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The single most competent and least competent Bond (NOT the actors!) performance.

TriggerTrigger
edited May 2013 in Bond Movies Posts: 183
I'm not talking about actors, I'm talking about James Bond as if he were real. I've searched for threads and couldn't find one exactly like this but apologise in advance if there is-I honestly have tried looking!

I'm talking about the best performance, AS A SECRET AGENT, James Bond has ever produced in a single film. Likewise the worst. You could look at it as if he was looking for another job with a different intelligence agency and you were helping him get the job-which movie would you send to the recruiters and why? And if you wanted to try and get him fired-which movie would you show MI6 and why?

Note, you must try to remove all biases towards favourite and least favourite actors, favourite and least favourite films, and focus purely on how Bond the character performs in each film in terms of his competency as a secret agent. So, it doesn't matter how suave he is, how many people he kills, how many woman he beds, how cool he looks etc, UNLESS you think any such thing actually made him more competent as an agent. Neither does it matter how scenes were acted, how lines were delivered, what the script or storyline was like etc. The focus is only on Bond the character.

For example, being great with the woman is fine, but he has to score more highly when he does it for a specific reason relating to his job/mission. The stunts and action he pulls off of course should be taken into account, but only if they don't break the laws of the universe (e.g the opening parachute stunt in TSWLM was amazing and scientifically realistic, the plane stunt in the PTS of Goldeneye was fantastic but shouldn't count here as it is simply impossible in reality). Then there is luck-Bond always enjoys an element of it, but there are films when he has to rely on it a lot more than in others-this should count against him in this instance. Unless of course you can argue situations where he "engineered" his own luck! Smart thinking in difficult situations will probably score highly, but less so if you think he got into the situation in the first place due to incompetence!

There are many things to take into account and I would love to hear your views.
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Comments

  • Sir_James_MoloneySir_James_Moloney
    edited April 2013 Posts: 388
    Interesting topic.

    Worst performance: A View to a Kill.

    Bond is provided with a cover to infiltrate Max Zorin's horse auction in order to discreetly observe him and link him to the Soviet microchip found in Siberia. Bond discovers enough to establish a link but he blows his cover within hours by behaving in a suspicious and ostentatious manner. Because if this, his assistant, Sir Godfrey Tibbet, is killed by May Day and Zorin tries to kill Bond.

    Rather than arranging for MI6 to take Zorin on for questioning (or just have him and May Day arrested for Sir Godfrey's murder) or arranging his execution, Bond instead follows him halfway across the world and continues to investigate him. Even after witnessing Zorin destroy San Fransisco City Hall and murder the mayor, Bond still refuses to call for backup. This ultimately leads to Zorin exexuting many of his own (innocent) employees.

    Fortunately May Day saves the day in the end.

  • Pierce2DanielPierce2Daniel
    Posts: 4,409
    Surely Skyfall was Bond's least competent mission.

    He lost the list, got himself shot, spend three months in a shack getting pissed, couldn't pass a single evaluation, let the shanghai art dealer and Severine die despite being in a position to do something and once he got back to London he allowed Silva to escape.

    It's only really in the film's third act does Bond get his shit together and save the day (excellant movie nonetheless)
  • Master_DaharkMaster_Dahark
    edited April 2013 Posts: 4,813
    For least competent, I'll pick Goldfinger. Even though it's the 'classic Bond' it still doesn't change the fact that he was repeatedly captured, avoided death by pure luck multiple times, and would have been killed if not for other characters
    If Bond did one thing right in the whole movie it was hiding Goldfinger's golfball. And hell, in the book it was his caddie that did that! I guess the film makers realized Bond needed an edge.....

    For most competent I'll go with The Living Daylights. Starting with the PTS and being the only OO agent to survive the ill fated training exercise, then wounding Kara instead of killing her-- a decision which ended up being right on the money; and this is all in the first 20 minutes! I could keep going: tricking Kara into thinking he's Koskov 's friend and getting all the info out of her, fooling everyone into thinking Pushkin has been assassinated (like the bad guys wanted)-- Bond literally does everything right in this one.
  • doubleoegodoubleoego #LightWork
    Posts: 11,139
    Competent: Dr.No, FRWL, TB, GE, TND, TSWLM, TLD.

  • 002002
    Posts: 581
    Master_Dahark wrote:
    For least competent, I'll pick Goldfinger. Even though it's the 'classic Bond' it still doesn't change the fact that he was repeatedly captured, avoided death by pure luck multiple times, and would have been killed if not for other characters
    If Bond did one thing right in the whole movie it was hiding Goldfinger's golfball. And hell, in the book it was his caddie that did that! I guess the film makers realized Bond needed an edge.....

    For most competent I'll go with The Living Daylights. Starting with the PTS and being the only OO agent to survive the ill fated training exercise, then wounding Kara instead of killing her-- a decision which ended up being right on the money; and this is all in the first 20 minutes! I could keep going: tricking Kara into thinking he's Koskov 's friend and getting all the info out of her, fooling everyone into thinking Pushkin has been assassinated (like the bad guys wanted)-- Bond literally does everything right in this one.

    No Agent 002 survived he was just shot by a paintball and failed the training exercise only 004 died
  • Master_DaharkMaster_Dahark
    edited April 2013 Posts: 4,813
    That's right. Mornings. ;)


    It was a poison paintball and he died later.
  • TriggerTrigger
    Posts: 183
    Pierce2Daniel wrote:
    Surely Skyfall was Bond's least competent mission.

    He lost the list, got himself shot, spend three months in a shack getting pissed, couldn't pass a single evaluation, let the shanghai art dealer and Severine die despite being in a position to do something and once he got back to London he allowed Silva to escape.

    It's only really in the film's third act does Bond get his shit together and save the day (excellant movie nonetheless)

    Love the post (had me laughing out loud!) but I'm not sure if Skyfall is his least competent performance. At the beginning I'd say he was very competent - it wasn't Bond that lost the list in the first instance, and he was doing a very good job in trying to retrieve it until he got shot (which wasn't his own fault and was actually very unlucky). He would probabaly, as Bond would put it, have finished the job if he hadn't been shot. Yes what followed was pretty poor until the 3rd act but I think the majority of that was due to circumstances beyond his control (ie getting shot by his own side!). Letting the art dealer and Severine die I wouldn't say was incompetence as they were surplus to his objectives.

    He did ride his luck at times though (what a good job Moneypenny was there when he climbed up out of the pit in the casino!).
  • HappiestinthesaddleHappiestinthesaddle Banned
    Posts: 101
    If i were an MI6 recruiter i would NOT be impressed if i were shown LTK or QOS.
    Bond is disobedient and has an attitude problem in both.

    Most competent?
    Cant be TLD because it depicts him being very scared of monkeys & birds! :))

    Bond highly competent in TB, YOLT, TSWLM, MR. He almost single handed save world & does a lot of hard work.

    Good topic... I want more time to think about this...
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    edited May 2013 Posts: 28,694
    Bond wasn't disobedient in QoS at all. The whole point of the film's ending line of "I never left" symbolizes that though Bond had his personal struggles regarding Vesper's betrayal and death at the end of CR, he never once compromises MI6 or "the realm" of England in a search for vengeance. From the moment he is one Greene's trail, he is focused, and even though he stumbles and feels the pain of Vesper's disloyalty and passing, he never wavers in his mission to stop the plot of Quantum and Greene in the film. If anything, it is Bond who is the only one with his head on straight while chaos is surrounding him. QoS is a film full of characters out of place with where they are at, and conflicted about what lays before and what is soon to come. M is shocked at how widespread Quantum and their threat is and faces criticism throughout the film. Camille has unresolved issues with her past and seeks to tie them off with killing Medrano, imagining a future free of the pain he placed on her. Mathis is bitter over his mistreatment and sympathizes for Bond's depressive state while trying to make him realize all the good Vesper did for him. Felix is unsure of his place in the CIA, and disapproves of the vitriolic Beam all along the way will still remaining loyal to Bond.

    Bond, even with all his problems never once oversteps the line and again saves the day. Through his journey in QoS he realizes just how pointless the idea and act of vengeance itself is. Looking at Camille and how unchanged she is, he sees that no matter how much blood is spilt, nothing will ever bring back his loved ones like Vesper and Mathis, and that is a big turning point in his personal life. It is because of this reason that he doesn't kill Yusef. He knows that wasting a bullet in him will do nothing to bring back Vesper, and murdering him makes his punishment too quick and easy. By turning Yusef into MI6 Bond is setting aside his personal anger and allows for the agency to get information related to Quantum out of him while also insuring that he has the rest of his life to be tortured by the guilt of what he did to Vesper. For all this and more, Bond is a symbol of competence in the purest form. As established by the lines of Tennyson in Skyfall that offer dual commentary on both Bond and M while extending far beyond them into a larger meaning, Bond is loyalty to the bone. No matter how much you beat him, exhaust him, haunt him, bleed him, break him and strain him, he will never give up no matter what. Just as Winston Churchill said, "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." Though Bond may stumble, he will always be that symbol of determination and resolve, of dedication and duty, of courage and loyalty. No matter how many times he falls, his rising again and again from that prostrate position is what ultimately counts.
  • Sir_James_MoloneySir_James_Moloney
    Posts: 388
    Agree 100% with @0BradyM0Bondfanatic7 about QoS. Great post.

    But he really should have been in more trouble for his antics in LTK. Apparently there was a cut line of dialogue in GE (I'm not sure if it was ever filmed but it was certainly in the script at one point) which indicated Bond's "evaluation" by Caroline in Monte Carlo was to assess whether he was fit to return to MI6 after having his licence to kill revoked and going rogue.
  • NicNacNicNac Administrator, Moderator
    Posts: 7,582
    Out of General Discussions and in to Bond Movies
  • NapoleonPluralNapoleonPlural
    Posts: 512
    A good thread, but surely the last third of SF sees him heading to his old home without back-up, no weapons to speak of - and winds up with M getting killed. Not that great surely, seeing as the villain had no other objective to speak of, and was pretty suicidal himself, so killing him wasn't such a big deal.

    It's just everyone else is dumber - flashlights on the moors, have henchmen arrive through front gate in one clump.
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    Posts: 28,694
    NapoleonPlural wrote:
    A good thread, but surely the last third of SF sees him heading to his old home without back-up, no weapons to speak of - and winds up with M getting killed. Not that great surely, seeing as the villain had no other objective to speak of, and was pretty suicidal himself, so killing him wasn't such a big deal.

    It's just everyone else is dumber - flashlights on the moors, have henchmen arrive through front gate in one clump.

    I do tire of explaining just why Bond doesn't do all these things, and why M's death isn't his fault.
  • Sir_James_MoloneySir_James_Moloney
    Posts: 388
    It's a bit of a gamble, but his decisions make sense and it's the sort of thing he'd usually get away with. The difference in SF is that it doesn't quite pay off and M dies. It's not incompetence, just bad luck.
  • NapoleonPluralNapoleonPlural
    Posts: 512
    0BradyM0Bondfanatic7 wrote:
    NapoleonPlural wrote:
    A good thread, but surely the last third of SF sees him heading to his old home without back-up, no weapons to speak of - and winds up with M getting killed. Not that great surely, seeing as the villain had no other objective to speak of, and was pretty suicidal himself, so killing him wasn't such a big deal.

    It's just everyone else is dumber - flashlights on the moors, have henchmen arrive through front gate in one clump.

    I do tire of explaining just why Bond doesn't do all these things, and why M's death isn't his fault.

    Well fair enough, but I've not ready your posts on this, I'm a regular on ajb. Anyway I'm not the only one to point this out. If that's not incompetence then he should get a free pass for getting the Masterton sisters bumped off too, just one of those things, it might not have happened.

  • AgentJamesBond007AgentJamesBond007 Vesper’s grave
    Posts: 2,632
    I'd say Bond's mission where he is most incompetent is GF, much for the reasons @Master_Dahark posted above, and when he was most competent is TLD, because he sticks loyal to the mission and shows Saunders that Bond knows what he's doing.
  • 4EverBonded4EverBonded the Ballrooms of Mars
    edited May 2013 Posts: 12,480
    It's hard to pick the single most ...

    Hmm. One of the most incompetent for me is The Man with a Golden Gun. For one thing, Bond drops his gun, which always bothers me.

    Most competent - I will go with The Living Daylights; I think Bond is competent all the way through in this one.

    As for Skyfall, I do not think Bond was incompetent in this.
  • thelivingroyalethelivingroyale
    edited May 2013 Posts: 12,837
    For most competent I think TLD.

    Least competent, Goldfinger, Skyfall and Die Another Day come to mind.
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    Posts: 28,694
    Skyfall is in many ways a tribute to Bond's unending competence and one of his most competent moments. The portrait of a man who never once gives in and never gives up no matter how beaten and exhausted he is.

    "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
    -Winston Churchill
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,804
    thelivingroyale wrote:
    For most competent I think TLD.

    Least competent, Goldfinger, Skyfall and Die Another Day come to mind.
    I agree mainly, but as written in DAD, Bond isn't THAT bad IMO. Debatable though, since the movie is so comic book...
  • thelivingroyalethelivingroyale
    Posts: 12,837
    I included DAD because he couldn't tell that his gun wasn't loaded.
  • pachazopachazo Make Your Choice
    edited May 2013 Posts: 7,314
    Well considering that he almost always accomplishes his mission in the end it's hard to call him incompetent! But for the sake of argument...
    4EverBonded wrote:
    Hmm. One of the most incompetent for me is The Man with a Golden Gun. For one thing, Bond drops his gun, which always bothers me.
    Yes! He does in Thunderball too! Doh!

    For least competent I suppose LTK comes to mind because he disobeys orders to go to Istanbul and then quits his job to go on a personal vendetta. At the beginning of DAD when he gets caught although his cover was blown so perhaps he deserves a pass on that one.
    How about FYEO? While he does prevent the Russians from obtaining the ATAC he also destroys it in the process. He did what he had to do but how much tax paying money was wasted in the process? And perhaps sleeping with everything that moved in Piz Gloria wasn't the best idea because that kind of blew his cover in OHMSS.

    Interesting thread. I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,125
    chrisisall wrote:
    thelivingroyale wrote:
    For most competent I think TLD.

    Least competent, Goldfinger, Skyfall and Die Another Day come to mind.
    I agree mainly, but as written in DAD, Bond isn't THAT bad IMO. Debatable though, since the movie is so comic book...

    I think everybody is utterly incompetent in DAD. No background check on Graves and he's already a knight, Miranda gets into MI6 way easily,Jinx gets captured a dozen times, heck even the villains are inept.
  • Sir_James_MoloneySir_James_Moloney
    Posts: 388
    Ludovico wrote:
    chrisisall wrote:
    thelivingroyale wrote:
    For most competent I think TLD.

    Least competent, Goldfinger, Skyfall and Die Another Day come to mind.
    I agree mainly, but as written in DAD, Bond isn't THAT bad IMO. Debatable though, since the movie is so comic book...

    I think everybody is utterly incompetent in DAD. No background check on Graves and he's already a knight, Miranda gets into MI6 way easily,Jinx gets captured a dozen times, heck even the villains are inept.

    Would it be worth making a distinction between poor writing and character incompetence? I think all of your examples are spot-on but I think they come down to poor plotting rather than intentional incompetence given to the characters by the writers.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,125
    True. But in the end the characters all come off as incompetent. I guess the most incompetent ones were the writer and director.
  • TriggerTrigger
    Posts: 183
    0BradyM0Bondfanatic7 wrote:
    Though Bond may stumble, he will always be that symbol of determination and resolve, of dedication and duty, of courage and loyalty. No matter how many times he falls, his rising again and again from that prostrate position is what ultimately counts.

    Love it! The whole post written superbly but this last bit had me thinking of the Tennyson scene from Skyfall, whilst reading it I could here the music and half expected Silva to burst through my door when I had finshed reading!
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    Posts: 28,694
    Trigger wrote:
    0BradyM0Bondfanatic7 wrote:
    Though Bond may stumble, he will always be that symbol of determination and resolve, of dedication and duty, of courage and loyalty. No matter how many times he falls, his rising again and again from that prostrate position is what ultimately counts.

    Love it! The whole post written superbly but this last bit had me thinking of the Tennyson scene from Skyfall, whilst reading it I could here the music and half expected Silva to burst through my door when I had finshed reading!

    You are too kind, dear @Trigger. >:D<
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,125
    Anybody mentioned DAF? Again in this movie everyone seems to be incompetent, but Bond is often embarrassing. He does not seem to take his work or his mission seriously. That could have been explained if he had been grieving Tracy, but he does not seem to care at all about her murder.
  • lucyminglucyming
    Posts: 1
    Sounds quite well.I have learn so much.






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  • SaintMarkSaintMark
    Posts: 7,653
    0BradyM0Bondfanatic7 wrote:
    Skyfall is in many ways a tribute to Bond's unending competence and one of his most competent moments. The portrait of a man who never once gives in and never gives up no matter how beaten and exhausted he is.

    "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
    -Winston Churchill

    You must have seen a different movie then?
    Bond getting his boss killed, but show must go on looks like competent to you?

    I wonder when they finaly are giving DC a worthy outing so far there has been a lot of missing going around.

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