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I enjoyed TND so much in my Bondathon that it shot right up to 7th! But then I thought...is Stamper really better than Jaws? And what about the Lotus? Ski parachute jump? I've also always liked FYEO despite no major highlights (except the rock climb). Hence TND at 9th. I think it's also that I grew up with Brosnan as Bond and he was Bond to me for a long long time, and his coolness in TND is why.
As you probably know my top 6 are quite solid as well although GE is on shaky ground and Spectre may push it down. I like having the mix of actors and serious/funny at the top, keeps things interesting.
Spectre may well conquer my Top 10 easily, hell, it could even remove Goldeneye from No 1!!
After Spectre I will also re-evaluate Daniel Craig as a Bond actor. And the Craig-era on the whole.
I feel CR/QOS and SF/SP belong in different camps because he's playing a rookie vs veteran plus the humour and behaviour is quite different.
For me this current Bond-era is very uneven. They have given us three completely different Bond movies with completely different takes on the James Bond character.
Surely the directors and EON have to be blamed for that.
Maybe Mendes can correct this impression to a degree with Spectre.
And thinking about it I hope he'll do a third one, so we'll have a great first CR and a "trilogy" with SF being the weakest SP being the best so far and Bond 25 being the high point in this era. Oh, how fabulous would that be.
Sarcasm: And I would maybe even start to like Craig :)) Sarcasm end.
True and the era will be looked upon from another perspective when it ends. The unevenness shouldn't count against Craig himself, otherwise Connery should similarly be criticised for DAF but people tend to ignore that performance when evaluating his era.
I agree, I wish they go back to the standard missions. Oberhauser can still be a great adversary without something personal woven into it.
I would be very interested to see which films are the most/least divisive (although I could hazard a guess), but it would be nice to have real figures.
If not, I would happily calculate them over the week.
Connery did 6 movies of which the first 5 are more or less of the same production quality. Furthermore Connery's first isn't perceived as being his best. I guess generally speaking FRWL was viewed as an improvement to DN and GF again as an improvement to GF and TB back then was even more loved as GF if you judge from box office.
So to forgive Connery for DAF is very easy.
The uneven run in this era has little to do with Craig. It has to do with the directors and the writers. Craig is merely acting and following directions and the script.
It would have been wise to keep Campbell for QOS or at least not do experiments with directors who had no record of doing action before.
My ranking of Connery's movies:
FRWL
GF
DN/TB (to be decided once I've seen TB in my current Bondathon)
YOLT
DAF
I like that, actually. After 40 years making movies with the same-old concept the idea of going "really personal" was the only way to "save" the franchise. Actually it wasn't Mendes that brought that concept, CR and QOS were (also) about that. Mendes just wanted to explore this concept even deeper adding a little glimpse of Bond's past...
There was no saving necessary in my opinion. All 4 Brosnan movies were highly successful.
But a change in direction was necessary, especially after 9/11, Barbara Broccoli says so herself in the Everything or Nothing documentary. Furthermore Casino Royale wouldn't have worked as Brosnan's fifth movie and EON really wanted to do it as soon as possible.
Casino Royale didn't have much of this "personal" stuff in it, not really more than happened in TWINE for instance.
QOS neither.
But SF was the one that changed the style completely in that aspect. Maybe SF was like a first try for Mendes to find the right balance. It can be debated if he succeeded with SF.
SP will be better in that regard I believe.
BTW I wasn't talking about box-office. CR "saved" the franchise because was able to adapt the concept of a dated but still iconic and beloved character to our times. That's it. Probably they did it in the most successful way so far.
Ok, I misunderstood.
Yes, that relaunch worked very well and EON did all the right things.
CR is testament to that.
And in Spectre also he seems to follow suit - "I came here to kill you" "I thought you came here to die".
I dont like Mendes and the story writers. Its boring. Since TND there has been no real 'Bond story'
Hoping that Spectre wont disappoint me like other craig movies. Hoping it would be a classic world domination james bond mission beginning with the gun barrel sequence !
A change in tone and perspective was necessary and we should be grateful that our beloved 007 is still so relevant within the business with such this grandeur after more than 50 years.
True, still a bit more of a grander plan to dominate "something" would do the current Bond movie good.
Skyfall just fell flat in that regard and in QOS...what exactly was the plan there??
Spectre will have this I believe, I mean it's called SPECTRE
I sure hope there will be some scheme of this organization that gets actually explained in the movie and not just some personal vendetta of Oberhauser to hurt Bond.
yes... hoping for the best... fingers crossed...
There will be for sure... I mean, I hope. I really trust Scott's character for that, as we saw him fighting M. Maybe he's a kind of insider within British Intelligence. But there won't be a kind of World War III scheme I think... something more subtle, political, power-related. As Mendes said in an interview this Spectre will be pretty different than that SPECTRE.
Kaufman is a camp pantomime villain. A parody.....not a high point for me. The campness weakens the scene in which Bond should feel anger at the loss of Paris.
yes of course... Kaufman scene makes me laugh... great fun...
Yep, by the end of the second (theatrical) trailer.
The fact that Dalton nearly played Bond in it at the time!...well that would have been 007 heaven.
That's funny, OHMSS also is kind of a Christmas movie for me. It is one of the very few Bond movies I watch outside Bondathons and mostly on Christmas.
I must say you have great taste in Bond movies. Our Top 8 is the same except for QOS, instead I have (prepare for shock) Goldeneye in my Top 8.
QOS never worked for me after the near perfect CR which is my No 4 movie.
Even further down our list is quite similar.
I think if you like Craig you love the era ..if not then you don't see it or judge it differently.
Maybe an obvious statement.
Now I will say I wish for a more strictly mission orientated film but I do think from the other discussions that everything is well in check or balanced with Spectre.
Until Craig and Mendes are gone I don't think we will have just a strict mission film. Babs as an increasingly dominant voice may also keep the series veered this direction as well. We'll see if the audience demands lead another way. They did with GE when the producers realized fans wanted just a straightforward Bond film.
...but then that had a personal angle too didn't it?
I'm glad you said this, GE had personal angles as did TWINE. Furthermore there were dark moments in both those movies, they are not that different to CR or even SF to some degree, story wise or style wise.
One should never forget when judging the 90's movies that there are 7 to 17 years between those and CR to SF or even up to 20 years if you count SP.
The Craig era has been the best by far production value and budget wise and in that aspect it is even.
Anything else depends on one's view as you said.