On Her Majesty's Secret Service -- I don't think it was Lazenby that made this film.

Which is worst movie of the series, Moonraker or Die Another Day? I'm gonna have to go with the latter.

Diamonds are Forever.

Agree with this. Diamonds Are Forever seemed like a cheap Friday-night TV movie. The casting (Jill St. John) and the sets were low-rent, and Connery was too old and was just coasting. I also didn't like A View to a Kill very much -- by that time, Moore was far too old for the role and Grace Jones terrifies me.

Skyfall was pretty good, but Casino Royale was better.

Doesn't Diamonds Are Forever have that low-speed car chase in a crowded valet-parking lot? It's so weird it's funny.

I consider "We Have All the Time in the World" from Her Majesty's Secret Service as the best song given Tracy's death.

I went to a bachelor party in the late 1990s which was a James Bond marathon. Diamonds are Forever was embarrassingly sexist and homophobic to us, especially given there were two gay men at the party (though not involved with each other).

One day I had $20 burning a hole in my pocket and bought the Aris Kristatos, For Your Eyes Only watch from this collection. The reasons for picking that one are complicated, but they included not picking a popular villain like Odd Job from Goldfinger.

By contrast, Moonraker is one of Fleming's better novels.

I've often thought someone should actually make a movie based on the novel. Maybe even a period piece, circa 1952ish.

I just got back from Skyfall. I really enjoyed it. At one point, about halfway through, the traditional Bond music starts and I started bobbing my head, my wife laughed at how much I was getting into it. The first half feels like a decent - good spy movie, and then then it becomes a movie that is what Bond should be and pays homage to Bond of old. Really fun.

I consider "We Have All the Time in the World" from Her Majesty's Secret Service as the best song given Tracy's death.

Beautiful song. A bit over-produced, but a fine example of John Barry's lush style. Louis Armstrong's last hit...doesn't fit in with his career, of course, but it adds another bittersweet note to the concept of Bond's final words in the film.

Visited several of the sites used in the filming of OHMSS while in Switzerland, including Piz Gloria, Blofeld's Alp-top fortress, and the ice rink in Grindelwald where Tracy finds Bond after his escape from Blofeld.

The first half feels like a decent - good spy movie, and then then it becomes a movie that is what Bond should be and pays homage to Bond of old. Really fun.

It really did hit the right notes. As someone said, not as good as Casino Royale, but darn good. Just to see the Aston Martin in real 007 use was a genuine treat; I was grinning ear to ear.

(Thunderball was my first Bond film at the movies...I was 11. My parents wouldn't let me see any of the first three...too violent and sexy. Luckily, those were the day of re-releases, so I saw all of the first three on the big screen in various combinations, usually as double features.)

I disagree with some of the hate being thrown toward A View to a Kill here. Yes, it's not good, but its a lot closer to middle-of-the-pack then it seems the consensus is giving it. Christopher Walken is a great villain and at least Grace Jones is memorable, unlike a lot of Bond girls. In comparison Octopussy has nothing to offer.

The Spy Who Loved Me is also getting short changed. It's the crown jewel of the Moore period and an easy top 5 pick.

The Spy Who Loved Me is also getting short changed. It's the crown jewel of the Moore period and an easy top 5 pick.

Agreed. It's the best of the Moore films, and perhaps the "prototypical" James Bond movie if not necessarily the best. It has pretty much everything -- good and bad -- that James Bond movies are famous for.

Walken is great, as always, and Jones is fine...but Moore was 57 and looked 65, Tanya Roberts as a scientist was absurd, and Patrick Macnee, GOD, JOHN STEED is treated like a lackey by Bond...that's unforgivable. Unthinkable!

Octopussy does have Maud Adams and Louis Jordan (the best Dracula EVER in the BBC TV version years ago) and the really sexy woman who heads up Octopussy's girls...but it also has the Tarzan yell and Bond ordering a tiger to 'sit'. Ugh.

Spy Who Loved Me did have Barbara Bach and Richard Kiel, but I liked For Your Eyes Only better among the Moore Bonds. If they'd left out the skating and nymphet stuff, it would have been darn good, IMO.

"I'm to eliminate all free radicals."
"Do be careful!"

I consider "We Have All the Time in the World" from Her Majesty's Secret Service as the best song given Tracy's death.

Beautiful song. A bit over-produced, but a fine example of John Barry's lush style. Louis Armstrong's last hit...doesn't fit in with his career, of course, but it adds another bittersweet note to the concept of Bond's final words in the film.

It depends on whether you have bangers or sausages for breakfast. Armstrong's "We Have All the Time in the World" was a hit single in England, but it never charted at all in America. Of course, the official charts are wholly inadequate for making sense or shape of Armstrong's discography.

I've seen all of them, but I haven't been blessed with the kind of memory that enables me to keep them straight. Ursula Andress is still the best Bond girl though. Craig is my favourite Bond.

My wife LOVES the Bond movies -- her father was a huge fan -- so I've seen many of them, though I can't keep the old ones straight. Die Another Day must be the worst Bond ever since we own it, and yet I've never seen it.

Quantum of Solace was not a good movie. But, it improves exponentially if you watch it immediately after Casino Royale, back to back. Suddenly a lot of things that made no sense make a lot of sense...you can see the threads connecting the two. It seems like Casino and Quantum were the same story, but they had to break it up somewhere, so they broke it at the 2/3 mark and by the time the second half came out it made no sense.

Casino Royale is still the only movie of any sort I've seen twice in the theater. What a fabulous movie.

RMc quotes the one movie no one has mentioned, the Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again...I guess it belongs in the middle group; great fun to see Connery in the role again, some solid zingers like the one he quotes, my faves being: "I hope that now you're on the job that we'll have some gratuitous sex and violence." and "Well, there was this night in Hong Kong"...Barbara Carrera was wonderfully beautiful and over the top as Fatima Blush, and Kim Basinger was beautiful. It had the worst score of any Bond movie, it was nothing but one big wink at the audience, which gets boring after awhile, and it was a remake of a not-that-interesting movie.

The 'original' Casino Royale was a god awful mess, and belongs at the bottom of the heap.

For Your Eyes Only has Carol Bouquet. It also has the best underwater fight scene IMO.

The best Bond girls are Bouquet, Jane Seymour, Eva Green, Ursula Andress, and Halle Berry.

Owning a Thunderball lunch box in the 1st grade -- cool. Owning one now ...

Yes, it's not exactly cool. At least I can say that it was a gift. (It is, however, on display on a shelf in the dining room.)

Ahh, the thermos. I musta broken 3 of those a year. I doubt the Thunderball thermos made it past early Dec (post-Thanksgiving turkey soup).

Yep, that's why lunchboxes with intact Thermos are so much more coveted among collectors. (I insist I knew nothing about this until receiving the Thunderball lunch kit...and I don't own any other ones. Honest.)

Never Say Never Again was ok. Not terrible, but not particularly memorable. I thought the villain was really good (can't remember the actor's name).

What about the first Casino Royale? Now that is film-making at it's...LSDiest.

You could probably put all the Bond movies on a camp to serious scale that ranges from Casino Royale to Casino Royale.

The best Bond girls are Bouquet, Jane Seymour, Eva Green, Ursula Andress, and Halle Berry.

I like this list. I'd add Diana Rigg and Mie Hama. If I could only vote for five, I'd bump Seymour and Berry off the list in favor of those two.

Never Say Never Again was ok. Not terrible, but not particularly memorable. I thought the villain was really good (can't remember the actor's name).

Klaus Maria Brandauer...probably most famous for Out of Africa. He's a genuine actor. He was one of the good things in the movie.

Brandauer is indeed one of the most distinguished German stage actors (he is Austrian, but has worked a lot in Berlin). If you like him as a Bond villain, get the film Mefisto, which is a great picture about acting, but also has some political-thriller elements.

What about the first Casino Royale? Now that is film-making at it's...LSDiest.

A triple feature of this, Myra Breckenridge, and Return to the Valley of the Dolls would be a great afternoon of sixties moviemaking at its most incoherent.

You could probably put all the Bond movies on a camp to serious scale that ranges from Casino Royale to Casino Royale.

Good point. If they remade the novel of Moonraker with Craig, that would be a potential bookend. (Though since the story has to do with post-war Britain and its place in the new world order at the time, it would be better if done as a period piece, which would leave Craig out.)

You could probably put all the Bond movies on a camp to serious scale that ranges from Casino Royale to Casino Royale.

I think QoS is even more serious. It's basically a straightforward espionage adventure film with nothing amusing in it.

It's so weird it's funny.

Diamonds was full of 'so weird it's funny' moments.

Bond escaping the bad guys by moon buggy?

The gay hit men? (not funny. just weird. Even THEN it was weird. I think everyone in the theater flinched every time Putter and Glover came into view.)

Jimmy Dean as Howard Hughes?

Plenty O'Toole ending up dead in a swimming pool for no reason whatsoever?

Connery wearing the worst hairpiece ever and working a good 30 pounds overweight?

A Mustang Mach I as the 'hot car'?

The aforementioned 'chase in the parking lot'?

Charles Gray playing Blofeld as if he were about to fall asleep?

What a lazy mess this was.

So are Bond movies like baseball? The best one is the one you saw when you were 12?

The one thing from Quantum of Solace that I kind of liked was the idea of that 21st-century SPECTRE group.. QUANTUM. I'd like to see them come back, sort of like how SPECTRE disappeared in Goldfinger only to show up again in Thunderball.

I'm not a true Bond aficionado, but I do enjoy the movies. My mom was a big fan, and took me to see The Spy Who Loved Me in theaters when I was a lad.

Overall I didn't care for Moore, but I really did enjoy Spy Who Loved Me. Possibly because of what #77 says.

Also, I adore Never Say Never Again, but I don't think I could come up with a logical defense for it.

Daniela Bianchi is a much under-rated Bond girl in "From Russia With Love." Her Russo-Italian accent is wildly funny, too.

The "We Hate Movies" podcast just posted a good takedown of Die Another Day. I really think it is the worst. Bond has an invisible car, but the bad guys instantly track its heat signature and shoot it, causing it to become visible? MI6 has a holodeck? We can "wipe your DNA slate clean" and make you an entirely different person? The plot proceeds like Axe Cop. Berry's part is written like one of those "back-door" television pilots (because that's essentially what it was). And Brosnan doesn't seem to give a crap at all.

Given how similar the films generally are, it can actually be difficult to describe why one is good and another is bad. The Spy Who Loves Me feels to me like it's running on all cylinders in a way that the other Moore films don't. (And no, it's not the first one I saw, or the one I saw when I was 12.) I guess it's just the right balance. Some of Moore's have rather great ideas -- Christopher Lee is Bond's dark mirror! Christopher Walken and Grace Jones as villains! -- but the scripting and acting don't carry it off. His others don't even have that much.

I liked The Living Daylights a lot, but in Licence to Kill, he essentially becomes Sonny Crockett or something rather than James Bond, and I really do not like it. (Dalton plays it fine, but it's just not what I want to see from my Bond movies.)

I think GoldenEye is fantastic and the other Brosnans are forgettable. So, I essentially give one "must-see" film each to those three Bonds.

Connery and Craig delivered consistent product, although I still feel like Craig does not look the slightest bit like "James Bond."

I'm in the camp that views Connery not doing OHMSS as the great tragedy of the series. Lazenby wasn't an actor, and they worked around it as well as could possibly be done, but it's not a fixable problem.

Her Russo-Italian accent is wildly funny, too.

Well, somebody's accent, anyway. ;-)

As I was reading this thread, I started thinking "What, no love for the 'original' Casino Royale?" Glad to see that extremely strange movie got its due. It is an excellent film for utilization in "Six Degrees of Separation," with its combination of David Niven, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Orson Welles, and, of course, Ursula Andress. (Not to mention George Raft!)

I have high hopes that Idris Elba will be the next Bond.

I had such high hopes for Brosnan. There is so much about him (looks, style, etc) that could and should have made him an outstanding 007, but the results were so weak.

I have never liked the Bond franchise very much. Too much cartoon for my tastes. I have enjoyed the Craig reboot pretty well, and I think Skyfall is about as good a take on "new James Bond franchise does old James Bond elements" as you're going to see. The fight scene in the Shanghai skyscraper was brilliantly filmed, and I love the set piece that closes the action at Skyfall.

The gay hit men? (not funny. just weird. Even THEN it was weird. I think everyone in the theater flinched every time Putter and Glover came into view.)

I just want to point out that Putter Smith is a genuinely great jazz bass player. I have no idea how he ended up playing a villain in a Bond movie.

The scuba battle scene that you referenced takes place in Thuderball, but the tuxedo scene is from the beginning of Goldfinger. Bond sneaks ashore of an unnamed banana republic and plants a bomb to destroy a heroin processing plant. After planting the bomb he removes his wetsuit to reveal a perfectly pressed white tuxedo. He then enters a club and calmly lights a cigarette while the bomb explodes and bedlam ensues.

Memory is a funny thing. I also thought it was a black tuxedo.
Well, whatever: action-packed bomb-planting scene! White tuxedo! Best thing!

I had such high hopes for Brosnan. There is so much about him (looks, style, etc) that could and should have made him an outstanding 007, but the results were so weak.

Brosnan would have made a good Bond in the early 80's but was a poor choice for a Bond of the late 90's and early 2000's. By that point the world wanted a more rugged and dirtier lone hero and that isn't Brosnan. Late 80's and early 90's simply wasn't a good time for James Bond period. The Cold War was over and our biggest enemies at the time were drug dealers.

I'm in the camp that views Connery not doing OHMSS as the great tragedy of the series

Bond is full of what-ifs like that. What if Connery had done OHMSS? What if Brosnan had taken over in the late 80s instead of Dalton (his near-casting as Bond led to so much publicity that it led to Remington Steele being renewed, which ironically took him out of the running)? What if Spielberg had decided to go ahead and offer to do a Bond film for the Broccolis instead of going with his friend George Lucas' idea of doing a "1930s James Bond" about a archaeologist? What if Dalton had been able to do another movie or two? What if there wasn't the whole stupid fight with Kevin McClory? What if Alfred Hitchcock had directed a Bond (he was Fleming's first choice)? What if David Bowie had been the villain instead of Christopher Walken in "View to a Kill"?

Countless, really.

What if Never Say Never Again hadn't been in the works at the time Roger Moore's contract had run out? They were ready to move on to Dalton (or James Brolin) for Octopussy, but were afraid of going up against the off-brand Connery Bond with a new guy in the role.

Oh, and what if they had done For Your Eyes Only instead of Moonraker? They only did Moonraker because Star Wars and 2001 had hit it big.

What if Alfred Hitchcock had directed a Bond (he was Fleming's first choice)?

IIRC Fleming's ideal film James Bond was David Niven (who did get into the farrago version of Casino Royale, of course). By the time of the first films, though, Niven was too old for the part.

I don't care much for Bond, I don't think I've seen any since college. But I'm fascinated by the longevity of the franchise. I wonder at which point in time it switched from "let's see if we can milk it for one more sequel" to a never-ending assembly line of movies.

My top 5 in no particular order:

From Russia with Love
Goldfinger
The Spy who Loved me
Casino Royale
Goldeneye


also I think that the Dalton and Brosnan Bond's were entertaining but Craig is definitely 2 or 3 steps above.


On a side note, Roger Moore was on Stern yesterday and I can't believe he is 85.

Oh, and what if they had done For Your Eyes Only instead of Moonraker? They only did Moonraker because Star Wars and 2001 had hit it big.

This really worked well, too, just like Live and Let Die's homage to Shaft and Hell Up in Harlem.

I'm surprised we didn't see James square off against some dinosaurs or aliens in the nineties.

I have high hopes that Idris Elba will be the next Bond.

Obviously this would have made no sense in 1963, but nowadays, why not? If you can can cast a short blond guy, you can do it. He certainly has all the "tools". (There's seemingly no need to replace Craig any time soon, however.)

What if Brosnan had taken over in the late 80s instead of Dalton (his near-casting as Bond led to so much publicity that it led to Remington Steele being renewed, which ironically took him out of the running)?

Yeah, this is another point of divergence where I feel things definitely could have been better. It's not a knock on Dalton, but I think that would have been the perfect time for Brosnan to get it.

Heck, Dalton himself allegedly was considered to replace Connery, despite being really young at the time. At least if you don't think much of the Moore era (and assume Dalton would have played the role in the same manner as he did later), that might have been sensational -- the equivalent of doing the late-2000s reboot 30 years earlier, with a guy who could have plausibly stayed in the role for decades...

I'm fascinated by the longevity of the franchise. I wonder at which point in time it switched from "let's see if we can milk it for one more sequel" to a never-ending assembly line of movies.

It's true, there really is no counterpart in that respect. (Although I'm sure Disney will try its damndest to change that with Star Wars.)

A friend once suggested that James Bond was a Time Lord who had too high a sex drive and was exiled to Earth where he couldn't impregnate human women. Then Timothy Dalton played Rassilon in the Doctor Who episode "The End of Time".

A friend once suggested that James Bond was a Time Lord who had too high a sex drive and was exiled to Earth where he couldn't impregnate human women. Then Timothy Dalton played Rassilon in the Doctor Who episode "The End of Time".

What about the various Ms, Qs, Felix Leiters, Miss Moneypennys and such? Are they Time Lords as well?

I'm fascinated by the longevity of the franchise. I wonder at which point in time it switched from "let's see if we can milk it for one more sequel" to a never-ending assembly line of movies.

It's true, there really is no counterpart in that respect. (Although I'm sure Disney will try its damndest to change that with Star Wars.)

Godzilla pulled off the feat shortly after he fought Mothra for the first time. He's had FAR longer hiatuses than 007, however.

The Daniel Craig Bond films are completely different films than the Connery/Moore films. The newer films are more similar to Jason Bourne series than they are to the old Bond films.

Two real problems with this: conflating the Connery and Moore films is madness, and while Casino Royale was very smartly, deftly edited, with great facility for placing the actors in space and in relation to each other (and thereby letting us know what the hell was going on, who was in danger, and so on), the second Craig film, Quantum of Solace, with a different director and editor, is the antiBourne in those regards.

The opening car chase in QoS, where the cars are difficult to distinguish and at times you don't even know which is in front and which is behind, is an abomination. One minute in and I knew the movie was going to be a slog. It was.


edit: and why the hell didn't they work with a real poker player in devising the seminal hands in Casino Royal?

Maybe it's time I just face up to the fact that I'm Ray's evil twin... or is that benevolent twin?

Ray's evil twin makes Atilla look like a simpering pantywaist.

What about the various Ms, Qs, Felix Leiters, Miss Moneypennys and such? Are they Time Lords as well?

Perhaps the next Bond film, sans Craig, will explore the quantum mechanics of the wormhole that connects all of the various Bond universes together. Maybe Spock could cameo as himself. But new Spock, from the reboot, not Leonard Nimoy.