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The most recent I've seen was on Twitter by user @ViewToATrill over Christmas and took a sample from 865 Bond fans, which seems to be a really good sample to me and probably as accurate a ranking amongst fans (or at least: the type who are active on Twitter) as we're likely to get. The average(mean) ranking was:
1. Casino Royale: 5.4
2. From Russia With Love: 7.1
3. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: 7.3
4. Goldfinger: 7.4
5. The Spy Who Loved Me: 7.7
6. Skyfall: 8.2
7. Goldeneye: 8.5
8. The Living Daylights: 9.0
9. Licence To Kill: 10.3
10. Live And Let Die: 11.7
11. For Your Eyes Only: 12.3
12. Dr. No: 12.4
13. Octopussy: 13.6
14. You Only Live Twice: 13.908
15. Tomorrow Never Dies: 13.911
16. Thunderball: 13.914
17. Moonraker: 14.7
18. The World Is Not Enough: 15.4
19. A View To A Kill: 15.8
20. The Man With The Golden Gun: 16.7
21. Diamonds Are Forever: 17.5
22. Spectre: 17.7
23. Quantum Of Solace: 18.0
24. Die Another Day: 21.4
https://www.mi6community.com/discussion/comment/1169621#Comment_1169621
It's quite interesting how close YOLT/TND/TB are- there's almost nothing between them.
I did not expect QoS to be so low...
Yes it's probably the biggest difference between here and Twitter, or maybe it just comes out after more people vote. Thunderball seems fairly significantly more popular here too. I'm surprised Dr No is so high in the MI6 rankings too, to be honest.
Clearly, our members have better taste. ;-)
I’ve come to respect QOS for what it tries to do, but it’s really not that great in my opinion. I’m happy that the film does have the following it does though, because there are some interesting concepts in it.
I don't think it's "that great", but neither is it as bad as some people say it is.
It’s not the bottom of the barrel for me anymore, but it’s progressing it’s way up my rankings list so I guess good for the film.
It feels like a knock off of Bourne, or a Jason Stathem movie rather than a Bond film.
I disagree. Just the Tosca scene and the villains scheme places it far more in Bond territory than a Bourne and a Statham. And I can't remember who said it here or in another thread, but the scale of the villains scheme (the quasi monopoly of a vital natural resource after a coup d'etat) makes it a far more "typical" Bond film than any other Craig films, except maybe SP.
Speaking as someone who works with foster families I can say that jealousy of foster children is all to real and usually most apparent in the first months that they join the family. Having said all this its quite understandable that Waltz Blofeld would be jealous of Craig and think his father liked him better. It really would have only taken a few months for this to occur. Jealousy makes people act irrationally and could have led to a resentment of Blofelds father and Bond. The rest of Blofelds comments around this plot point I believe are purposefully embellished by Blofeld to make Bond feel he is a greater threat to Bond personally. In my view when given the opportunity through his running of Spectre to impact Bonds life, the jealous and resentful Blofeld would have. His scheme however was not to only hurt Bond it was just an added perk.
My issue however with that whole angle in Spectre isn't whether it's grounded in a reality or not it's that as a concept it just shouldn't have been explored. Certainly not with Blofeld as the sibling.
As a motivation for the bad guy to go after Bond or for Bond to feel a personal connection to the villian it could have been a very interesting and fresh approach, albeit on another Bond film. With a different villian. In other words if the baddie was 'Mr Ouberhauser' from Bond's childhood that could and probably would have been good to explore.
Making him Blofeld however is just a stupid concept in my opinion. In one fell swoop you render all previous versions of Blofeld either irrelevant or non existent. It also makes Bond's universe seem very small. I'm actually staggered that BB actually let the legacy of Blofeld be scuppered like that.
It does, but in a way Fleming would do a lot of that himself. M and Bond just happen to meet Drax -who wants to destroy England- socially at M's club; Bond meets Tracy by chance and she turns out to be the daughter of a massive crime boss who can help Bond etc.
It's definitely a big swallow that they knew each other as kids and happened to go into lines of work which crossed over, but I can kind of live with it.
BB doesn t always show sound judgment. Nor does Craig.
I'm not sure that's such a big deal. The Craig universe is but one iteration of Bond, and likely to be "rebooted" with the next film. It doesn't particularly try to be consistent with the older films, whose continuity was always paper-thin to begin with. This version of Blofeld was never going to be the same Blofeld we saw in YOLT or OHMSS. So in that sense, I don't mind what they did with this Blofeld.
My personal preference would also have been to keep Bond and Blofeld unrelated in every conceivable way, but I'm not as appalled by this issue as some here seem to be. I can let it go. I have to. If such things rendered a film totally unwatchable for me, I'd have a big problem with almost the entire series because in most Bond films there's that very implausible or extremely coincidental thing that happens. Just roll with it. I'm sure that after NTTD, the whole Blofeld-is-Bond's-brother thing will quietly be forgotten.
I don't like the "Brofeld" angle myself (otherwise I like SP), but I agree: this is the mind of contrived coincidences that often happen in Fleming and in spy fiction in general. You can also add a few more to the mix: in the novels Bond initially meets Goldfinger at complete random, through someone he met at Casino Royale, no less, in TB he's sent to therapy exactly where and when SPECTRE puts its big scheme in motion, in YOLT he is sent in Japan to redeem himself and stumble on Blofeld again...
Oh yes, I forgot about the Thunderball coincidence: that’s probably the one which has irked me the most over the years. And the YOLT one is fairly crazy too.
Bond does recognise him? He’s unsure the first time but that’s because he only sees Oberhauser from behind, and it’s fairly hard to recognise someone from that angle! :)
It’s quite interesting that Bond lost two dads in tragic circumstances. No wonder he’s messed up! :)
I think one can make a distinction between the sort of plotting contrivances that are often necessary to kickstart a thriller (which is by nature a chain of implausible events) and the even more wildly contrived revelation of secret "family" relationships among already well-established characters, which is a hallmark of melodrama and a cheap attempt to make things personal for the hero. And of course the hallmark of the Craig series is making everything personal for Bond--turning Blofeld into a quasi-sibling of Bond marks the ludicrous apex of this tendency. The result is just bathos.
I think only if one wants to let Fleming off the hook! :D
If Oberhauser hadn’t taken the Blofeld name I think it wouldn’t have been so irritating to people and wouldn’t have changed the film much at all.
Which kind of shows how small an issue it is.
Don’t forget that Octopussy turned out to be the daughter of the man who murdered Bond’s childhood skiing instructor- unlikely Oberhauser coincidences are nothing new! :)
And he hasn't seen Oberhauser for twenty years at least. And... he's supposed to be dead. We can't expect him to say: "I never forget people's back of the head. I never forget ANY back of head."
Like I said, I don't like it, but let's not split hair here: a conteived coincidence is a contrived coincidence is a contrived coincidence. Whether one likes one more than the other is beside the point. They're not intrinsically different. I'd easily said that the Brofeld angle was unnecessary: they could have kept everything else, including every single piece of dialogue ("the author of all your pain" for instance works very well even if Blofeld and Bond never met prior to SP), without the backstory.
I do think though, the backstory would have possibly been fine if he’d remained Oberhauser. Making him Blofeld was perhaps the step too far.
Certain set pieces do feel very much Bondian, but the films editing and action sequences is what makes me compare it to Bourne and Jason Stathem. That fight in the Hotel room is a perfect example, as is the opening car chase. They both feel like something out of The Bourne Ultimatum.
They even could have made Blofeld Oberhauser's murderer without making him his son. I do like that Blofeld is back, making him Oberhauser is a terrible idea, but since it has no impact whatsoever on the rest of the plot, or indeed on Bond himself (he even calls him Blofeld for the rest of the movie), I tend to handwave it.
Or if Oberhauser (personal connection) and Blofeld ("author of all his pain" simply because Bond keeps foiling his plans) had been two different characters.
The new Largo (mild personal connection through Domino) and Blofeld, if you will.
Yes, although I guess that is the sort of situation where characters get combined into one in later drafts just to streamline the thing.
Perhaps if Denbeigh became Oberhauser and Blofeld was exploiting his personal relationship to Bond in order to further Spectre's plans, that may have been some way into it..?