The Daniel Craig Bond movies, ranked by A.V. Club review
Here, in order of preference, is how we felt about each installment in the latest 007 run
Film Lists Daniel Craig
Fifteen years after he first donned the iconic menswear and turned to fire a bullet straight into the camera, Daniel Craig is retiring from the spy game. His final turn as James Bond, No Time To Die, arrives in theaters this Friday, bringing to an end a whole era of slightly grittier, more serialized adventures for cinema’s most famous secret agent. Unless one counts Sean Connery’s one-off return to the role in the early 1980s, Craig has played 007 for longer than any actor before him. He’s made the character his own.
But how were the movies themselves? The A.V. Club reviewed each when they first hit theaters, charting the course of this franchise within the franchise in real time, from the autumn of 2006 to early last week. Let’s take a closer look at how our critics felt, on a film-by-film basis, about the Craig installments of this endless series—beginning with the one we liked the least and working our way, in order of site preference, to our favorite. Just remember: The ranking that follows may not reflect your own hierarchical assessment of the last five Bonds—nor, for that matter, each individual writer’s.
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Skyfall has an amazing first act but it shits the bed SO HARD after that. Thankfully there’s always nice Deakins shots to look at.
The opening scene of Spectre is pretty damn good, too. It’s a shame about the Into Darkness style twist midway through.
spectre feels like two or three different movies, it’s insane. you’ve got a dour and portentous spy thriller (the day of the dead scene, the stuff in Snow Level), an abstract magical realist movie where events just sort of happen without reason but in a beautiful way (the stuff in Italy, the stuff in the desert), and then also the hackiest late 2000s action movie crammed in there too (everything else).
The only things I remember about Skyfall are the title song and there’s a scene where Bond sets up a bunch of Home Alone-esque traps.
The worst thing about Skyfall is people still making Home Alone jokes, as though no movie had ever before shown people defending a homestead with traps and ingenuity.
I never understood the massive praise for Skyfall. It’s not a bad movie but too much of it takes place in London. It feels like we missed a bunch of movies between Quantum and Skyfall.
I love Skyfall but those two things are my biggest issues with it. Too much UK, and we’re missing the 30 missions he went on between QoS (a continuation of the first mission he has as a 00) and when he suddenly became old and washed up.
It definitely might’ve happened in other Bond movies but the whole “literally everything the good guys do is part of the bad guy’s plan” thing, landed with a thud hard enough to leave a cartoonish impression in the ground.
Skyfall and The Dark Knight Rises both fail for me because they don’t understand what the scale of their story should be. Skyfall sets the stakes too personal when Bond movies operate with millions of lives on the line, and TDKR essentially does the opposite. Also it ruins both the notion that James Bond is a codename (which is the only way the movies make sense) and the notion that James Bond is always the same guy (given Judi Dench is M much later in Bond’s career, but then is also M at the beginning of the career, and has the door slammed shut on returning for his later years). So we’re left with absolute rubbish continuity.Adele is nice, at least.
Pretty much the only thing I like about The Dark Knight Rises is Tom Hardy. Although that counts for a lot, it’s just…strange. It goes full A Tale of Two Cities for no other reason than because it can. It’s ridiculously stupid but expects us to take it all deathly seriously (remember when Bruce gets a crucial story beat from his own hallucination?). It just tries to cram too much in. I’m not a Nolan hater by any means, but it’s definitely far from his best.
Haven’t seen No Time to Die yet, but I’ve heard it suffers from the overstuffed issue too.
Yeah it’s a very dumb script and baffling so after TDK’s fairly decent one. It would have been so much fun if it took itself less seriously but I just don’t think Nolan is capable of doing that, for all his strengths
I just couldn’t get over the stupid voice Bale was using, even to people who knew who he was. He didn’t do this in the first one! It also felt very tone deaf as Occupy was happening, I know the film was mostly done before that emerged but it just was a bad look/philosophy
The biggest offender in movie series is when the movie spends too much time talking about the first 2 movies. Spectre, Dark Knight Rises, Spider-man 3 all stumble in this regard. You can have connective tissue to the past (such as Professor Crane) but you can wrap up a trilogy without perseverating on previous installments, let alone, without retconning previously films.
TDKR also gave us that great Pete Holmes sketch though.
To be fair he gets it wrong thinking Bane is Ra’s son
The “James Bond is just a code name” theory is just a bunch of hooey. While the George Lazenby film does reference “the other fellow” and Blofeld doesn’t recognize him, Roger Moore Bond mourns Lazenby’s wife on multiple occasions. Pierce Brosnan references the Dalton M. The same rough origin story – orphan whose parents died in a climbing accident – is also referenced multiple times.The only way the movies make sense is if they don’t have continuity between Bonds, but that each Bond actor is their own continuity.
THE EXPLAIN HOW THE FIRST BOND ENDED UP IN ALCATRAZ, SMARTARSE.
Or that they recruit their Bonds solely from climbing accident orphans and that they get dossiers on all the previous Bonds to study. Or that Bond is actually a Time Lord and we just don’t see the regeneration scenes.
Yeah, it’s emphatically debunked in multiple films including recent ones. Skyfall had Bond tombstones in it for his dead parents. Plus 007 is already his codename. Perhaps he should give fake names more often to people, but there’s no reason MI6 would stick with the aliases
I always just thought of it as “different producers, different continuities” and that one day, if I wished hard enough, we could get an animated crossover a la “Into the Spider-Verse”
Here’s a funny thing: Bond films have very consistent producers for their entire run, and it’s kind of a family-run operation.Harry Saltzman and Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli produced all of them* until the ‘70s. Then it was just Broccoli until the ‘80s. Then he brought on Michael G. Wilson, his stepson. After License to Kill, he stopped producing the films, and was replaced by Barbara Broccoli, his daughter. *Kevin McClory was officially the producer of Thunderball while Saltzman and Broccoli were executive producers, due to a bunch of legal stuff involved in the Thunderball script. This is also why Never Say Never Again could both happen and was a Thunderball remake.
The idea that Bond was a codename was always a flimsy fan theory at best because there’s no direct evidence for it in any of the movies or the novels. A character being the same guy played by different actors over time is par for the course with long running franchises.Hell, we’ve had five (I think?) different actors playing Batman in those movies, and almost as many actors playing Spider-Man. And no, Bond is not any more realistic than a comic book superhero.
Yeah, maybe Daniel Craig decided to vamoose before they had ‘Bond In Tights’
Especially since the movies always take place in the present day. Yes the actors age as they appear in subsequent films but you’re not meant to be watching a career progression (with the exception of the Craig films), just whatever adventure he’s living today.
Although the comic book movies seem to love rehashing the origin stories (how many times have we seen Uncle Ben killed?) so it is clearer that each version is its own continuity. Other than the non-canon Never Say Never Again redoing Thunderball, Bond has never been shown to repeat any of his experiences.
True, but for the most part, each of the comic versions are in their own “world” with the whole multi-verse angle. It’s been around for years. Spider-Man even had his Spiderverse movie where having the different versions was the whole point. I think we just expect it in comics.
I mean, we know Bond’s a codename, because the first one ended up in Alcatraz under a false name.
No offense, but I’ve never really understood the people who get upset over Bond movie continuity. Star Wars or MCU, sure, but it’s been long established that the only Bond continuity rule is that there are no Bond continuity rules.
absolute rubbish continuity
Bond continuity is “there’s a bunch of stories about this guy named James Bond, and they’re as related to each other as they need to be for the story currently being told to function.” Trying to hammer all of it into a consistent, coherent timeline is just asinine, and it’s clearly not a goal of the series.The stories are linked like folk tales, not like chapters in a novel. The continuity is perfectly fine because it never pretended to be anything else.
When you try to jam a bunch of loosely related installments into a single continuity you end up with shit like this:
Also it ruins both the notion that James Bond is a codename (which is the only way the movies make sense)
That was disproven by the movies a long time ago, when Moore visits the grave of his dead wife, who died in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which Moore was not in. James Bond is not a code name.
the notion that James Bond is always the same guy (given Judi Dench is M
much later in Bond’s career, but then is also M at the beginning of the
career
She’s not the same M. The Craig movies are a full reboot of the story. But when you have Judy Dench saying “Yes, I’ll be in your movie,” you don’t say no. Watching the Brosnan movies & then the Craig movies, it’s clear that Dench is playing two different M characters.
oh no, the continuity!
The “Bond is a code name” thing has been hogwash for decades now. Connery’s Bond goes on a roaring rampage of revenge against Blofield for the murder of Lazenby Bond’s wife, Moore’s Bond visits her grave and Dalton’s Bond gets all melancholy at Leiter’s wedding when he catches the garter. Meanwhile Brosnan’s Bond has a desk full of mementos from his previous missions when he was Lazenby, Connery and Moore.He’s the same dude.
Does Leiter appear in any Bond movies following License to Kill? And if so, does he have both legs?Because if he does, then you can pretty much dispense with any notion of continuity at all in the 007 series.Unless “Felix Leiter” is also a code name (I don’t think he was ever portrayed by the same actor twice — same for Moneypenny).
Lois Maxwell played Moneypenny from Dr No through A View to a Kill. After that Dalton and Brosnan each had their own Moneypenny actresses (Bliss and Samantha Bond).
Felix Leiter doesn’t appear after Licence to Kill until the rebooted Casino Royale (Jeffrey Wright). Licence to Kill is the first time Leiter was played by the same actor more than once – David Hedison also played Leiter way back in Live and Let Die.Regarding Bond continuity, people shouldn’t overthink it because it’s clear that the producers just weren’t too concerned about it.
I never knew that about Moneypenny. She always looked different to me, but maybe I’m mis-remembering the switch from Moore to Dalton. I haven’t watched a 007 movies in probably more than a decade.I want to say that Live and Let Die’s Leiter looked familiar to me, but those two movies were made more than 15 years apart.I remember Goldeneye bringing in Joe Don Baker as 007’s CIA buddy, but he wasn’t playing Leiter. I also remember Joe Don was the bad guy in The Living Daylights.
Because of the personal role Leiter plays in Licence to Kill I think they wanted a previous Leiter, and Living Daylight’s John Terry was unavailable. I mean, like it mattered since it was 15 years apart.Joe Don in GoldenEye returning after being the villain in Living Daylights was kind of off, but the Bond franchise brings back actors in different roles almost as often as Law & Order did (Charles Gray was Henderson in You Only Live Twice only to play Blofeld in Diamonds are Forever). Without home video there wasn’t the scrutiny we are afforded today.
They should have gone for OG Felix Leiter and hired Jack Lord.
On Felix (and Moneypenny):Felix shows up in the Craig movies! He has both legs AND he’s black now AND the same actor shows up in several movies. David Hedison – he who lost his legs in License to Kill – was the first actor to play him twice, but Jeffrey Wright has been Felix through the Craig series.Moneypenny, on the other hand, is rarely re-cast – there are fewer Moneypenny actors than Bonds, since Lois Maxwell portrayed the character from Dr. No to A View to a Kill – though they have begun giving each actor a different Moneypenny since.
Yeah, I think the change in Moneypenny actors after the Moore era may have confused me. I haven’t seen any of the Craig movies so I didn’t know Felix came back — and having both his legs AND being black, then I think that reinforces the “there is no continuity in 007 movies other than what each film demands” thing.
Lois Maxwell played Moneypenny for more than 20 years. She was in her late 50s by the last film.ETA: Dookie beat me to it.
It looks like Felix’s last appearance – before appearing in the Craig reboot, at least – was indeed License to Kill. So . . .go continuity?
I would also point out that he already has a codename: 007. They don’t need to layer them. One of the movies also points out that double-ohs have a very short life expectancy, but Bond just keeps surviving. Clearly they’re talking about the man himself and not a codename.
But do you really watch Bond movies for continuity? Do you sit down, make yourself a cocktail, put a log on the fire, settle in for a nice viewing of The Man With the Golden Gun and think, “Now! A pleasant evening of satisfyingly coherent plotting!” These movies are so silly. Putting Judi Dench in CR was an active defiance of continuity. Because fun!
I agree 100%. Skyfall had zero stakes… and went out of its way to tease us with continuity (007 has access to the Aston Martin!) and then just further confuses us. (Wait, why does he have that Aston Martin?) before showing us the tombstones and obliterating the codename theory.If “James Bond” is a codename, then the moment Craig first says “Bond. James Bond” to Mr. White at the end of Casino Royale is his “arrival” moment and it’s SO much greater.
It’s not supposed to be the same M. In addition to Bond being a rookie, Skyfall establishes that the Craig M was running the Hong Kong office in ‘97 and in the 90’s Bronson movies she is not.
Is Quantum Of Solace good? No. But does it have Gemma Arterton? Yes, yes it does. Does it waste Gemma Arterton? Oh, absolutely.
I like how they tried to give Arterton a typical dumb Bond girl name (Strawberry Fields), and it was awkward and weird and didn’t fit the new tone at all so they never tried it again.
i thought it was funny, because her name is never spoken aloud in the movie. bond asks for her name and she says “just fields,” like she’s embarrassed about it in the same way the craig bonds are clearly embarrassed by the antics of the older movies (or were embarrassed by them, until they realized they could bank on nostalgia in the next ones).
Agree-ish, mostly.
Is Quantum Of Solace good? No Yes. But does it have Gemma Arterton? Yes, yes it does. Does it waste Gemma Arterton? Oh, absolutely.
I remember Skyfall being way too long but it’s actually one minute shorter than Casino Royale (which is my fave). Now I don’t know what to believe!!
I will always love me some Bond films. During my work break earlier this year I re-watched the Bronsan films and while they did degrade with each successive film into the realm of Roger Moore territory, I found they essentially held up. I saw the cheesiness coming, so I was actually ok with it.I’ve liked how they have treated Bond over the Craig era. It’s a back to brass tacks move, playfulness imbued with an overall seriousness. I haven’t seen the Connery films in a while, but it seems like they took notes from Dr. No and ran with it. I absolutely love Skyfall, and feel it really is possibly the -best- Bond film made. I know there are detractors, but they can go piss off. However, the second (possibly third) best Bond film with Craig was Layer Cake. (And yes, I know it’s not a Bond film, but if you don’t see what I’m saying here, then you need to watch more movies.)
I didn’t think SPECTRE was great but damn nothing deserves to be below Quantum of Solace (haven’t seen NTTD yet but I sincerely hope it’s not). I feel like that should be possibly in contention for one of the worst Bond movies ever.
I remember reading somewhere that it was made in the middle of the writers strike and Craig and Forster were basically piecing the movie together as they went. Which is a shame, but considering the context it was made in, it was surprisingly decent. Definitely took the wind out of Casino Royale’s sails though.
An even bigger shame for QoS is that, apparently, the editors also went on strike.
(Though I’d agree that plot and dialogue-wise the movie is actually alright, all things considered)
Agreed that criticisms of QoS’s plot are overblown. It’s mostly logical, complicated only by the fact that Bond makes some wildly reckless decisions. (This girl just tried to kill me! Clearly she’s connected to the villain somehow. Wait, the villain’s trying to kill her now? Alright, I’ll just go rescue her then.)
Oh yeah! I’d forgotten about that sequence but I do remember getting whiplash from it on first viewing. But yeah, even then it does still hang together more-or-less.
That’s a bad explanation though. The problem with Quantum of Solace is not the writing (it’s not great, but it’s serviceable enough), it’s how badly edited the action scenes are in a piss poor attempt to replicate the aesthetic of the Bourne films. That makes them more confusing than exciting or satisfying, and ruins the whole flow of the movie.
I believe the rankings are made by the rating the movies got on release. AVC might have been slightly more kind to it due to the writer’s strike.
I’ve always felt that the action scenes in QoS and Spectre both hit far, far wide of the mark but in completely different ways. QoS has a few superbly choreographed action scenes (opening car chase, rooftop chase/fight, opera shootout) that are ruined by some terrible choppy editing and shaky-cam direction. Whereas Spectre’s action scenes are dull and completely lacking in any sort of dynamism, but are filmed with perfect clarity.Plot wise, they’re basically the same film except in Spectre it’s: ‘Hey, remember that secret sprawling terrorist organization with people everywhere from QoS? Well, it turns out that they were merely a part of an even secreter, even more sprawlinger terrorist organization that also happens to be run by your brother!’
I’ve always felt the Vesper death sequence and aftermath at the end of Casino Royale deflates what was a perfect film up to that point.Ironically, if they had shifted the sequence to Quantum of Solace it would have elevated that film.
i will say if you watch casino royale and qos back to back it makes a really good bond mega-movie and evens out some of the rough edges.
Absolutely! Just did that last night in preperation for NTtD on Thursday. Skyfall and Spectre tonight.
Watching those first two back to back is 100% the way to go.
Maybe QoS got extra marks for having Olga Kurlenko and Gemma Arterton. They’re the only pluses I can remember.
Definitely more traditional Bond girls than, uh, M.
No way! None of the DC Bond’s should be remotely in the lower half of the franchise. QoS was the perfect complement to CR’s relatively low action affair.
In CR Bond loses Vesper but finds she betrayed him, in QoS Bond loses Mathis after realizing he wasn’t betrayed by him, Jeffrey Wright returns as Felix in a great showing, Mathieu Amalric puts in a compelling and consistently underrated performance… I obviously consider it highly underrated.I quite liked Spectre as well, thought it had plenty of great pieces but falls a bit in the latter third, but when looked at outside of the movie itself and more in context with the other three it has some real issues. Lea Seydoux is a great selection but after the lessons Bond learns in CR and QoS it seems insane that he’d be so invested in Madeleine (hoping NTtD works that out) which I find to be it’s biggest issue, but then there’s also the little thing of Bond being so old and washed up he’s almost hung up in Skyfall and then 45 yrs later when Spectre came out we need that to not be an issue. However, you get the great pre-titles sequence, the return of Blofeld (which hopefully Waltz has more opportunity with in NTtD), Bond returning to a nearly dead Mr. White, the Michelle Balducci post funeral scene which was maybe one of the best single scenes in the franchise… quite a bit in that one.
it’s actually good
At least for me, Casino Royale is still the best of Craig, and probably the best Bond. I’ve also never gotten the Skyfall hype. A perfectly good movie, but not at the level of that first Craig outing.
Watched No Time To Die the other day and while I think Dowd’s review was overly harsh, some of his criticisms are legit. The movie tried to do a lot and not all of it came together for me. In particular, there are a lot of unrealistic old-school Bond moments that IMO don’t really befit this particular iteration of Bond (many of them related to Safin, who is very much an old-school Bond villain with an old-school Bond villain plan and an old-school Bond villain lair, except he also happens to have this weird personal connection to things… Malek is good though). Set pieces could also have been better, and it is a little long.
However – I enjoyed it. It does a few things very well, particularly (IMO) the emotional beats, which Dowd dismissed. I didn’t buy the big romantic connection between Bond and Seydoux’s character in Spectre, but I did in this one. Parts of it are affecting. Lashana Lynch is great. Definitely better than Spectre.Overall ranking:1. Casino Royale2. Skyfall3. No Time to Die4. Quantum of Solace (haven’t watched for ages though)
5. Spectre
yay thanks for this, Casino Royale worked so well for me because of the emotional beats between Bond and Vesper, and I was disappointed that the review made no real mentions of how it worked in No Time To Die. This made me excited!
Glad to hear it! It is thoroughly worthwhile viewing, even if it’s not Craig’s best. In Dowd’s defense, I think he did talk about that aspect of NTTD, but (IIRC) said that it fell flat because he didn’t buy the central relationship between Bond and Swann. That’s a criticism I’d have wholeheartedly agreed with in Spectre, but I think they did a good job with it here.
fair fair, and I think Vesper is a hard act to follow, especially when the chemistry between Craig and Green was so intimate.
I have a feeling this is how I’ll feel, too, based on your comments on the other films. I have to see QoS and Spectre again, but I think my only change in ranking is swapping those two. But, Casino Royale definitely overtakes Skyfall for me. I didn’t even like Bond movies and CR was the first one I ever saw, and I really liked it a lot. I wouldn’t have watched the others if CR hadn’t been so good.
My only real problem with No Time to Die is the bad guy’s motivation. But, hey, he’s a Bond villain… being a homicidal jerk is motivation enough. Otherwise I thought it was fun and, for a 120 hour movie, it flew by.1. No Time to Die2. Casino Royale3. Skyfall4. Quantum of Solace5. SpectreThe ending of Casino Royal is turgid. Skyfall doesn’t make any sense. Quantum of Solace? Ryan puts it better than me…And everyone knows Spectre is one of the worst films ever made.
“And everyone knows Spectre is one of the worst films ever made” It’s not even the worst Bond film ever made.
It’s ok-decent, from my recollection.
Spectre isn’t bad at all, it’s just boring and forgettable. In a sense that makes it a really bad Bond film because the worst ones are at least memorable. But as a film itself it’s competent
I remember exactly two things about Spectre, one that was cool and one that bugged me:1. The Bautista train fight was good2. Blofeld going “Ha ha ha Bond! This brain torture shit I’m doing to you is going to give you brain damage and turn you into a paralyzed moron forever!” Then two seconds later, Bond is picking off bad guys from 500 yards away with nary a twitch or shake in his hand. Was Blofeld just really bad at torturing?
If SPECTRE ends with the desert base exploding, it’s a 50% better movie. The train fight against Batista was pretty great, and reminded me of GoldenEye 64.
It’s not even the worst Daniel Craig film.
I wouldn’t call Spectre one of the worst films ever made, but I absolutely agree with you ranking.
Disagree with the “Spectre is one of the worst films ever made” It’s not a good movie in any way but have you seen truly horrible films? I suggest stuff like The Happening and Battlefield Earth as a start. And that doesn’t even cover straight to home movies.
It’s not even the worst big-budget action-oriented release in 2015, a year that gave us Fant4stic Four, Mortdecai, and the Point Break remake.
If they’re worse than Spectre I’ll pass, thanks :)I may have succumbed to a spot of hyperbole there, and I only saw it once so perhaps I’ve forgotten the explanation, but… Blofeld is Bond’s step-brother?!? And his motivation for all the evil plans is… he’s jealous of James Bond?That can’t be it. Maybe I should re-watch.
No I think you’ve got it. That’s definitely my recollection and I have no desire to rewatch and find out.
As an aside, what is this shit where people put REALLY BIG EYES into pictures or videos of live-action characters? Is that some kind of attempt to spoof automated copyright scrubbers, like changing the pitch in the audio or reversing the image? Or is just some stupid shit people do because they think it’s funny?
That’s not what Ryan George’s (one of the best humorists on Youtube, IMHO) videos are about, though. Yes, the thumbnail is that way, but not the video.
Jesus Christ, I had forgotten that the plot of Quantum was “Steal water then sell water back to them at a higher price.”Not “Siphon off all the world’s water and hold it for ransom”. Not “Put mind control drugs in the water to enslave Bolivia”. Fucking price fixing.
Modern James Bond sucks.
To be fair, the villain’s big evil scheme in View to a Kill is to flood Silicon Valley and corner the market on silicon…apparently under the mistaken assumption that Silicon Valley is where they mine the silicon rather than the single largest market for microchips.
In the 1980s they really did make chips there though. You are thinking of modern Silicon Valley where they just write software there and the chips are made by near slaves in China. But there’s a real reason they didn’t call it “Software Valley”.
This YouTube bit is one of the worst films ever made.
As the single longest-running film series in history, I think it’s important to acknowledge that it’s also the one with the least critical consensus. You’ll hear From Russia with Love and Goldfinger widely cited as the best, but one has that awful gypsy camp scene and one has an infamously nonsensical plot (as well as an all-out rape scene). I have seen a self-professed fan claim Die Another Day is his favorite, while another argue that Spectre is underrated. Me, I’m a die-hard defender of Quantum of Solace.Because the thing about the Bond series is that there simply isn’t a universally agreed-upon opinion of what a Bond film should be. Many fans are invested in the male sex-and-power fantasy aspect; most of the rest of the world want to purge it of the racist, sexist and colonialist aspects; some grew up in the Moore era and like it when it’s cheesy and over-the-top; yet others remember the Fleming novels and prefer it to return to those roots. This series has spanned 25 movies and almost 70 years; the closest comparable film franchise is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which will overtake it in number of entries soon but is a long way off from matching it in timespan.So whatever opinion you have of the Bond films, I think you should do you and have that opinion. You like FRWL and GF, fine – I don’t. Moore was your favorite Bond, great – he’s bottom of my ranking. Even if you think the whole thing is irredeemably misogynist – I actually wouldn’t disagree. No other film series has spanned so many different time periods and cultural sea changes, hence, it’s the one film series that supports the widest variety of critical views.
Yeah, to paraphrase the U.S. Supreme Court, I can’t define a “good” Bond movie, but I know it when I see it. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is probably my favorite Bond movie, but Craig and Dalton are my favorite Bonds. I have lot of affection for the Moore era, but I’m pretty cool on the Connery era, particularly when it comes to pacing (there are long stretches of Thunderball that are only slightly more interesting than watching paint dry). And also the Brosnan movies exist (okay, Goldeneye is decent).
This is what’s great about talking Bond….I’m 100% with half of what you wrote 🙂
OHMSS is one of my favorites, despite Lazenby (who is not great, but not as bad as people think).
Dalton is my favorite for sure and I really put his two movies high on my list, even though they have many flaws.
Tomorrow Never Dies is a top 5, maybe even a top 3, for me and I felt Goldeneye is good, but a little overrated. (His later two are….not great).
Live and Let Die is my favorite Bond movie, but I know it’s not the best one and Moore is usually tied with Brosnan at #4/5 on my list.
oh man… I could spend all day in this thread, but I have to get some work done! Bond is my favorite movie franchise by a mile and there’s really only a handful I won’t stop to watch if I see it on while channel surfing (well not technically channel surfing these days but Pluto has a Bond channel so I check that out from time to time. I do think there are a couple of tell tale signs of a “true” Bond fan though, since you have a proper appreciation of OHMSS and Dalton’s take on Bond I’ll give you my stamp of approval but we’ll have to agree to disagree on Live and Let Die. It’s a great score but damn the racial stuff has not aged well. It’s kinda uncomfortable to watch these days. And I feel the same way about how Bond treats the women in some of the Connery films too.
Oh I absolutely agree on the racial stuff in LALD & other aspects of the earlier movies that didn’t age well.
LALD is certainly not the best, but it’s my favorite. I think I was just the right age when we rented it as a kid….the music is great, not too many gadgets (in fact, it’s weird there’s no Q at all, but I still love it), the plot isn’t too wacky, it’s not too camp/cheesy like much of Moore’s other movies, the plot moves along pretty well, there’s a good amount of Felix in it, and this is all before even mentioning Jane Seymour….
Jane Seymour is easily top 5 for bond girls, so you have a point there. And definitely nothing wrong with it being a personal favorite. Everyone has one or two that are personal favorites even if the critical consensus doesn’t agree, which is part of what makes it so great. Personally I love Moonraker even though most people (rightly) dismiss it as possibly the silliest of the Roger Moore movies.
OHMSS has not one but two separate bobsled chases, so I believe it starts in B+ territory right off the bat.But seriously, after watching it during my series watch/rewatch over the last couple of years I came away thinking it was a shame Lazenby didn’t stick around for more.
Hey, Goldeneye is great!
Godzilla would like a word about this “longest-running film series” thing. He’s got eight years and four sequels on Bond, and that’s not counting the American flicks.
Thank you, scrolled down to say it. And for those who haven’t revisited the original Godzilla, it’s not what you think and well worth watching.
I stand corrected. Beyond the limits of American/UK films, there are plenty of longer-running and more prolific film series than Bond. Kwan Tak-Hing was the original Wong Fei-Hung in 77 movies since 1949.
Well, sure, if you don’t count the television version of Casino Royale, which… you probably shouldn’t.
Toho was also doing the cinematic universe 50 years before marvel, but they always get the credit
I mean, I enjoy most of the Bonds on some level. There are some turds, but even the ones that are not-so-good are enjoyable. I have major soft spots for The Man With the Golden Gun and A View To A Kill in particular. Granted, a lot of it is nostalgia. My dad and I would always get so excited when the XX Days of 007 came around each year on TBS.
The differences between Bond movies are such minutia that it’s almost barely worth arguing – it’s the same formula mixed over and over. Sometimes the mood one if in will determine ones appreciation for a film as I’ve seen the same people have wildly different reactions to the same film at different times.
The level of disdain towards Quantom of Solace is undeserved. Sure, some of the action sequences are a little rickety, but it’ s a solid, lean back-to-basics Bond movie. Which is really all anyone wants.
That said, some people are going to love Skyfall’s Nolan-eque blow-it-all-up high stakes, but there is no way it rationally goes above Casino Royale.
Are the stakes high in Skyfall? Worst case, if the bad guy succeeds, M gets killed – and that actually happens. (Spoilers!)
Are the stakes high in Skyfall? Worst case, if the bad guy succeeds, M gets killed – and that actually happens.
Well, kind of my point – Craig’s Bond films are more concerned with personal stakes. Sure it’s not another nuclear bomb, but I wrote “Nolan-eque blow-it-all-up high stakes”. MI6 gets blown up, Silva attempts to blow up Parliament, derailed the London underground – all similar to R’az and Bane blowing up Wayne Manor and Gotham.
QoS easily the best Craig film as its a nice 90 compared to the others that have a good 20+ minutes of fat to trim.
Which is why you’ll find few people (at least who have seen more than a handful of Bond films) who don’t like at least a couple of them. You’ve got cool, silly, actiony, gritty and a bunch of other versions available, all featuring the same character.
I can see purging the series of its racist (and to a degree sexist, depending on whether it is the actual rapes and misogyny or Bond’s womanizing behavior entirely that is to be eliminated) aspects, but you can’t really have an anti-colonialist Bond — he’s a British secret agent! His whole reason for existing is to be an agent of British power in foreign countries!
I mean, Bond has done fine battling white male villains who are either generic megalomaniacs with rule/destroy-the-world motivations or “terrorists” of indeterminate national/political affiliation. Not like he’s ever tried to annex the Falkland Islands or anything.You could argue that a British secret agent operating in foreign countries is inherently colonialist, but then you’d have to say the same of Ethan Hunt in the M:I movies.
I was never clear exactly who Ethan Hunt works for. Isn’t it an international organization rather than the CIA or something? Making non-colonialist secret agents can be done of course — The Man From UNCLE did it by assigning them to the UN.
He works for the US government Specifically the State department they make it clear in the movies considering he is either working, with/against the CIA.
As the single longest-running film series in historySecond longest.
There’s another one with weird continuity. The Showa era films are in a kind of loose continuity – the monsters are a fact of life and everyone knows they exist, but the story doesn’t flow from one to the other. Sometimes you’ll just yet “oh yeah, remember when Godzilla did this other thing?” Or you get Godzilla Raids Again where they just straight up play the first movie for a bit.The Heisei films are direct continuity with each other – they have a clear, overarching story between them – but it’s completely separate from the Showa films. The Millenium era ditches continuity completely – there is no connection between films at all, and sometimes they will make story decisions that seem to be exclusively to show that continuity is dead.
I think the Zatoichi may beat Bond actually, so third?
Seconded on Quantum of Solace. They took the typical Bond formula and flipped it on it’s head and made a gritty Charles Bronson revenge thrilled rather than a breezy spy movie. I love it.
Put me in the “I like Quantum of Solace” camp as well. I enjoyed it and will gladly go back and watch it.SPECTRE, on the other hand? I still am unsure whether or not I actually saw the damn movie. And I know I saw it! Or, did I?
I’m the same. It’s shocking how little of that movie I remember.
Pretty great post. I know which Bonds I dislike (Skyfall!), but others seem to just love it.(I wish they’d leaned in to having each 007 take on the name “James Bond”, though – just for the potential continuity.)The only objective truth about Bond movies is that Chris Cornell’s “You Know My Name” is the best theme song. Obviously.
The best five are You Know My Name, A View To A Kill, Skyfall, Live and Let Die and Goldfinger.
Saw Duran Duran play “A View To A Kill” last Sunday night, live. It rocked.No hyperbole – I think that they created the main plot of “Skyfall” COMPLETELY from “You Know My Name”. It’s M telling Bond that he’s expendable and on his own:Arm yourself because no one else here can save youThe odds will betray youAnd I will replace youThe coldest blood runs through my veins / you know my name
hard to argue with that ranking!
Yes to “You Know My Name!”
No to “Bond is a code name!”Craig’s films were a legit reboot whereas all the previous Bonds were set (very loosely, obviously) in the same continuity.I can only assume they will go full reboot again for the next actor. I doubt they’ll have him start as a pre-00, but I think they’ll just make it a soft reboot without bothering to explain much.
The main knock on Quantum is that the villain SUCKS, which, fair.But it’s still solid
I think the villain was fine. He was nicely slimy, which is all a good movie villain needs to be. And “performative do-gooder billionaire villain” is positively timely, these days.He’s no flamboyant megalomaniac with a visual gimmick, but then again, that’s one of those Bond things that people think every Bond film should have but not all actually do.
i do like having a bond villain who’s just kind of pathetic, like an even more insecure roman roy from succession
I think it’s also a fair cop on Quantum that it leaned way too hard into Bourne shakey-cam for the action sequences, which was especially sad after Casino Royale.
FINALLY, I found someone who likes Roger Moore as much as I do.
“I think it’s important to acknowledge that it’s also the one with the least critical consensus.”I remember in 2007 fans were up in arms. People didn’t want it AT ALL. It was Black Panther level hatred.
Born in 1968, Craig is the first actor to portray James Bond to have been born after the Bond series started and after the death of Ian Fleming, the novels’ writer. The casting choice caused significant controversy. Throughout the entire production period, internet campaigns expressed their dissatisfaction and threatened to boycott the film in protest.[72] Craig, blond and 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m), was not considered by some protesters to fit the tall, dark-haired Bond portrayed by the previous Bond actors, to which viewers had apparently become accustomed.[73] Although the choice of Craig was controversial, numerous actors publicly voiced their support. Most notably four of the five actors who had previously portrayed Bond – Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton – called his casting a good decision.[74][75] Connery notably shared his thoughts on Craig’s casting as Bond in 2008, describing him as “fantastic, marvelous in the part”. The other actor to have previously played Bond, George Lazenby, has since voiced his approval of Craig also.[76] Clive Owen, who had been linked to the role, also spoke in defense of Craig.[77]
This series has spanned 25 movies and almost 70 years
60 years is not almost 70 years. And it’s exactly 60 years – TODAY! Dr. No premiered October 6, 1962 in the UK.
For me, Quantum of Solace’s biggest flaw is that it feels like an Arrested Development-esque “On the next Casino Royale” punchline – it’s fun but it’s short, silly, inconsequential and relies entirely on what came before rather than standing alone. It’s Casino Royale, Skyfall, No Time to Die, Spectre and Quantum of Solace for me, though the top two can change depending on which one I’ve most recently watched. Neither of the bottom two are bad – there’s fun to be had in both (Solace really suffers from its rushed writing frenetic editing which diminishes the set pieces) – and No Time to Die is a great finish for what’s been one of the strongest Bond runs so far. I’d say Connery (even with his last pair of films) is the only rival – Brosnan’s run was the weakest, Dalton was a great Bond with cheap, average films and Moore had one out and out classic, a handful of fun ones and some very poor ones. I’d also refute Dowd’s assertion that Craig seems bored in No Time to Die – I’ve watched it twice now and he’s clearly having a lot of fun.
Michael Bluth will return in. . . “Notapusy”
“For British eyes on-lyyyyyyyyyyyy!”
I kind of agree with this list. Here’s my take for the future of Bond. Adapt the Moonraker book. Its the best book with the best companion (Gala Brand) and set it in the 60s and make it low-key but high stakes like the book and you’ll have an amazing film.
Die Another Day actually uses a lot of Fleming’s Moonraker. Not to say they couldn’t try again.
Does Moonraker include invisible cars, CGI surfing, and North Koreans using gene therapy to make themselves look Caucasian? Because holy shit, that stuff was stupid as fuck.
Ha, no thankfully, just the broad strokes. Fleming’s Hugo Drax is secretly a Nazi who crafted an identity as a British socialite war hero so he can use a nuclear space rocket to destroy London. Similar to Die Another Day’s Gustav Grave’s and his Icarus laser.
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I don’t think any of Craig’s movies stand out as terrible. Quantam of Solace is not great but it’s short and has some decent action scenes. The script is almost non existent but doesn’t put Bond in a clown suit or anything. I don’t really get the hate for Spectre, to me Spectre could be fixed with a couple of post production work, a new score, fix the garish colour grading and a tighter edit. The Rome car chase is a dull as dishwater and it should have been much better edited. I don’t even mean cutting out huge chunks of the movie, but alot of scenes in Spectre just linger too long.
Upon rewatch, QoS is much better. Good pacing and good action. I think really the only thing that I really, really have a problem with is they decide the showdown at the end needs to be a fist fight between Bond & Greene. Mathieu Amalric is just way smaller than Daniel Craig. It makes no sense at all that he’d give Craig any trouble. They really should have found a better showdown.
It doesn’t help (or maybe it does?) that Almaric shrieks through the entire fight for no discernible reason.
I got that Bond has training, but Almaric is a desperate and crazy man at that point. Never bothered me.
If nothing else this is a good demonstration of how the initial critical reaction doesn’t always line up with how a film is received long-term. Though I still consider it to be the second best Craig Bond, Skyfall in particular seems to have plunged precipitously in many (most?) fans’ estimations.
If you take AV Club commenters as a representative sample, perhaps. I doubt that they actually are representative though.Personally, Skyfall is in my top 5 Bond films still.
As a rapacious Bond-fandom consumer I feel like this is turning truer and truer. Skyfall is still one of the more popular options among non-fans and fans alike, but the Bond community seems to be cooling to it while simultaneously warming up to QoS.
The pendulum always swings back and forth. During Brosnan’s run, he was repeatedly hailed as the best since Connery, which has toned down substantially in the years since. Conversely, Dalton was derided as too serious, but has since been reassessed as “Fleming’s Bond”. I recall my college roommate and huge Bond fan claiming Die Another Day was Brosnan’s best upon seeing it (it’s universally panned as his worst by a wide margin).
Having been released 4 years after the tepidly received Quantom of Solace, Skyfall is a wonderful looking film with a compelling villain that attempts to subvert the Bond script. I think that got people high on it. On its own, it’s an off the beaten path of a Bond story that is just too damn personal to hold up over time. Even Christopher Nolan has to think it’s overly-plotted.
Casino Royale is #1. I guess the Home Alone one is #2 and I don’t remember the other 2.
Overall, I’m afraid I’m going to have rate the whole Craig era a failure:1) It followed, instead of led. Bond bends the knee for no one, yet it kowtowed to the ‘Murrican Bond rip-off (Bourne), and to its own parody (Austin Powers).2) Despite try to shoehorn a SPECTRE Cinematic Universe – retroactively, no less. 3) Four out of five movies were barely tolerable, let alone good. 4) Mistakes ponderousness for depth.5) Bond falls completely in love with no less than two girls on two different trains, in two separate movies.6) Trying to justify Bond’s caddishness by lobotomising his love centre of the brain.7) Wasting the entirey of Skyfall.8) Myriad other little crimes I couldn’t be arsed listing.
Bond bends the knee for no one
Bond bends the knee so often he has RSI in his legs. Moore chased blacksploitation, kung fu movies and Star Wars, Dalton desperately tried to be a one-man Lethal Weapon, and Brosnan really wanted to be x-treme. Having Bond tackle a trend from two years earlier is a tradition going back decades.
I saw the slideshow too, and Bond is followed about 600% more than it follows (real science used.)
That slideshow was hardly the first time someone pointed out that Bond has followed trends pretty hard since the beginning of the ‘70s.
It really goes way past what was covered in the slideshow, if you want to look at specific action sequences and not overall themes. Take for example the parkour from the beginning of Casino Royale, which was an absolutely great scene.
You’re missing the point: Bond was bending the knee to the movies it inspired – Bourne and Austin Powers.It’s self-effacing, and embarrassing.
Casino Royale isn’t just the best of the bunch, but one of the best action movies ever.
Yikes. I love Casino Royale but it wouldn’t even make my Top 10 action films of all-time list.
Skyfall failed miserably for me because it almost immediately ditches the entire mission statement of Casino Royale. It goes from “here’s a new beginning for a new young Bond!” in Casino/Quantum (they’re pretty much one movie since Quantum starts seconds after Casino ends) to “Bond has been doing this too long and is aged out” in Skyfall. Skyfall also folds in all of the previous Bond adventures and implies they all happened (the Goldfinger Aston, etc.), thus ditching the new start.Casino is the only good Craig movie (and its great – among the top 3 Bonds for sure). Skyfall is a pretty failure, and Quantum and Spectre outright suck.
I never understood that decision either, it’s a theme they could have tucked away for 2 films later. Especially considering the same year The Dark Knight Rises unfortunately did the same thing, but at least had an 8-year time jump. Instead Bond gets shot and falls off of a very, very high bridge by Moneypenny.I think Skyfall owes its estimation by fans to Roger Deakins – it’s a very shiny turd.
>I think Skyfall owes its estimation by fans to Roger Deakins – it’s a very shiny turd.This 100%. The number one thing fans always cite about Skyfall is the cinematography, which is admittedly great, but if you look past that the movie is frankly a mess.The main problem with it is how baldly it tries to have it’s cake while eating it too as it tries to subvert the classic Bond tropes while also reveling in them. The most bizarre example is the scene where they try to subvert the “Bond seduces female henchman” trope by having the female henchman explain her tragic backstory of being sold into sex slavery and admitting that she was ordered by her owner to find Bond and have sex with him then two scenes later Bond bangs her anyway. If you’re trying to make Bond look like a total psychopath missions accomplished I guess but that clearly wasn’t their intent. The tone was just all over the place.
Skyfall is a perfectly fine Bond movie on its own, but it suffered from the desire to have every film cover some Big Important Thing in Bond’s life, and also the desire to give Craig a proper send-off (since at the time it was looking like he was going to walk). If we had a couple standard Bond movies in between and then got Skyfall exactly as it is, I think it would play a lot better now.
Hey, now we can watch it that way!
Yeah, you’re probably right. A lot of the problem is that Bond pretty much has one outing, then he’s immediately too old. It would have worked better as a send-off. It still has a bunch of problems, though. M is a moron, the Home Alone bullshit at Bond manor, etc.
I only saw Skyfall the once in theaters, and it was so pretty, but I hated it so much. It felt so dour, and long, and undeservedly self-serious, not to mention the “Bond’s old and being Bond sucks” thing I keep whining about.
I feel like this “Bond is suddenly too old now” criticism is overblown. It’s more like Bond is still the depressed and broken man he was at the end of CR, the need for revenge that drove him in QoS has burnt out, his less-than-100% physical skills are a symptom of that, and the movie is about him finding a new motivation to keep doing his job.
I really don’t understand how people who loved CR wanted to go directly from the ending of that movie to Bond having fun again.
The books managed it.
Hell, the movies managed to follow OHMSS just fine.It’s only a hurdle that needs to be leapt if you’re slavishly devoted to strict continuity in a way the series has never been before. This was a problem of their own making.
It still boggles me that CR is the movie everyone loved and immediately wanted something completely tonally opposite to follow it.
People loved it because it was a new and interesting take on the character, but you can’t do “brash young upstart learning the ropes” forever, so the hope was that they’d find a way to transition Craig’s aggressive and troubled Bond into other stories that fit the character Casino Royale established.Instead we went directly from two brash young upstart movies directly into three plaintive nostalgic looking-back-on-his-life movies, and all of them put in overtime trying to justify Bond as a character (Quantum strays the most from this, but its significant problems lie elsewhere). The tone is fine, but the themes got stretched to within an inch of their lives.
100% agree with this. I thought Skyfall was decent, I enjoyed it, but man did it bug me how they were all of a suddenly calling him old and irrelevant. It doesn’t help that they keep harping on the same note in Spectre as well…
The other thing is that since Skyfall was an ‘anniversary special,’ so to speak, some meta-commentary is to be expected. But this was how they chose to go about it. The criticisms of Bond and MI6 in that film are clearly intended to reflect criticisms of the series as a whole, which Bond and M then refute in the movie by being badass/speechifying/whatever.
The problem is that the movie is structured so heavily around those criticisms that it comes off as weirdly insecure and defensive… It’s like, who is even making these complaints? Sure, maybe there are some people out there who don’t like the series anymore but who cares? They’re still cultural events that make piles of money! And this is right after they just rebooted the series with Casino Royale, a movie that found a fresh take on things and which most people loved… IDK, that whole aspect really detracts from that movie, I find.
Yes, exactly. This is what I was going for, but you said it much better.
Yeah, Skyfall coincided with the series’ 50th anniversary, so I can forgive a lot of the navel gazing and nostalgia tripping in that movie. But then they finally settled the Thunderball dispute so they felt it was necessary to jam Blofeld and a metric ton of mythology back into the Craig movies. And now we have Craig’s swan song so it looks like we’re getting yet another retrospective, “but what does it mean to be Bond???” take.
It’s not that he should be having fun again, it’s that his experience with Vesper is what makes him the James Bond who coldly carries out Her Majesty’s orders, the very 007 we’ve been watching for decades. What makes Casino Royale unique is the personal nature of it, the impact of which is diminished if every subsequent Bond adventure is also personal.
After Quatom of Solace, it seemed like he’d had his pound of flesh, and the experience turned his heart a little cold which allows him to carry out his orders without attachment (echoed by the gun-barrel sequence at the end of the film). Instead we next see Bond shot off a very high bridge, resigns into hiding only to return and fail his physical and has mommy issues.
Yeah I feel like the creators looked at Casino Royale, thought: ‘What was so great about this movie?’ and the only thing they could come up with was the ‘personal stakes’ aspect. Which, sure, but there are so many other things that made that movie work which they failed to carry across to subsequent films.Also: I would say that having a personal element to the proceedings is fine. It’s just that that doesn’t always have to mean that the villain is someone from deep in Bond’s past or whatever.
I would say that having a personal element to the proceedings is fine.
It’s just that that doesn’t always have to mean that the villain is
someone from deep in Bond’s past or whatever.This is one of my biggest pet peeves. James Bond is a secret agent. He’s not Peter Parker. The fun is watching Bond anonymously infiltrate terrorist organizations. He would be sent to a desk job if every villain was his step-brother or he was being personally targeted.
The last few Craig films have also suffered from another of my pet peeves – being overly-concerned with previous installments. Bond films were never concerned with continuity, to their strength. You could drop in on any installment without having to know any history, save for a few references here and there. But the last few Craig films have been so concerned with inter-connecting Bond’s missions that there is no mystery left. Mr White went from a mysterious underworld boss in Casino Royle to [SPOILER] James Bond’s daughter’s grandpa. That’s absurd.
I just watched No Time to Die and it desperately wants to flip the Bond script, but it also wants to be referential at the same time (a slight nod to “We Have All the Time in the World” was apt at first, but by the end of the film the nod becomes a lazy pilfering – as if The Dark Knight Rises recycled “A Kiss From a Rose”). Some nice action scenes aside, No Time to Die does neither well and ends up being a bit redundant. It’s Bond’s Godfather III – an overly long, unnecessary epilogue rather than a complete standalone Bond film, which is all fans have ever really wanted.
I don’t know if I’m that harsh on Skyfall, but it’s baffling to me that it’s held in such high regard. It’s just ok. Casino really is the best of the Craig Bonds (and the best Bond movie ever IMO).
If this were a Bond television series it would be different. But the concept of “young Bond” in a movie series was always going to be fleeting. Because if you cast a dude in his mid 30s to play a dude people think of as being 40+ he’s obviously going to immediately age out of “young Bond” by the time you get 2 or 3 movies out of him.It is sort of why the Uncharted movies need Tom Holland of all people to play Nathan Drake so he can be the normal age people would expect the character to be if the franchise still exists 10 years from now
Skyfall was by far the worst movie of the entire franchise. Craig’s Bond is at the beginning of his career but a major theme of the movie is him being a has-been and an antique and struggling to be relevant. It was an obvious meta-commentary on the franchise, and in-movie provided parallels with Silva the discarded former agent, but it was just dreadfully boring. I don’t watch Bond movies for mopey introspections about relevancy.Silva was also a pretty boring villain. He’s frighteningly effective for most of the movie, but why? Because he’s a god-tier hacker (god I’m tired of that trope), excels at planning (to a level that would put Batman to shame), and his timing is always perfect (to the point he must have luck-based superpowers). For example, his plan involved bombing MI6 headquarters and then not only knowing they would move to that specific bunker, but predict which room they’d put his cell in, so he could plan his escape. And not only that, but rig a tunnel with explosives so that he could drop a train on Bond who was trailing him at the correct distance and the exact timing of the train’s schedule. And this was only possible because he predicted that Q would be dumb enough to connect a god-tier hacker’s computer to the entire MI6 network, and not recognise a virus from an encryption, AND the virus would shut everything down at the exact moment needed. I know these movies require a lot of suspension of disbelief, but that’s insane.Oh, and the movie just deep-dives into Bond having a lot of parent issues, and bludgeons the audience with the idea that Judi Dench’s M is his dysfunctional mother surrogate. Nothing in this movie is fun.Spectre was just stupid. The big bad being Bond’s long-lost jealous stepbrother was the biggest eyeroll moment possible. What should’ve been an awesome car chase through Rome was incredibly dull. It also repeats the irrelevancy theme, except now it’s the entire double-oh program instead of just Bond himself. Still boring.Quantum of Solace wins most boring movie award. Can’t tell you one thing about that movie, except that the villain has the most boring lair possible, a fucking hotel. It blows up because. . . what, each room is powered by its own hydrogen fuel cell?Casino Royale is the only Craig movie that’s tolerable on a rewatch, and 95% of that can be attributed to Eva Green.I’ll see No Time to Die at some point because it’s a Bond movie, but no matter what I think of that one, I’ll be glad Craig is finally done with this franchise. He’s a black hole that just sucks the charisma out of everything, and his dour Bond has been an absolute chore to watch.
Skyfall was by far the worst movie of the entire franchise.
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Totally agree with this. Casino Royale was a gritty take on the “old” Bond, and Daniel Craig reinjected the series with grit and the emphasis on Bond’s physicality. The other 4 in this series were throw-away — they really felt like just audience exploitation for the ticket revenue.
Personally, I like the Sean Connery Bond movies, regardless of their somewhat strained plots and pacing, simply for the nostalgia and somewhat faithful adherence to the original novels/stories. George Lazenby was gawdawful… can’t get past him to actually evaluate the movie. Roger Moore came very close to destroying the franchise with his mugging and smirking — he was the antithesis of a cool, efficient, skilled spy/assassin. The plots and action became ever-increasingly absurd. Timothy Dalton was bound to look great after that, and I did like how he brought in the suave, sophisticated aspect of Bond. Pierce Brosnan… meh. Brought nothing new to the role (but at least was better than Roger Moore films). Definitely a regression from Timothy Dalton; very disappointing and the franchise felt like it was on its last legs. Daniel Craig injected new life and offered the freshness of a serialized story, but really suffered from forced attempts to create continuity with earlier Bond adventures. It isn’t cute or interesting anymore… introduce some new supporting characters at MI6, already. Enough throwbacks. And poor Bond… must be in his 90’s now and still just a Lt. Commander in the Navy.
What’s next? I’d like to see a generational break… forget trying to shoehorn in a new actor to play a character conceived during the Cold War and whose first published appearance is nearing 70 years ago. Go bold: begin again with a series set in the near future (say, 2040-2050) that deals with anticipated global-political crises. The old Cold War is long over — the best way to make the Bond franchise fresh and interesting is to abandon the old super-villain trope and inject true menace and suspense with (perhaps James Bond’s grandson as?) a new 007, serving as the point of the spear for intelligence gathering and special action to avert a regional-global war, perhaps to ultimately avert military disasters stemming from threat (or limited use) of nuclear/biological weapons. Plenty of narrative space there, and shouldn’t pose much of a difficulty for writers’ imaginations of areas for future strategic conflict, and crafting of memorable foils and problems for Bond to overcome. This could be easily serialized, or alternatively created stand-alone to allow each new movie to explore different scenarios for strategic conflict focusing on various national interests and actors.
Sounds like you’re trying too hard to poke holes. There’s no indication that he knew they’d move to that bunker. When he escaped, we see those floor hatches open in multiple rooms in Mi6 HQ; he didn’t know which room he’d be in. And the train; do you know how busy the London subway system is? Hell, even in my much smaller hometown, you don’t have to wait more than two minutes for a train to come through a tunnel.
This is an interesting listing to think on, not just because of the general lack of consensus on the Bond movie quality, but also because I feel especially the Craig Era Bonds can be divided into how they felt the day after and how they felt six months later. For me, that is what makes NTTD such a fitting final film as I know that despite liking it now, I can pretty much guarantee that I will dislike it six months from now as the great visual touches and beats it hits are going to fade from my mind and I will think more on how nothing in that film made sense. On the other end of the spectrum, while I liked Skyfall after seeing it, I now absolutely love it and appreciate a lot of the things it did more. With that said, my listing is:1. Skyfall2. Casino Royal3. Quantum of Solace4. No Time to Die5. SpectreAs a final note, what bothered me a lot with NTTD and why it is so low on the list, despite me currently liking it, is that it felt like there were two factions making that film who had wildly different visions what the film and the Bond in it should be tonally. As a consequence almost every heavy scene feels like a weird kind of a compromise and there are multitudes of character actions that are just baffling.
The worst part of Spectre is how badly they squandered Christoph Waltz’s Blofeld, which should have been a slam dunk.
They unironically cribbed from Goldmember, which itself was parodying the same type of dumb plot twists that have followed Empire Strikes Back.
I was on board with Spectre until that… now I just pretend that part doesn’t really happen (like Star Trek V, in my world they skipped it and went straight to “The Undiscovered Country”). I can tolerate the “bad guy gets caught on purpose” and “MI6 has a traitor for the 10th movie in a row” tropes, but how do you literally steal a plot point from a movie that’s satirizing your franchise?
i’m really not sure how good christoph waltz actually is. i think he’s got the giancarlo esposito problem, where everyone just wants him to do his most famous role again. same deal with aidan gillen
Spectre wasted Waltz! He was born to play a Bond villain and they wasted him TWICE! They brought him back for another movie and they wasted him AGAIN. I’m so mad
I’m embarrassed to admit, but I’ve never seen a Bond film in a theatre or in its entirety on tv. 56 years old … big into every other movie franchise in my lifetime but somehow just missed these. Feels too late to catch up.I have seen a couple of the Matt Helm movies with Dean Martin, which I guess makes my blindspot for Bond even worse.
There’s nothing really to catch up on. I started with Goldeneye and skipped around a bunch and it was no problem. I still haven’t seen half of the movies. For No Time To Die, you might need to see just the Craig entries, but, even then, you could probably skip Quantum of Solace and read a plot summary of Spectre.
No Time to Die is a direct sequel to Spectre. And Spectre basically expects you to have at least seen Casino Royale.
Need to see the new movie. But I did a rewatch of the Craig Bonds and I think I just like all of them. Even the weird continuity stuff has it’s charm.
I never understand the love for Javier Bardem, both in general, and particularly in Skyfall. I didn’t find him at all menacing or threatening – he even bordered on camp at some points.The Craig movies, aside from Casino Royale, fail to clearly identify the villain and their goals. I mean, what was the villain’s goal in Quantum? And Spectre (Full disclosure: I may have dozed off watching this snooze-fest)?What they did best, in my opinion, was dial Bond back to being human, with vulnerabilities and faults, something that was glossed over in previous iterations.While Craig provided a sense of unpolished Bond, he lacked the charm of Connery or the polite, yet ruthless, veneer of Brosnan. I don’t think that’s bad, it’s just different.
I mean, what was the villain’s goal in Quantum? You’ll figure it out on the eighth to tenth viewing.
If I stay awake….
they were trying to double the price of water for some third world towns. it was based off of something an American company actually did, only they were successful and they didn’t double the price of water, they tripled it.
the villain’s goal in quantum was to seize control of the water supply in bolivia, engineer a drought and then back a coup that will install him as utilities provider and gouge the government (read: the public) on price. basically all of this happens offscreen and the movie misdirects you into thinking he’s really after oil until he reveals his plan in the last 10 minutes and you realize it’s 1: super banal and B: extremely evil. quantum of solace whips, in other words
What is interesting to me here is that the villain’s goal in Quantum of Solace isn’t opaque at all. For the first two thirds of the movie people think he’s running an environmental foundation as a front to steal oil. But the twist is that his real goal was the getting rich by taking control of the freshwater supply.This is explained in plain English and not glossed over. We are shown a Bond making a visual discovery proving this plot.But the thing is … the movie isn’t really about the bad guy’s plan the way Tomorrow Never Dies is about a news corporation starting a war for profit The movie is about Bond trying to avenge his dead girlfriend by investigating the criminal organization responsible, and along the way, he foils a scheme by one of their agents who had no direct relation to his dead girlfriend.It was like a filler episode of a Bond television show. And maybe that made it feel more complex than it was
rate the movies all you want, theres no question that Skyfall had the best trailer. Actually, it had one of the greatest trailers ever.
Boy the Club was way off on Casino Royale weren’t they? That thing has aged like wine. I love Skyfall for its look, dialogue, characters, clever inversion of series tropes (what’s a lair, what’s a Bond girl, how old is Q, etc.), leather door ending, and the implication that Bond is good with dudes. But it loses points on plot coherence. Some folks who take it apart have a dweeby weirdness akin to those to LOVE to pick at The Last Jedi, but a plot is a plot hole. As for Quantum, there’s a really good movie in there and it’s fascinating to watch it struggle to get out. Spectre is fine for a series that I enjoy even when it’s operating at The World Is Not Enough level but it’s not a very successful movie. My indisputable and empirically proven opinion.
Anybody who says Craig has a terrible film has not seen many Bond movies, or movies in general. Boring, under-developed, or overplotted in places maybe, but nothing near the lows of Die Another Day or as embarrassing as Octopussy or the unofficial Never Say Never Again.Getting a kick out of the Skyfall revisionism amongst fans on here though
Unsurprisingly I feel almost the exact opposite as every review here. I think Skyfall is impossibly dull and dreary, way too long and steeped in melodrama, like every Sam Mendes creation.
I also love Quantum of Solace, it’s a 90 minute revenge thriller and by making it a direct sequel it changed the whole course of the franchise.
I think Spectre does a great job at integrating all that came before it while giving Bond his humor back. I was surprised they did a fifth because I thought it was a great way to close the series.
My ranking would be
Casino Royale
Quantum of Solace
Spectre
Skyfall
Haven’t seen No Time to Die yet, seeing it on Saturday.
The new one just HAS to be better than Spectre, Spectre is a low point for Bond in general. Casino Royale is no. 1, it’s maybe the best Bond outside the early Connery run. Spectre is one of those modern Hollywood films without a decent script, very poor direction and awkward acting, making all involved look like they were failing to make a decent cheese sandwich. Quantum is just there. Skyfall is obviously no. 2, the action bravado doesn’t reach the searing capacity of Casino. I really hope the new one isn’t worse than Spectre, otherwise why did Craig come back? I thought his whole despair about the Bond gig was how poorly done Spectre was in a universe of Furious2Fast and computerized dino-beasts?If it wholly reeks of contractual obligation I will be so sad for Craig and the suits who forced it.
It isn’t said enough but Eva Green really elevates Casino Royale for me.
No Time to Die was so bad it makes Spectre look good in comparison. I was honestly shocked they were able to make a movie so bad that I now retroactively appreciate a movie a little more that I previous and still do dislike
One quick counterpoint – SKYFALL is awful. It’s not as bad as Quantum of Solace, which is easily the worst Craig Bond.
It’s miles behind Spectre and light-years behind Casino Royale.In SKYFALL, the stakes were comically low – nothing at stake other than M’s life. The problem could be solved by putting her into hiding. The villain’s escape plot was stupid. It required him to know in advance that MI6 would self-infect their own computer systems, and that those systems would be networked. It required him to know – in advance – the timing of a train during his escape, and where he and Bond would be positioned. It’s insulting.If all the villain wanted was to kill, M, and they knew where she’d be, why bother getting captured?Bond leaves town with M in a fan-service-but-continuity-destroying Aston Martin, and brings her to the *single most obvious possible location*. This location then shows us Bond’s parents’ graves, confirming that Daniel Craig Bond is not a codename – he is actually named “James Bond” – and somehow he was the Bond who had the prior adventures in the 1960s in that tricked-out Aston Martin. Despite the fact that we saw THIS Bond get his 00 just a few films earlier.Bond could have left M *anywhere* on the way to Scotland, and she’d be impossible to track. Instead, they plan a Home Alone-style trap. When that fails, M – a master of spycraft – tries to escape across a dark field, on a clear night, with a LIT FLASHLIGHT.In conclusion, Skyfall is boring and dumb, and Casino Royale is the greatest Bond movie ever made.
…continuity……codename…New rule: anyone still clinging to these after decades of evidence on how the damn series works is no longer allowed to call a movie stupid.
Seriously, it can’t be emphasized enough that no one over the age of 12 should be giving the codename “theory” more than 10 seconds of thought. It’s a series of movies that spans decades. That’s the only explanation necessary.
I don’t understand how people can handle Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan and Batman, but the idea of Bond movies being connected or isolated at their own convenience is somehow too much.
Wait how does the DB5 break continuity? I thought that was the same DB5 he won in Casino Royale, he just had Q branch add some of the same modifications.
You’re correct, I didn’t remember that the DB5 appeared in Casino Royale.
correct, except Quantum of Solace is actually the second-best Craig Bond movie. common misconception
Agree with you on Skyfall. I don’t get why people like it. So cheesy.
Even without having seen the movie, I can say with confidence that there’s no earthly way “No Time to Die” is worse than “Spectre.”
Yeah, “Casino Royale” is the only legitimately good Craig film. In no universe is Skyfall better than it (though Skyfall is at least a little better than the rest of the crap in Craig’s oeuvre.)
I remember the controversy of casting Craig and that he was “brutish” and the new Bond was “unrefined”. All the old fans were up in arms. Now it’s like everyone who was having conniptions 15 years ago got Alzheimer’s and forgot how they felt.
I know I’m in the minority, but “Another Way to Die,” the theme song from Quantum of Solace, is my favorite of the Craig-era Bond movies. Sorry Adele. For what it’s worth I hoped for better from the Billie Eilish one too – it was meh.
I’ve loved the Bond movies since I was a small child. I was born in England in 1972 and the first Bond I saw in the theatres was Moonraker. Bond was a staple of my childhood and I’ve seen and loved every movie the day it was released. I’ve loved them all. Roger Moore will always hold a special place as my first, Sean Connery was the classic, George Lazenby’s single film was awesome but he didn’t ever seem quite right, Timothy Dalton was cruelly underrated, Pierce Brosnan is my secret favorite, and Daniel Craig convinced me slowly. And Clive Owen is the greatest Bond that never was. The Bond creative team could cast a muppet as the next 007 and I’d love him no less. I’m 49 now, over 4 decades older than when I saw Roger Moore shoot into space, I have my tickets for Friday night, and I’m still as excited as a kid before Christmas.
Skyfall might not be perfect but I think a lot of the complaints about it might come from the same people who thinks watching MCU films as praxis.
I’m torn on the whole franchise. I think Skyfall absolutely should be #1. The rest? Doesn’t really matter. I did not like Casino Royale, though I admittedly need to revisit it as I saw it in theaters (so it’s been a while). Specter was pretty bad despite Waltz, who can’t be anything less than stellar in anything. Quantum? I can’t tell you anything about the plot.Here it is, I thought I loved Craig as Bond all these years. Is it possible for one solid film (and I do love Skyfall) and the idea of a character to cloud judgement?
Skyfall is so overrated. I liked it at first but it gets worse with each repeated viewing. Casino Royale is easily the best Craig film and I would argue that it is one of the better Bond films in the franchise.
Skyfall above Casino Royale!AV Club writers, you are drunk on the job here.
This list is not going to age well
I feel like Casino Royale/Skyfall being the generally favored Craig movies, and Quantum of Solace/Spectre/No Time To Die being considered the lesser ones isn’t an especially hot take today … neither will it be years from now
This is an extremely lazy excuse for content and you know that.
I had seen every Bond film first-run from “Diamonds are Forever” onwards, but the Craig series broke me. After “Skyfall,” I realized that I had no interest in this modern, mopey conception of James Bond with his daddy issues and empty inner life. I never, ever thought that what the series needed was brooding introspection. “Spectre” is the first Bond film that I didn’t bother to see in the theater. (I eventually caught it as in-flight entertainment.) I was appalled to learn that after four decades of legal wrangling, the Broccoli family had at last wrested the rights to SPECTRE from Kevin McCrory’s cold, dead hands only to bring back Blofeld in the hackiest possible manner.I think I’m gonna sit this next one out as well.
1. Casino Royale – Anyone who says this isn’t the best Craig Bond film might not be a Bond fan – it’s one of the best in the entire series. Bond films’ quality tends to increase the more of Fleming’s material they include, since screenwriters’ idea of a good Bond story is often recycled or cribbed from something better. Casino Royale perfectly adapts Fleming’s first Bond novel, while updating and upgrading it. It’s Bond’s origin story, the event that freezes his heart. It’s personal this time, so he’s able to carry on with his future missions. 16 years later it holds up as a brutal yet elegant introduction to 007.
2. Quantum of Solace – Most Bond fans just want a lean, mean Bond film. Quantum has it in spades. People can complain about the shaky editing or action scenes, but I still like Batman Begins despite its incoherent fights. Bond has never cared much for continuity, but picking up immediately after CR was inspired considering the hole in Bond’s heart. Credit to Olga Kurylenko’s portrayal of an equally heart-broken lost soul, who is more co-pilot than Bond girl. Greene might seem like an average villain, but his Bolivian water rights thievery seems devilishly contemporary and under the radar, and on-brand for a Fleming story. The introduction of the Quantum organization was not only a nice way to justify the clunky Fleming title, it felt like the next Spectre – full of future intrigue and mystery. The future looked bright.
3. Skyfall – With Vesper in the rear view mirror, now Bond can shelve the personal drama and get on with being a secret agent foiling megalomaniac’s plans and infiltrating their secret organizations, right? Nope. This time, it’s personal, uh, again. Instead Bond is over the hill and jaded enough to leave MI6 (again). He’s goaded out for another evil double-0 (see GoldeneEye) while MI6 gets blown up again (see The World is Not Enough), along with a number of other movie tropes and a plot that would make the Nolan brothers’ heads explode. Judi Dench’s M deserved a better send-off than being scolded and hunted down like a fox. It all looks pretty thanks to Roger Deakins and it is bold to put one in the L column for Bond. Skyfall would have made a nice send off for Craig, an easy place for the next Bond actor to pick up from. Instead its something of a soft re-set with the promise of a return to a more traditional Bond (something we would not get).
4. No Time To Die – With Craig’s option up, it would almost be unfair for another actor to have to continue his specific interpretation of Bond and its threads. But the inevitable finale feels so reverse-engineered, throwing every tragedy our hero can bear at him (and some clunky nanobots). Like Godfather III, No Time to Die is less of a movie and more of an epilogue, bringing our samurai into one final mission before he’s denied sunset. It’s not a bad film considering where Spectre left our hero, the action and new double-0 are entertaining but what imitates a story is desperately trying to pull at you feeeeelings (Mr White is Bond’s daughters’ grandpa?). But it seems to be inorganically checking boxes as it wraps things up like a TV series finale. Brief references to “All the Time in the World” and OHMSS music are welcome winks, until they are completely overwhelming, evidence that No Time To Die was out of ideas of its own. This time it was the most personal.
5. Spectre – With the rights to Blofeld and Spectre back in the fold, Craig’s 4th Bond film should have been a no-brainer. The movie had everything going for it and starts off well enough, but the
screenwriter’s ape both Into Darkness empty reveal (your names is what?) and
Goldmember’s step-brother reveal (I’m Dougie!). Both discredit Bond’s most famous
nemesis, a completely wasted opportunity to infuse some more mystery and intrigue into the series. And Craig’s Bond resigns MI6 for the [checks notes]
the 3rd time in 4 movies, this time with a child
bride we barely know. 20 years after the release of Bond’s most tragic film, 1989’s Licence to Kill proclaimed “this time it’s personal” sending Bond on a vendetta after events mirrored the death of his own wife (which Bond never truly avenged). Meanwhile Craig’s Bond hasn’t caught a break since the death of Vesper. After decades spent as a secret
agent infiltrating secret organizations, all of his villains are personally acquainted with him,
like he’s Peter Parker. That’s got to be exhausting. This time it’s like, super personal.
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