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For me it's GE>TWINE>DAD>TND. Love the first two. TND I don't mind but I prefer DAD because as stupid as it is, it's at least out there and memorable and very James Bond, while TND gets very bland and generic by the end imo.
I think on balance I'd say I prefer the Brosnan era to the Craig era too. Partly because of nostalgia, partly just because I preferred the more old school straightforward approach, and because while the Brosnan era is a mixed bag there isn't a film there I hate as much as QoS.
The weakest era for me is the Moore era. I think LALD is decent, TMWTGG is terrible, TSWLM is great, MR is pretty poor, FYEO is really forgettable, OP is great, and AVTAK is pretty poor.
So only three films out of seven there that I think are actually good, and I'm not even particularly fond of LALD. I love Roger as Bond and to be fair, all those films do always have stuff going for them. But that's probably the weakest overall for me.
Even Brosnan would disagree with this.
In fairness I think Brozza himself does improve with every film (possible exception of painface overload and 'Knew all about my shooouuulder' in TWINE) and I wouldn't level a single fault of DAD with him as he gives a very slick performance even with everything collapsing around him. He was very badly served by scripts and directors and was the patsy for Babs and MGW making some appalling decisions on DAD which nearly sunk the series.
Broz deserves to be given a decent amount of respect for resurrecting the series and always being professional and doing his job.
For me, the Moore era is a mixed bag, but I would lean positive.
LALD = unique, really good
TMWTGG = meh; besides the villain, pretty weak
TSWLM = great, one of the series’ best
MR = maybe the worst Bond film
FYEO = really good; the most basic, Connery-esque film of Moore’s, and I like it
OP = sometimes too silly, but overall good and fun
AVTAK = not strong overall, but has good elements like the title song and villain
1. TSWLM
2. FYEO
3. LALD
4. OP
5. AVTAK
6. TMWTGG
7. MR
Yeah, it’s my least favorite bond film. It feels cheap, there is too much america, connery is shit in it, the plot is shit, the action is shit. Blofeld is trash in it. The henchman are amazing, those two are awesome, however it cannot save this film. Ay it’s ten times better than never say never again tho.
Even Brosnan would disagree with this.
I'd agree with this especially about resurrecting the series. He brought back and kept Bond on the radar. But he himself said in an interview that after GE his other Bonds are blurry to him, there's his first then the other ones. He also said that TND was just not as good as GE.
Give me some existential drama any day, but not in a Bond film. I'll gladly turn to Antonioni or Bergman for such occasions.
I also feel Craig is sleepwalking half of the time, sometimes I think the guy has only two emotions: repressed anger and tough guy.
Controversial definitely, but I agree. It skirts the top ten for me, amazingly. Bar several seconds-long lapses of all worldly judgement, it's an amazing piece of filmmaking. The series would be much poorer without it. Though I do of course realize the insanity of this position.
Couldn't agree more. I can't really trust someone who is so up their own arse they can't sit back and enjoy the greatness MR for what it is - exceptional popcorn entertainment.
I very much enjoy MR. A guilty pleasure. I objectively rank it low (although far from bottom) but if I was to be subjective, I really like the film. Same goes for TMWTGG (another one which I objectively rank low but actually enjoy far more than my ranking would suggest).
I agree wholeheartedly! Much of what I enjoy about Bond, the qualities that drive me to watch the series and be a fan, have been toned down or altogether eliminated in the Craig era. There's no more fun. And when they attempted it in SP, they just had to mix in the typical Craig era emotional crap with the stepbrother "twist". I miss Bond.
MR is due another viewing soon for me.
At the end of the day I like all the films,it just depends on my mood.
That's why we are lucky to have such a selection of 24 films so far.
Also this is the controversial thread so I'll just throw this out there, eliminating SP's action scenes (apart from the Hinx fight, that's too awesome, and maybe the PTS) and instead making it a legitimate Fincher-esque thriller, lean and tense instead of trying epic and grand, would have made a much better film. I understand this is an action-blockbuster franchise, but action is almost put into SP as an afterthought and all of it is very tedious excluding aforementioned fist-fight.
But that is clearly the past. For me, MR gets better with every viewing, having inched its way up for me from a low 6/10 to a very solid 7, bordering on the 8 I've been awarding TSWLM and FYEO. It's simply a fun movie, with incredible "production values", one of the best villains ever (at least his quotes), one of the best PTS ever (albeit a bit too funny at the end, but I find Jaws silly in TSWLM as well - I wouldn't have minded if he had been dumped along with the Bondola and the double-taking pigeon, but still), superb cinematography, and Ken Adams' last magnificent set. The only Roger Moore movie that rivals it for "rewatchability" is LALD, but the latter more for nostalgic reasons. It won't be long before MR officially moves up to being my favourite Roger Moore Bond movie. Even now, it's not half as dated as TSWLM.
MR is fun, no doubt. A great film you can just sit back and watch. Flaws aside, it's the ideal escapist adventure. A lost art in movies in general, not just Bond.
I think CR is great fun and Spectre is fun enough, but not the other two, which is why they're among my least favorite. You could compare them with something like LTK and the latter, for all its intensity and serious tone, still feels like its primary purpose is entertainment. So do FYEO, OHMSS, FRWL. QoS and Skyfall, while interesting in their own way, went in another direction. That's why I prefer the Brosnan era, and probably all the others, to the Craig era: fun. And there was something CR had they never fully replicated afterwards. They brought back its grit but couldn't match its elegance and its romance.
I think Craig sleepwalks in Skyfall, but not in the others.
Edit: in retrospective, CR wound up being a transitional film that lead into the next three with their higher artistic aspirations. It should've been the destination, not a stop along the way. In fact, now I feel CR's sense of playfulness was just a leftover from the Brosnan days.
I hope with the arrival of Bond #7, the Brosnan films will be reevaluated and appreciated as the solid entries they are, along with the obscenely underrated TWINE.
I can understand why some may dislike the direction it took, but I find it to be the perfect middle ground between exciting, over-the-top Bond adventure and serious character analysis and thematic depth. The previous two Craig films went too far into the latter portion and Spectre had a hard time deciding on which way to go. Skyfall was the product of a very specific vision of a very talented director, and I think it succeeded wildly. Mendes should have never returned for seconds when his first meal satisfied everything.
I think he's just sort of going with the crowd with that one (not liking any of them after GE). I know he said in the 50th doc he couldn't remember any of them but I'm sure I remember him saying ages ago that his favourite was TWINE.
He has always been critical of TND though. I think it was because it was a messy production. He's said a few times that when they were making it he didn't have any idea what the film was actually about.
@TheWizardOfIce I agree about him getting better and I'd go as far to say that DAD is one of the best Bond performances in general. I really can't picture any of the other actors holding it together as well as he does. Moore would have sold the OTT stuff as always and I bet he could have nailed the North Korea stuff too based off the OP finale, but I can't picture him in the colder moments (trying to shoot Miranda, killing Zao). Dalton and Craig would have nailed those bits and the dramatic scenes but I'm not sure they'd be able to sell the really stupid stuff. Connery probably would have just phoned it in. But Brosnan nails it. It might be the most tonally inconsistent film of the series and he really holds it together.
I think by that point as well he was at his most confident and self assured. He wasn't playing Bond anymore, he was Bond, he'd grown into the role.
This might be a controversial opinion actually: people call Brosnan the generic/greatest hits Bond but I actually think that's a really tough job. He never got a script that played to his strengths like Connery, Moore, Dalton and Craig did, he had to play all the different sides of the character and make it feel consistent, like it was the same person, and I think he did that really well.
An excellent analysis. I wholeheartedly agree.
On Moonraker, I agree it's hard to make a defence for it being one of the better Bonds unless your criteria is based primarily on entertainment. But as the largest Bond movie in terms of scale, with the sets and score to match, there's something very alluring about that production. The humour is inserted quite well (even if it goes overboard in a couple of instances) and while the performances aren't amazing, there's surprisingly good chemistry between the cast. So it flows, even if it's not to a place that you might like. But I personally prefer it over LALD, in all honesty. It does the escapist job better, and neither film is really intended to be more than that (unlike, say, FRWL or CR).
CR
SF
GE
QOS
SP
TWINE
DAD
TND
GE
SF
TWINE
CR
DAD
TND
QOS
2. SF
3. GE
4. SP
5. QOS
6. TND
7. TWINE
8. DAD
TWINE
DAD
CR
GE
SP
SF
QOS