James Bond Ranked AF (w/ No Time to Die)
A non-definitive, super subjective of James Bond ranking that no one asked for but my takes are fire so enjoy, shaken not stirred ;)
Hey hey, it’s October 2021 which means it’s Spooky Season and fuckin’ Bond season. Daniel Craig’s final 007 outing is finally out after a year and a half of COVID delays, and since this’ll probably be the last time I have a calendared excuse to write about James Bond for a while I figured I’d indulge in a not-so-humble, non-definitive ranking of every Bond movie.
I say not so humble because I know the Bond movies like the back ‘o my hand or whatever (hence my exhaustive case for Chris Nolan’s Tenet as a byzantine love letter to Bond movies back in January). And I say non-definitive because, as a lifelong fan, I dig all ends of the Bond spectrum—from the pure ‘70s spy-camp of the Roger Moore era to the cold-blooded gravitas of Timothy Dalton and Daniel Craig—so my favorites tend to fluctuate often (other than like the top 5, which tend to stick).
In other words, this ranking should be taken only as an indulgent snapshot of how I feel about each Bond entry right here right now, hot off the latest 007 adventure (the inclusion of which you’ll take with a grain ‘o salt on accounta I just saw the thing) and in the midst of a full-blown Bond-fever relapse. Gonna be talkin’ a lot of inside baseball here so if you’re down, enjoy…shaken not stirred ;)
27. Casino Royale (1967)
A Bond spoof that I guess aimed to cash in on the ‘60s spy craze (while paving the way for Austin Powers 30 years down the road), Casino Royale ‘67 is an absolute batshit mess. But hey, if you’re down for a wickedly weird swinging-’60s pop-culture deep cut with all-star cast, or happen to be half-awake and half-baked at 1:00 in the morning or somethin’, give it a whirl.
26. Quantum of Solace (2008)
Daniel Craig’s second Bond film isn’t so much actively terrible as it is frustratingly rutterless (didn’t help that it was made during a writers strike). Say what you will of Casino Royale’s riffing on Jason Bourne and Batman Begins, at least it has a style you can call authentically Bondian. Idk man, this one just kinda sits there. Utterly skippable.
25. Die Another Day (2002)
Pierce Brosnan was a fantastic Bond—cool like Sean Connery, unflappable and charming like Roger Moore, but inquisitive and vulnerable in a way that felt distinct to his ‘90s-metro take on the character. It’s a shame his Bond tenure never quite delivered on the promise of his glorious debut outing. And it really sucks that it ended with a whimper. Die Another Day has a few moderately fun Bondian tricks up its sleeve (including a villainous breakout performance from Gone Girl herself Rosamund Pike) but mostly it’s an uninspired dud, iterating on wackier 007 entries to no avail. I wish they’d let my man come back for like a one-off, Loganesque “Old Man Bond” type deal and let him fully reclaim his legacy in the franchise. Justice for Broz!
24. A View to a Kill (1985)
Roger Moore’s Bond is always a charming, delightful hang. Unfortunately, I think he stuck around one or two movies longer than he should have. A View to a Kill is a mid-’80s sorta-remake of Goldfinger, mostly an auto-pilot entry that just feels kinda “off” (especially with a conspicuously long-in-the-tooth Moore hookin’ up with ladies that look like they could be his granddaughters). But it’s got Duran Duran’s title song—the best Bond theme ever—and Christopher Walken makes a decent wackadoodle villain which will surprise no one.
23. The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
Moore’s second Bond film feels like an awkward misstep, mostly because they hadn’t yet figured out how to rework the character to their new actor’s strengths, and when Moore plays the part vaguely like Connery, he just sorta comes off as an unbearable asshole. Still, The Man with the Golden Gun has some killer elaborate sets, immaculate costume design, exceptional exotic locales, and Christopher Lee as the titular villain. Not too shabby despite itself.
22. For Your Eyes Only (1981)
A back-to-basics turn following the space-bound extravaganza of 1979’s Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only features Roger Moore at his most grounded and least parodic. He tows the line with grace, and the rest of the film follows suit. Pretty solid all around.
21. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
Pierce Brosnan’s sophomore effort is pretty much Bond by the numbers, riding on the franchise formula while updating the look and feel for the late-‘90s. It’s mostly a fun ride with plenty of great action scenes and an underrated media-mogul villain, played with fiendish enthusiasm by the great Jonathan Price. Well worth a watch if you vibe with ‘90s blockbuster spectacle.
20. The World is Not Enough (1999)
Michael Apted, most famous for the Up documentary series, was an odd choice to direct a Bond film, but the end result is a uniquely dramatic action flick with a look and feel that resembles something between a low-key British costume drama and a moody late-’90s jewelry commercial. Pretty cool. Feels more, I dunno, timeless than Tomorrow Never Dies, as well as tonally in sync with Brosnan’s particular brand of sleek, understated, sensitive cool.
19. Octopussy (1983)
Another enjoyable Bond-by-the-numbers joint with a fucking hilarious title to boot. Maude Adams slaps in the titular role, though—a mature, badass crime boss who leads an acrobatic all-female fighting squad. Octopussy has a great mix of cold-war espionage and wacky spy-fantasy revelry. There’s a scene where Bond infiltrates a circus and disarms a hidden bomb in a full clown costume. Fun shit.
18. Licence to Kill (1989)
This was my favorite one as a kid. In retrospect I think it’s just ‘cause I liked ‘80s action movies. Licence to Kill undoubtedly goes all in on the Lethal Weapon/Cobra/Miami Vice oeuvre of the era. The story of Bond going rogue and seeking revenge for the torture of CIA buddy Felix Leiter at the hands of a drug kingpin (brilliantly played by Robert Davi) is pretty dope. Unfortunately, the film severely lacks in the style and design-candy that makes Bond a worthwhile institution of blockbuster filmmaking. Some choice action scenes though, most notably the explosion-heavy tanker-chase finale.
17. Never Say Never Again (1983)
Due to behind-the-scenes legal battles over story rights ‘n such, Sean Connery got a chance to return to Bond in the ‘80s in a film made outside the official, Eon Productions-owned franchise. A reworking of Ian Fleming’s Thunderball story, Never Say Never Again is absent of the James Bond theme, opening gunbarrel graphic, and a host of other hallmark accoutrements of the “official” Bond films. And though you definitely feel those absences, the secret weapon here is Connery, who plays an aging Bond with style, grace, and a rekindled, contagious enthusiasm.
16. Spectre (2015)
Daniel Craig and director Sam Mendes’ follow-up to the uber-successful Skyfall was bound to disappoint. In trying to tie in all of Craig’s previous Bond films and imposing a familial connection between Bond and returning arch-nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Spectre bites off more than it can chew (it’s also riddled with a “big brother” anxiety that’s aged, uh… weirdly). Action and aesthetic-wise, though, it’s stylish as hell. Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema makes this thing look immaculate, and Craig’s earned confidence in the role this time around makes up for a lot of the film’s flaws. Underrated in the sly, Bond-brand humor department as well. Overall more solid than it gets credit for.
15. You Only Live Twice (1967)
With a wild script penned by none other than Roald Dahl, a magical showcase of Japan circa 1967, and production designer Ken Adam’s most ambitious work for the series thus far, You Only Live Twice is a borderline-sci-fi superspy fantasy you can’t look away from. It gets bogged down, though, by a tired, phoned-in Connery performance. I’m all for a special effects-heavy, gadget-laden spy extravaganza, but it doesn’t work as well if the star at the center is asleep at the wheel, ya know?
14. No Time to Die (2021)
Like I said up top, mix this particular martini with a grain of salt ‘cause as of writing this I just got back from an IMAX screening of No Time to Die, my head still spinning from the catharsis of finally seeing this movie and enjoying the hell out of the experience (movies are back y’all!). I’ll try to keep things brief and dive deep later, just wanna say right off the bat; mad props to director Cary Fukunaga for turning a 007 cold open into a mini-Giallo.
And despite what you may have heard, the cold open is technically the newest ground covered in No Time to Die (minus the ending, which I won’t spoil here). The rest of it, as surprising and outside the Bond box as it may feel, riffs heavily on previous eras and elements of both the films and the books (its most prominent inspirations being On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Fleming’s You Only Live Twice novel). The first half is as fun, funny, and fever-dreamy as Bond has ever been, and Fukunaga delivers on gorgeous, fluid action throughout. Still not quite sure about No Time to Die’s biggest, boldest choices, and I’m real iffy on its convoluted middle act, but it does a better job than Spectre of mixing the familiar with the new, and wraps up the emotion-driven, continuity-obsessed Craig era more organically than I had anticipated. Well done (and so long), Mr. Craig.
13. Goldfinger (1964)
Listen, I dig this movie just fine and believe me when I say I understand why it’s got its “best ever” reputation. It’s the movie that kicked off Bond mania in earnest and largely established the Bond formula and blah blah blah. I just think on its own merits, Goldfinger isn’t as exciting as the entries that directly preceded and followed it. It remains essential Bond viewing, though, if only to put the whole franchise in historical perspective. Connery whips ass, and Pussy Galore is an unbelievable name for a leading lady. Ian Fleming you dirty old bastard amirite?
12. Live and Let Die (1973)
Roger Moore’s Bond debut is a weird one, and pretty cringe in its Blaxploitation-sploitation, but it’s also fun to watch all the villains be cooler and smarter than Bond at every turn. The early ‘70s was a helluva time and this is as whack a cultural document of the period as any. Plus, it’s got a great boat-chase sequence and some killer, funky music (i.e. Paul McCartney’s groovy title track).
11. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
The Spy Who Loved Me is the platonic ideal of a Roger Moore Bond flick—complete with a luxurious underwater villain lair, a gadget-laden sports car that turns into a mini-submarine, and a metal-mouthed henchman literally named Jaws. No glaring weaknesses really. A campy fuckin’ blast from start to finish.
10. The Living Daylights (1987)
Timothy Dalton was really the first Bond to go all in on evoking the human side of Ian Fleming’s 007, single-handedly paving the way for the Daniel Craig era. His first of two Bond films retains all the glamorous trappings while reviving some of the deeper romantic elements of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Shakespearean pathos isn’t something everyone wants from their Bond, but I’ll be damned if Dalton doesn’t deliver it.
9. Moonraker (1979)
Bond…in…SPACE! In recent years, this pure-camp 007 mission has become weirdly influential on the 21st-centruy spy genre. You can see shades of it in everything from the Kingsman films to Marvel’s Black Widow. And why not? Cynical Star Wars cash-in though it is, Moonraker is charming and fun and appropriately silly to the last minute. Jaws returns, Roger Moore does his best work as Bond, there’s a pigeon doing a double-take (I shit you not), and the production design is both literally and figuratively outta this world. This joint also has the best double-entendre quip in the whole series.
8. Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
Diamonds Are Forever is the first Bond film of the 1970s, ushering in the high-camp, bordering-on-self-parody look and feel that would define these movies for the next decade and change. Most of it takes place in Las Vegas, which is kind of a weird, inelegant location for a Bond movie but makes for a delightful showcase of the city as it existed in the early ‘70s.
It’s also distinct in that it’s got Sean Connery basically doing a tongue-in-cheek, Roger Moore-era Bond movie and crushing it. “Sean Connery was the king of transcending his own miscasting,” tweeted The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey after Connery’s passing last year. It’s an important observation about the iconic actor, who, by 1971, was sort of in the Bond role past his welcome. The series was already far removed from the cold, grounded portrayal of Ian Fleming’s literary character that defined the early films, and yet somehow Connery still stuck the landing. What a fascinating trick for an actor to pull off by sheer force of his own charisma.
7. Casino Royale (2006)
Gotta say, for me this one doesn’t hit like it used to, which isn’t to say it ain’t good (still in my top 10 after all), just not as profound or “prestige” as maybe it thinks it is? Daniel Craig’s revamped take on the character is a revelation, though, and should still be recognized as such. In retrospect, Casino Royale is a fascinating look at the militarized, industrialized, apocalyptic worldview of the Bush/Blair era wrapped in a moody, visually stunning James Bond reboot/origin story—turning the character into a confused, brutish killing machine who reflects the misdirected, boyish bloodlust of the proverbial Afghanistan/Iraq-War soldier.
Oh, and the parkour shit still rulez.
6. Dr. No (1962)
It’s not the best, but it’s the first (unless you count the apocryphal 1954 TV adaptation of Casino Royale where Bond is recast as an American agent named “Jimmy” Bond lol). And like the original Star Wars or first X-Men movie or any number of Hollywood mega-franchise kick-offs, Dr. No was a commercial game-changer.
It’s both ironic and telling that James Bond emerged as a self-aggrandizing colonialist fantasy of the British intelligence community, just as their empire was collapsing and real MI6 agents were defecting to the USSR in droves. But hey, compared to the spy thrillers that preceded it, Dr. No was such a new, brash, dangerous, propulsive machine, it’s no wonder the franchise captured the imagination of a global public. Bond was a new kind of cold-blooded killer in 1962, equal parts sophisticated and brash, elegant and violent, appealing and prickly. Dr. No is a mad interesting genre flick to look at today to see which elements of Bond have endured for nearly 3/4 of a century.
5. Thunderball (1965)
The movie that introduced the world to the jet pack, Thunderball is the direct follow-up to Goldfinger and actually delivers on the latter’s high-caliber reputation. Gets a bad rap for being too long (which, like, ALL Bond movies are), its signature underwater battle scenes oft considered slow and tedious, though I’ve always found them far more impressive than boring. The Bahamas setting makes for some great tropical technicolor eye candy, and Connery was never more confident and effortless in the role that made him an icon. Thunderball is Bond firing on all cylinders.
4. From Russia with Love (1963)
Goldfinger may have been the movie that established the hallmarks of the series, but From Russia with Love is undoubtedly the best of Bond’s initial run of films. It’s got a more traditional, sorta Hitchcockian spy-thriller story, but it’s no less extravagant in its international locale porn and action setpieces. And the extent to which the film revolves entirely around the searing animal magnetism of Sean Connery is overwhelming. In his second turn in the role, before he had the weight of the series formula to wrestle with, Connery serves as From Russia With Love’s main special effect, ferociously embodying a new, dangerous kind of cinematic hero.
3. Goldeneye (1995)
Maybe I’m just a child of the ‘90s with a lot of fond memories clocking hours of Goldeneye ‘64 with the boys, but this film deserves to be remembered as more than a movie that inspired a more popular video game. The first “modern” Bond adventure, Goldeneye is a timelessly cool and relentlessly atmospheric action flick with a singular mood and visual flair that sets it apart from every other film in the series.
And though Pierce Brosnan’s Bond legacy has diminished (unfairly) over time, he’s nothing short of tremendous here. So is Sean Bean as former-double-o Alec Trevelyan, an insatiably charismatic villain doing the wrong things for the right reasons. Everything else about this movie is inspired too, from the famous St. Petersburg tank chase to the relaxed-fit commentary on Bond’s post-Cold War relevance, and certainly the stunt-casting of Judi Dench as Bond’s boss, M (which would pay off in dividends for the next decade and a half). Goldeneye fucking smacks.
2. Skyfall (2012)
15 years in, I guess we’re all fatigued by the brooding vibe of the Daniel Craig era, but boy does this shit hold up. Though Craig’s Bond films are far more concerned with continuity and inter-connectivity than the rest of the series, Skyfall works as a standalone 21st-century refraction of both the literary and cinematic 007 (much of it feels uncannily like something Ian Fleming would conceive of himself were he magically planted in a modern context).
Yes, there’s a touch of Dark Knight-harping going on, but I think that criticism is largely overblown when you consider the conversation Skyfall is having with the entire James Bond phenomenon as an enduring pop-culture entity. Cinematographer Roger Deakins does the best work of his post-digital-overhaul career, Judi Dench’s M gets a worthy sendoff, and Javier Bardem makes for one of the most memorable villains of the decade. Oh, and the screenplay is fuckin’ dynamite. Skyfall sets a high-ass bar for modern Bond. It’ll be a minute before it’s topped.
1. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
At some point, every Bond fan has to accept that this is the best one—a ‘60s pop-art collage of the Bond series up to that point with a welcome injection of heart ‘n soul. The A.V. Club’s Ignatiy Vishnevetsky called it “the definitive Bond fan’s Bond film: romantic, unusually invested in Bond as a character, and about as beautiful as these movies would ever get.” And George Lazenby’s one and only turn as 007, despite his clear limitations as a first-time actor in a starring role, only gets better with age.
Where On Her Majesty’s lacks in comfortable familiarity and, well, Sean Connery, it makes up for tenfold in every other conceivable way. As Steven Soderbergh put it, “this movie is beautiful in a way none of the other Bond films are—the anamorphic compositions are relentlessly arresting—and the editing patterns of the action sequences are totally bananas; it’s like Peter Hunt (who cut the first five Bond films) took all the ideas of the French new wave and blended them with Eisenstein in a Cuisinart to create a grammar that still tops today’s how-fast-can-you-cut aesthetic.”
If you made it this far, thanks for indulging me. And tune in for some horror recs ’n other hits from the adrenochrome of my movie lizard brain in the coming weeks.
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