupid blue screen of James Bond windsurfing an ice tsunami or fighting in space even once. Do I even need to mention how awesome Eva Green is as Vesper Lynd? Yes? Well, she just is.