And boy howdy, are there a bunch of lousy ones. You can thank me later.
* Mentally. Get your minds out of the gutter, ladies.
A few things:
a) I’m not including the aforementioned prior Casino Royales (or is it Casinos Royale?) because they suck.
b) I am including the non-EON** produced Never Say Never Again. It’s my list, I get to make the rules. If you don’t like it, write your own list.
c) If you’re a Pierce Brosnan fan, you can stop reading now.
** EON is the company that produces Bond flicks, which consists primarily of a family with the last name “Broccoli.” One of them was named “Cubby Broccoli,” which sounds like a sexually transmitted disease.
I’ve broken each movie down by what I consider to be the quintessential Bond elements: actor, bad guy, evil plan, henchman, girl, car, and theme song. I’m not doing gadget. I’ve also included the best scene and my thoughts on the overall movie.
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| My thoughts. You know you want them. |
Onto the list:
THE “DON’T EVEN BOTHER” TIER
25. Die Another Day (2002)
The Bond Plot: James Bond gets captured trying to bust a weapons deal in North Korea. One of the bad guys gets diamonds embedded in his face after an explosion, because of course that’s what happens when diamonds, explosions, and flesh come together. A North Korean colonel gets plastic surgery and reemerges as an evil British business guy. Bond surfs a tsunami. Madonna is in this as a fencing instructor for some unfathomable reason. Bond surfs a fucking tsunami. Tidal wave, whatever, IT STILL SUCKS.
The Bond: The horrendous Pierce Brosnan, seen here going through the motions of “turning rogue” for approximately 20 minutes before settling into his normal routine of somnambulating*** through gunfights, sex, and quips, sometimes all at the same time.
*** Big words are better because you can charge more for using them. Wait, I’m not getting paid for this? Fuck. All these years I’ve devoted brain space to knowing the meaning of somnambulate, for nothing.
It means to sleepwalk, for those of you who don’t do word stuff.
The Bond Bad Guy: Will Yun Lee as Colonel Moon, who uses plastic surgery to become Tony Stephens, who plays the aforementioned evil British business guy whose gimmick is he never sleeps, Gustave Graves. Wait, what? Gustave Graves? A guy named Gustave Graves pops up out of nowhere and everyone doesn’t assume he’s evil? Was “Vic Villainstein” copyrighted or something? This movie is fucking nonsense, and there can be no debate that it is the worst Bond movie ever made.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Plan: To use a satellite laser to fuck up South Korea. I didn’t make that up. He wants to use a space laser to destroy the Korean Demilitarized Zone so North Korea can invade South Korea. That is not a proper Bond villain scheme. A proper Bond villain scheme is using a space laser to turn the world’s supply of avocados into irradiated guacamole so the villain can make radioactive avocado toast to mind control hipsters. God, I hate this movie so much. Before I forget, let’s start the Space Laser Counter.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Henchman: Some other North Korean guy with at least $10k of unwanted bling in his face. That’s all I remember about him, and I’m not doing any more research.
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| This is actually a thing that people got paid to come up with. |
The Bond Girl: Halle Berry’s Jinx is there to do some stuff, mainly “be Halle Berry.”
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| It’s Halle Berry, and who needs a reason to put Halle Berry in a bikini? |
The much more interesting character is Rosamund Pike’s traitorous Miranda Frost, the “evil” Bond girl. Evil Bond Girls are destined to die, often even if they redeem themselves, and Frost is killed by Jinx at the end of the movie.
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| She's pissed because the movie sucks. |
The Bond Car: An invisible Aston Martin V12, which somehow makes both invisibility and Aston Martins uncool.
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| Nice door, Remington. |
The Bond Song: It’s a dance number by Madonna. Do I need to tell you that it sucks? Reader, I do not.
The Best Bond Scene: I honestly don’t know. The tsunami-surfing looks terrible, and is as dumb as it sounds (it’s actually para-surfing, if we’re going to be accurate). I’m going to go with the unnecessary sword fight 007 has with Graves upon their first meeting; they take off any protective wear and duel to the “first blood,” because OF COURSE THEY DO. It’s totally stupid, but it’s not any more stupid than any of the other stupid that stupids its way through this stupid movie.
My Bond Take: At 133 minutes long, this movie will take away over two hours of your life that would be better spent doing just about anything else. In fact, here is a list of things you should do instead of watching Die Another Day:
• Watch a better movie
• Read a good book
• Read a mediocre book
• Paint a picture
• Take a picture of a painting, then lie and say you painted it
• Get a small tattoo
• Start learning a new language
• Start forgetting the language you already speak
• Hit a punching bag
• Set your eyeballs on fire and try to survive
• Set your eyeballs on fire and accept fate
• Workout
• Take a nap
• Have good sex
• Have mediocre sex
• Memorize the opening of The Canterbury Tales in Middle English
• Ask Dustin what his favorite Paul Reiser jokes are and to explain the various intricacies contained therein
• Play some online video games where you can and will learn some new ethnic slurs
• Knock on your neighbor’s door and fight him because he blasts opera at odd hours
* If your neighbor doesn’t do this, feel free to come to my house and fight my neighbor, who does this on the reg
• Turn Die Another Day off and actually talk to your family
• Absolutely nothing
There, see? I just saved 133 minutes of your life, and gave you a list of fulfilling alternatives you could do instead of watching this piece of tripe.
24. Octopussy (1983)
The Bond Plot: I had to pause here, because my brain broke trying to remember the plot of this movie, and when, after recuperating, I looked it up, my brain broke again. Here’s the best I got:
Fabergé eggs, an Afghan Prince (and Russians, duh), Maude Adams, babes, the circus, thieves, aquatic-themed sex cult, and backgammon.
Put it all together, and whaddaya got?
Movie!
I think.
The Bond: Roger Moore. Dressed as a clown. This is the movie where they literally put a clown suit on James Bond.
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| This about sums up the Roger Moore era. |
The Bond Bad Guy: Exiled Afghan Prince Kamal Khan, played by the decidedly not Afghan, or exiled, Louis Jourdan, who is in cahoots with General Orlov, played by Stephen Berkoff. The only thing I remember about General Orlov is that I thought he was General Ourumov from Goldeneye when I was younger. Stupid me thought the Bond movies cared about continuity.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Plan: I’m really not sure. Khan and Orlov want to blow up a nuclear warhead that they sneak into West Germany. They plan to blow it up at a circus, because, of course, as we all know, high-ranking dignitaries, military personnel, and intelligence operatives regularly attend sketchy sex-cult circus shows (they actually might, now that I type that out). What ensues can be best be described as “something something spy stuff something something and then Europe will get rid of their nukes and the Soviets can invade.” I have a nosebleed now.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Henchman: Twin knife throwers with actual Russian names, but who, for the sake of brevity, we will call “Sifl and Olly,” because Sifl and Olly was dope, whereas these goofs are decidedly not dope, and I really want to make a Sifl and Olly reference. Sifl and Olly the henchmen are entirely forgettable, and Sifl and Olly the henchmen get killed by Bond in the least exciting train fight in a franchise filled with train fights. There’s also a Sikh Indian guy named Gobinda who guards Prince Khan, and if I’m being honest, I always liked this guy. When ordered to fight 007 on top of an airplane, he looks at his boss like, “ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS BRO?” But he still does it, and he still dies, and other than that, he isn’t memorable at all.
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| Almost too smart to die, but not quite. |
The Bond Girl: The aforementioned Maude Adams’s titular Octopussy, who is only as interesting as whatever mileage you take out of the name “Octopussy.” Yes, she runs a smuggling ring/sex cult, but when the most interesting thing about a character is an octopus tattoo, odds are you have a lousy character on your hands. Points for this being Adams’s second go-round as a Bond girl.
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| A double entendre in a Bond flick? SHUT THE FRONT DOOR. |
The Bond Car: Alfa Romeo GTV6, which is pretty fucking slick, actually. I don’t count the Tuk Tuk or the submarine disguised as a crocodile.
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| Nice. |
The Bond Song: “All Time High” performed by Rita Coolidge. I’m going to make any Bond purists angry early on by declaring this song aces (people with functioning ears probably take issue with that statement as well). DON’T CARE. ACES, I SAY. If you’re a hater of Rita Coolidge’s sanitized, pop/smooth jazz feat of senility that graced this altogether unworthy movie, we aren’t friends. “All Time High” is an objectively awful song, and I could listen to it over any “competently crafted” Billy Joel song any damn day.
The Best Bond Scene: For me, when Orlov is chasing Bond into West Germany, and gets shot and killed by the Soviet guards because they think Orlov is defecting. It made me laugh the first time I saw this flick, and it made me laugh when I watched it on YouTube just now.
My Bond Take: It’s a movie where Bond dresses as a clown to save a woman who runs a circus-based smuggling sex coven, and calls herself Octopussy without a hint of irony. Do we need to do any more analysis than that? This movie is barely better than Die Another Day.
23. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
The Bond Plot: MI6 sends James Bond to take down CNN. The preceding sentence wasn’t a joke, that’s the actual plot of this movie; Bond vs. the News. There are people who claim this movie was underrated and is one of the better Bond movies. Those people are maniacs, they shouldn’t be trusted, and if you know any of them, stop reading this and report them to the proper authorities.
The Bond: Once again, we have Pierce Brosnan, in his first “true” outing as Bond. This is because Tomorrow Never Dies is the first movie specifically written for Brosnan’s version of Bond: a bored Brit who seems as surprised as the rest of us that he’s banging Lois Lane from Lois and Clark. Brosnan would turn in his only decent performance as Bond in The Thomas Crown Affair two years after this movie came out.
The Bond Bad Guy: The great Jonathan Pryce, playing a guy named Elliot Carver. He’s evil Rupert Murdoch, which is the same as regular Rupert Murdoch, I guess. A wonderful combination of smarm and charm, Carver is a great villain played by a great actor, but his crackpot scheme and the shitty movie surrounding him squander all that potential.
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| Jonathan Pryce makes almost anything better by his presence alone. This movie is the “almost.” |
The Bond Bad Guy’s Plan: Carver wants to start World War III to get in on that sweet, sweet China money. No, really. In order to increase ratings and secure broadcast rights from the CCP, Carver throws morals and caution to the wind just to squeeze every last possible dollar out of the People’s Republic.
So, basically, he’s Disney.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Henchman: This thing:
This frosted abomination is called a Richard Stamper. Holy hell, Richard Stamper? DICK STAMPER? We’re really scraping the bottom of the goofy name barrel, here. At least name him Richard Stomper. Or Richard Puncher. Or Richard Kicker. Or how about something that isn’t an unfunny dick joke.**** This guy is really lame, with a stupid blonde dye job, but I give him credit for displaying a “Jonathan and Jack Donaghy” level of dedication to his boss, Jonathan Pryce, who is admittedly pretty fucking awesome in everything he’s in. However, Penis Stamper here looks like 90’s pro wrestling’s idea of a Eurotrash techno-dweeb.
That is Das Wunderkind Alex Wright, and his Das Wunderpackage, which I’m assuming is what a Richard Stamper actually is.
All Mr. Stamper really does is fail at life, watch his friends die horrible deaths, and then, ultimately, get his Richard stamped in by James Bond and Wai Lin. Lame, lame, lame.
**** Who am I kidding, all dick jokes are funny.
The Bond Girl: We have Teri Hatcher’s doomed Mrs. Jonathan Pryce (the character’s name is Paris Carver), and she’s fine. This lousy movie, however, gave us Michelle Yeoh’s Wai Lin, who is not only one of the best Bond girls, she’s one of the best Bond protagonists, period. There was talk of giving her a spinoff movie, but it didn’t come to pass. Instead, we got The World Is Not Enough. Just in case you’re wondering if there is a God, there is, and it hates us.
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Why didn’t we get this movie? |
The Bond Car: A self-driving BMW 750iL, a car I frequently saw on the road where I lived at the time. This movie plays a lot like a commercial for BMW, and also started the trend of not letting Pierce Brosnan have any cool car moments. Bond cars should be cars you don’t see all that often. Granted, none of the beamers I saw were self-driven (they were driven by soccer moms, for the most part), but, still, come on. Give the guy a Lotus, an Aston Martin, a Rolls, or something. Not something so pedestrian I'm not going to bother with a picture. It's the world’s most expensive remote-controlled car. Don’t talk to me about actual radio-controlled cars, you lunatic. I have no time for your loser details.
The Bond Song: “Tomorrow Never Dies” by Sheryl Crow, which, from what I can tell, isn’t any better or worse than any other Sheryl Crow song (translation: it’s pretty bad).
The Best Bond Scene: The whole scene where this assassin, Dr. Kaufman, is holding Bond at gunpoint and explaining to Bond what an amazing assassin he, Dr. Kaufman, is, only for Bond to disarm Kaufman and shoot him in the face. I always liked that actor, Vincent Schiavelli, whom you probably remember as the pissed-off subway ghost in Ghost.
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I don’t know why, but there should have been a lot more of this. |
My Bond Take: I had pretty high hopes for this one after Goldeneye (like most people my age, I was wowed by Goldeneye, because I was easily wowed). I absolutely hated this movie; it felt rushed, was completely different from the darker, better Goldeneye, and this one didn’t even get a decent video game tie-in. Tomorrow Never Dies is the movie equivalent of Jell-O for desert after a great steak dinner. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s damn close.
22. Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
The Bond Plot: James Bond travels to Las Vegas to infiltrate a diamond smuggling operation and finds out that an old enemy intends to do something very diabolical using diamonds.
The Bond: Sean Connery, in his sixth and final outing as James Bond, making his first appearance on our list. This is not Sir Sean’s best performance. Connery had left the role after You Only Live Twice, citing fatigue with the character. Watching this movie, Connery sure seemed tired; the jokier tone of the movie probably didn’t help, but Connery was lured back to the role for an at-the-time record $1.25 million salary. His performance screams “I did this for the cash.”
The Bond Bad Guy: Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the Bond Villain of all Bond Villains. Blofeld, in the books and movies, uses plastic surgery to change his appearance, so here he’s portrayed by Charles Gray, whose cheekbones and chin are out-fucking-standing.
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| It looks like half a human face and half a Claymation character. |
This is Gray’s second appearance in the series, having previously played a good guy in You Only Live Twice. Gray is fine in the role, but Blofeld was pretty played out by this point, and while Gray is better than Christoph Waltz, he’s a step down from Telly Savalas, and can’t hold a candle to the one, true Blofeld.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Plan: Blofeld is stealing diamonds to construct a space laser. I think this is the first space laser in the franchise, but I might be wrong. It isn’t the last one. Blofeld builds his space laser and uses it to blow up nuclear weapons, and then phones the world’s superpowers to demand they pay him to see who will end up as the remaining power. If reading that description lowered your intelligence, imagine what watching this movie could do to you. LET’S PUT ANOTHER ONE UP ON THE SPACE LASER COUNTER, BOYS!
The Bond Bad Guy’s Henchman: Gay panic time! Meet Messrs. Wint and Kidd, a pair of assassins who are actually pretty good at their jobs despite the ludicrous methods they use to accomplish their kills. If you’re wondering what Wint and Kidd are like, personality-wise, they’re basically human versions of the Goofy Gophers from Loony Tunes, complete with dueling one-liners after completing their goals.
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| Shall we? WE SHALL! |
This duo pushes way past ambiguously gay and gets all the way into “even the 1990’s concept of gay men would blush” gay, even though it’s never stated in the movie. They constantly refer to each other as “mister,” hold hands at one point, and one of them states that 007’s squeeze is good looking, “for a lady,” prompting an angry stare from the other guy. Wint is also distinguished by his use of women’s perfume. I’d say this is offensive, and it is, but Bond flicks are basically oceans of offensive, especially during this period, so it’s hard for me to rate this as any more offensive than the crap around it.
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| We’ve come a long way since these guys. I think? |
There’s also Bambi and Thumper, who are Blofeld’s guards, but they’re barely in the movie, and they’re quite ineffective, so we’ll just forget about them.
The Bond Girl: First up is Lana Wood as Plenty O’Toole, a gold digger Bond meets at the casino. As best as I can surmise, this character can be distilled into one word:
BEWBS.
She has a memorable scene – ok, they’re all pretty memorable because of the existence of plunging necklines – when some anonymous thugs throw her out a window and she lands in a pool, only to come back upstairs looking, well, BEWBS.
Plenty serves as the red herring Bond girl, getting drowned by Wint and Kidd (she has bad luck with pools) over a case, pun intended, of mistaken identity, as they confuse her with…
Tiffany Case, played by Jill St. John. Case is a diamond smuggler who initially betrays Bond but then realizes she wants to bang him, so she switches sides. Not much more to her than that, really.
The Bond Car: Ford Mustang Mach 1, which seems kind of…pedestrian, for James Bond. Nothing wrong with the car, and it beats die Hose off Brosnan’s Beamers, but James Bond shouldn’t be a pony car guy. And don’t even try to tell me that the old Aston Martins are pony cars.
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| Eh, nah, bruh…you’re just not James Bond enough. |
The Bond Song: “Diamonds Are Forever” performed by the great Shirley Bassey, turning in her second Bond franchise performance after “Goldfinger.” This song crushes, I absolutely love it, and while it’s not quite as great as “Goldfinger,” it’s still one of the best Bond themes by the best Bond singer, and it definitely deserved to grace a better movie.
The Best Bond Scene: BEWBS. Seriously.
My Bond Take: Despite decent reviews at the time of its release, this is not a good movie. Sean Connery was done with the role at least four years before this came out, the Las Vegas setting is somehow not exotic enough, and everyone in this movie just seems to be going through the motions. Diamonds also serves as an omen of the hokey Roger Moore era that was about to descend upon the franchise.
THE “I’M EMBARRASSED THAT I KIND OF LIKE SOME OF THESE” TIER
21. A View to a Kill (1985)
The Bond Plot: Christopher Walken is a genetically engineered Nazi super-man (uber-mensch? We’ll go with uber-mensch) who hangs out with Grace Jones and goes up against a hilariously past-his-prime Roger Moore because Walken wants to drown all the tech nerds in Silicon Valley. This movie is absolutely absurd, is abject crap, has almost zero redeeming value, and I fucking love it.
The Bond: 57-year-old Roger Moore. Moore would admit that he was way too old to be Bond here, and it shows, early and often. Moore’s lined visage makes him look more than a little like a horse trying to approximate a human face, and he just doesn’t have it in the physical scenes to make the fights seem even a little bit believable.
The Bond Bad Guy: The aforementioned Christopher Walken, in one of the most Walken-y roles Walken ever Walkened. Walken plays Max Zorin (NOW THAT’S A PROPER EVIL NAME, DO YOU HEAR ME, RICHARD HEAD?) an unhinged uber-mensch psychopath created by Nazis who exists purely to do evil for the lolz. His plan is barely a plan, and you know what? I love this character. This is the perfect Bond villain for the ‘80s: a crazy white guy in a top hat who thinks that if he gets the highest score in Pac-Man, he’ll control the world. I can watch Walken play psycho in this movie all day, every day, and I refuse to apologize for it just because A View to a Kill happens to be one of the worst movies ever made.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Plan: Zorin wants to destroy Silicon Valley so he and his buddies will own the market on microchips. To accomplish this, he intends to blow up the San Andreas fault (and the lesser-known Hayward fault). There’s something to do with horses, and the KGB is there for some reason, but honestly, it’s best not to think about this one too much.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Henchman: FINALLY. A proper Bond henchman (er, henchwoman…henchperson). Not just a proper henchman…one of my favorites.
It’s Grace Jones, which should properly convey how awesome this character is to anyone who knows who Grace Jones is. This is a movie that shows Grace Jones effortlessly lifting a man over her head and murdering him. Grace Jones always brings the style, and May Day is one of the most visually memorable of any James Bond henchman.
And while it’s a shame that, like most evil Bond girls (despite turning to the light toward the end), May Day has to die…boy howdy does she die like a fucking boss. Only Grace Jones could ride a bomb to her death and make it look glorious.
The Bond Girl: Stacey Sutton, played by Donna’s mom from That ‘70s Show. No, seriously, it’s Donna’s mom from That ‘70s Show. Stacey Sutton is one of the worst, most useless characters ever committed to film, and every time I see this movie, I desperately hope that the ending will change, May Day will survive, and Stacey will get ‘sploded in the mine; unfortunately, every time I watch the movie, it’s always the same.
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| That look pretty much sums her up. |
The Bond Car: A View to a Kill isn’t the best movie for Bond cars; 007 steals a taxi for the big car chase. But I do have to mention the Rolls Royce Silver Cloud II, which is an absolutely gorgeous automobile. Unfortunately, I’m now remembering that Bond survives drowning by sucking the air of the Rolls Royce’s tires (because that’s how tires work). Again, this movie is trash.
The Bond Song: “A View to a Kill” by Duran Duran, a killer tune by one of the “B-Team” new wave bands (get angry in the comments, but we all known Depeche Mode and Tears for Fears dump all over Duran²), one of Double D’s biggest hits, and, to date, the only Bond theme to get to Number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. This was the last song recorded by the classic Duran Duran lineup before they broke up, and kept up the streak of mostly great songs for lousy Roger Moore Bond flicks.
The Best Bond Scene: This one is easy. Walken owns a mine, and he has to destroy some underground thing that stops the previously mentioned faults from moving at the same time. They have some name for this; I’m neither a geologist, nor am I a person who puts effort into their bullshit, so I don’t remember the name – we’re going to call it the Alert, Geological Annihilation Imminent? Never!
Aka, “A.G.A.I.N.”
So Walken’s going to use yet another bomb to destroy A.G.A.I.N., and has all these workers of his toiling around the clock to accomplish said goal. Then, for no good reason other than for the EVULZ of it all, Zorin floods the mine to kill his own people. As if that isn’t enough, he grabs a machine gun that’s just lying around, and starts shooting everyone he can see while laughing as only an unhinged Christopher Walken can laugh. Did I mention that I love this movie? THIS IS WHY. You can keep your late-stage old man comedian Christopher Walken that’s a caricature of himself, I like my Walken completely unglued and randomly shooting his own friends in the face. This is Walken at his finest, and perfectly sums up the bonkers end of the bonkers Roger Moore era.
My Bond Take: I love this movie. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m 38-years old, and I can appreciate old man Bond running around, beating up much younger men, and getting Grace Jones to hop into bed with his geriatric ass. Maybe it’s because Bond’s Useless Cover Name™ in this one is St. John Smythe, and I love the way the British pronounce the name “St. John” (they say SIN JIN). Maybe it’s because Grace Jones is charisma taken human form. Maybe it’s because this movie marks Dolph Lundgren’s first movie role (also Alison Doody’s first movie – you know her as the hot Nazi in The Last Crusade). Or maybe it’s because Walken needlessly says “Wow, what a view…to a kill!” for no good reason towards the end of the movie, and I like it when screenwriters crowbar the title of the movie into dialog. Or maybe it’s because I have crap taste and am too lazy to find a better movie. But I like this one; always have, always will.
20. The World is Not Enough (1999)
The Bond Plot: Bond has to rescue Sophie Marceau whose father ran an oil company and got blown up by Robert Carlyle who kidnapped Sophie Marceau prior to the movie and Bond has to stop Robert Carlyle from doing something vaguely evil with the oil and also there’s caviar and I CAN’T, I JUST CAN’T WITH THIS MOVIE, OK?
The Bond: Pierce Brosnan. For the third time. Why? I don’t know. No one asked for this, no one wanted this, and The Thomas Crown Affair came out the same year, and only made this performance look worse.
The Bond Bad Guy: Robert Carlyle as the terrorist Renard, who doesn’t feel any pain because of a bullet lodged in his brain that is going to eventually kill him…which is totally how bullets and the human anatomy interact. Robert Carlyle is a welcome sight in almost any movie, but this character is just plain stupid. Just because you don’t feel pain doesn’t mean you don’t get damaged; this movie seems to think lack of stimulation to nerve endings equates to superhuman durability. Here’s a photo of Renard holding a molten rock in his bare hand and suffering ZERO DAMAGE TO SAID HAND.
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| The scientific term for his condition is “the screenwriters failed biology class.” |
The Bond Bad Guy’s Plan: I really can’t tell. Something about selling oil so he can do more terrorist stuff. Sophie Marceau wants revenge against Judi Dench’s M (SPOILER). That’s about all I can remember.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Henchman: Sophie Marceau’s Elektra King, who TWIST is actually evil and was the one who blew up her dad. Named Elektra because DADDY ISSUES, GET IT? Elektra King is actually really cool and interesting (and Sophie Marceau is smoking, let’s be honest), and she deserved a much better movie than this, and should have been the main villain instead of saddled with a silly Stockholm Syndrome infatuation with Renard’s bald, broken ass, but it is what it is. I still wish she had gotten away with her evil plan (despite me not knowing exactly what it was).
The Bond Girl:
THIS ENTIRE MOVIE EXISTS SO BOND CAN MAKE A FEMALE ORGASM JOKE AND THAT’S SO LAME AND actually, I’m ok with that. Dr. Christmas Jones is ridiculous, and nobody bought Denise Richards as a scientist, but Bond’s line to Dr. Jones is easily the best part of this movie that isn’t Robbie Coltrane.
The Bond Car: BMW Z8, which I legit always thought was a Porsche 911. Google tells me that BMW had a three-movie product placement deal with the Bond flicks at the time, so the Z8 was the last beamer Bond drove until EON decided to bring back the classic Aston Martin and cross it with a chameleon.
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| They’ll watch the movie and then leave the theater to go buy a BMW. |
The Bond Song: “The World is Not Enough” by Garbage. Middling song by a pretty middling band, and that’s all I have to write about this song. Watch Romeo+Juliet if you want to hear the only good song by Garbage. Better yet, just listen to that song, because Romeo+Juliet is awful.
The Best Bond Scene:
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| LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. |
Ok, I guess I should put effort into this? FINE. The scene where the bad guys use flying circular saws to chop up the caviar factory (LOLOLOLOL) is pretty baller if only for how supremely insane that sentence truly is.
Elektra King’s erotic torture/murder scene on 007 would take this spot if she’d actually killed Bond. Instead, she kills Valentine, which makes that the WORST scene in this or any Brosnan movie.
My Bond Take: So, Robbie Coltrane is back as Valentine Zukovsky, who was the best part of the Brosnan era. This movie, however, kills him off, which is unforgivable. The World is Not Enough is better than the other two Brosnan sequels, but that’s like saying stabbing yourself in the dick is better than stabbing yourself in the eye. This movie could have been cool, but it plays like a collection of Saturday Night Live sketches making fun of a Bond movie, rather than as a proper Bond movie.
19. The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
The Bond Plot: James Bond vs. Evil James Bond. Spy vs. Assassin. 47-year-old Roger Moore vs. 52-year-old Christopher Lee. This movie plays like a giant midlife crisis, but it’s fun, at times. It’s far too derivative of popular trends of the time, however, as it mixes psychedelic nonsense with martial arts nonsense, and never really succeeds at either one.
The Bond: Roger Moore, in his sophomore effort as James Bond. The winking at the camera, the quips, and the unwelcome humor are dialed up to 11 here, to the point where I often find myself rooting for Scaramanga to put a bullet in Bond’s head just to shut him up. Moore would totally redeem himself and his entire largely lousy run three years later, though.
The Bond Bad Guy: Francisco Scaramanga, bitches!
This is a bad movie, but as with A View to a Kill, the villain is the damn tits.
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| It’s Christopher Lee, complete with a third nipple! |
Christopher Lee is the consummate villain’s villain. Scaramanga is touted as the “world’s greatest assassin,” which I find confusing. What makes one the greatest assassin? I feel like step one is “kill the target,” step two is “don’t get caught.” It seems tough to improve on that. I mean, it’s not like Scaramanga makes his hits look like accidents. “Not only do I kill the mark, but they void their bowels twice!” Scaramanga charges a cool million per hit, and kills his targets in an Arcade-style (the X-Men villain) funhouse, all with one bullet from a…wait for it…golden gun.
There’s another, lesser, villain, named “Hai Fat” who employs Scaramanga, but he’s really not that cool, or important, and he’s not Christopher Lee.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Plan: Pretty simple, really. Kill James Bond. That should count as easily the least convoluted and therefore best villain plan ever, but if a true fan knows anything, it’s that you don’t kill James Bond. Bad plan.
Hai Fat has some plan that he hires Scaramanga to help him carry out, that involves something called a “Solex,” which I assume is either a knock-off Rolex or a piece of home exercise equipment, but Hai Fat really exists to have a funny name and be shot by Scaramanga so the assassin and the spy can go mano-a-mano at the end of the movie.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Henchman: Tattoo from Fantasy Island, here called Nick Nack. He’s a lousy henchman, but Hervé Villachaise puts so much style into the role that Nick Nack is pretty memorable, if somewhat useless.
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| DE PLANE! DE PLANE! Sorry, I really had nothing for this one. |
The Bond Girl: Two this time. Andrea Anders, played by Maude Adams, marking her first of three appearances in the Bond franchise, is Scaramanga’s squeeze, and she wants him dead, because, apparently, being the kept woman of a psychotic carnival assassin isn’t all that great of a life, after all. Of course, as the villain’s moll, Anders is killed near the end of the movie. Bond goes to meet her at a Muay Thai fight, where she is sitting upright with a very silly look on her face, and not moving. Anders had been shot earlier by Scaramanga, in such a way that the neither the wound nor the fact that she was a cadaver was visible to a highly trained secret agent who has seen several dead bodies.
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| He talks to her for way too long before he notices she’s dead. |
Bond girl proper is Mary Goodnight, who is Bond’s secretary, and can best be summed up by the word “dopey.” Hey, it’s a bad movie, alright?
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| About what this movie deserves. |
The Bond Car: The AMC Hornet, which 007 uses to execute a 360-jump across a bridge. The car is bright red, isn’t very good-looking, is American-made, and as an added fuck you to anyone watching this flick, contains an unwanted J.W. Pepper inside, something no one wants to find anywhere.
The Bond Song: “The Man with the Golden Gun,” performed by Lulu. Lulu certainly had a helluva set of pipes in her day, but this isn’t a good song, and the real story here is the producers passing on Alice Cooper’s “Man with the Golden Gun,” released on his album, Love Muscle. Alice’s version >>>>>> Lulu’s version. Lulu’s “The Man with the Golden Gun” also pales when compared to the other themes of the Moore era, particularly its direct predecessor and successor. It’s just not up to par, and might be the worst Bond theme ever.
The Best Bond Scene: The climax of this movie is just…you have to see it to believe it. It’s really that dumb, and considering the sea of dumb this movie floats in, that’s saying something, and the ending of this movie cements my belief that Roger Moore really was the human equivalent of a department store mannequin come to life.
My Bond Take: Good villain, obnoxiously bad flick. Most of the Moore-era movies tried to piggyback on hot trends in pop culture, and this time, it’s martial arts. Major points get deducted for bringing back the insufferable Sheriff J.W. Pepper, who should have been left to rot with the carcass of Live and Let Die. The Man with the Golden Gun has an intriguing premise and a main villain that can match Bond in both wits and fists, but the story is inane, the characters are silly, and the winking at the camera is insufferable.
18. Moonraker (1979)
The Bond Plot: The Spy Who Loved Me, but in space, and much worse.
The Bond: Roger Moore, coming off his finest performance, stuck in a stupid movie, saying stupid things, and breathing in the vacuum of space.
The Bond Bad Guy: Hugo Drax, played by Michael Lonsdale. Once again, good villain, bad movie. Drax is a great, smarmy aristocratic-type douchebag, and Lonsdale kills it in the role, but he can’t save this movie.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Plan: Drax has the exact same plot as the villain in the film that preceded Moonraker, except, instead of wanting to live under the ocean, he wants to live in outer space, which, I suppose, is totally different. He intends to use a space laser (PEW PEW PEW) to wipe out the human race, breed a race of superhumans in outer space, and then repopulate the planet, or something. Matching jumpsuits are prevalent. By now, dear reader, you should know what’s coming next.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Henchman: Jaws, the greatest henchman ever, here reduced to a comedic role that lets down the character to the point of nearly ruining his prior appearance. Even worse is the unnecessary and out-of-left-field face turn (Jaws becomes a hero) where Jaws falls in love with the girl from the Swiss Miss hot chocolate box and ends up helping 007, robbing the character of his menace. Also, CLOWN SUIT.
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| NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. |
The Bond Girl: Lois Chiles as Dr. Holly Goodhead, a CIA agent posing as a NASA scientist working for Drax. Dr. Goodhead’s name is Dr. Goodhead, and that’s about as much character development a character named “Dr. Goodhead” needs or deserves.
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Nice head. |
The Bond Car: Nothing memorable, really, at least as far as a legit “Bond car” goes. There’s a made-up Bentley model that appeared in the book, and is maybe in the movie for a minute or two. This one is more known for the gondola/hovercraft that Bond drives through Venice in one of the worst scenes in franchise history, complete with a pigeon double take.
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| Vomit. |
The Bond Song: “Moonraker,” which is the third spin on the Bond theme carousel for Shirley Bassey, and a damn fine song. Yeah, it’s the weakest of the three Bassey themes, but it would be a home run if performed by any other singer. “Moonraker” the song is much better than Moonraker the movie, and I don’t think we could ask for much more than that, other than a better movie.
The Best Bond Scene: Another easy choice. This is a lousy movie with a dearth of good scenes, but it does contain one of James Bond’s finest moments from any actor to play the role. Bond is staying at Drax’s estate, who, of course, is trying to kill Bond, but only in a silly, roundabout way, and only after feeding him. Drax takes him to go quail shooting. Or grouse shooting. Shooting something. There’s a sniper in a tree waiting to shoot Bond, just as Drax gives Bond a rifle and tells him to bag a bird, which leads to the following:
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| Two things: 1) Miss? James Bond doesn’t fucking miss; and 2) James Bond doesn’t get out-snarked by anyone. |
My Bond Take: Bad movie. Very bad movie. The last scene of this movie has Drax and Bond standing in an OPEN AIRLOCK and there’s no suction or anything, they’re breathing just fine, and physics work the same as if they’re on a movie soundstage. I’m not too proud to admit that not only have I seen this movie more than any other Bond, I might have seen this movie more than any other movie, period, because I watched it approximately 10,000 times as a kid. It was James Bond IN SPACE. What could possibly be more awesome than that?
Many things, as I learned later.
THE “POSSIBLY WORTH A WATCH IF YOU HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO” TIER
17. Live and Let Die (1973)
The Bond Plot: Bond vs. black guys, voodoo, and crocodiles. Also, there’s racism. Lots of racism.
The Bond: Roger Moore, taking over for Sean Connery after Diamonds Are Forever. Moore brings a genre savvy lightness to the role that would quickly mutate into overly self-referential humor and eventually render his now second-longest-running tenure as Bond nigh insufferable, but he isn’t bad here. Moore’s personal take on James Bond is something I cannot disagree with: a secret agent that everyone knows, can’t sneak anywhere, and constantly blows things up in broad daylight is a joke and should be treated as such. I might hate that, but Sir Roger had a point; 007 is a really terrible spy.
The Bond Bad Guy: Yaphet Kotto as Dr. Kananga aka Mr. Big. Kananga is the dictator of a fictional Caribbean nation that is basically the Dominican Republic, and his alter ego is a drug-dealer in Harlem and New Orleans, somehow at the same time. I know a lot of people really loved Yaphet Kotto, but Big/Kananga is largely forgettable, doesn’t have much of a presence, certainly doesn’t hit the level of menace that a Blofeld or Goldfinger does, and while some people like this movie, it sucks (like, big time), and Kotto is a big part of why this movie sucks.
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| Fancy suits can't disguise the fact that you're lame, dude. |
The Bond Bad Guy’s Plan: Refreshingly simple: as Kananga, he produces heroin for super-cheap by exploiting the island’s inhabitants fear of voodoo, and as Big, he gives the heroin away for free, thereby driving other dealers out of business and allowing him to corner the lucrative heroin markets in New York and Louisiana.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Henchman: Several, and they’re all pretty bad. Whisper is a fat guy who doesn’t really do anything beyond killing Bond’s driver. Tee-Hee has a claw for a hand and a stupid name. Baron Samedi is either a guy who dresses like pro wrestler Papa Shango, or is a legit voodoo loa. The movie leaves it unclear with a supernatural twist at the end.
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| Fat guy in a little shirt. |
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| TEE HEE!!! Wait… |
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| Several people looked at this and said "it's fine, leave it in." |
The Bond Girl: Solitaire, played by the so-good-looking-it’s-almost-painful-to-look-at-her Jane Seymour. I could ogle Jane Seymour in skimpy clothing all day long, but Solitaire is terrible. She’s a tarot card reader/prisoner kept on hand by Kananga, who may or may not believe in magic, but seems to think that watching Solitaire play Three-card Monte is the best way to make decisions on how to run a criminal empire.
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| This movie really put the "problem" in "problematic." |
The Bond Car: Ummmm...a double decker bus. Huh? 007 drives a caddy for about five minutes, and something called a “Mini Moke” that looks like a golf cart, but the big chase scene sees Bond driving a goddamn bus.
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| hahahaha what the fuck |
The Bond Song: We all know this one. The fantastic “Live and Let Die,” aka “The Song that Single-Handedly Justified the Existence of Paul McCartney and Wings.” This song absolutely rocks, is a welcome listen any time it comes on the radio, and if it isn’t in the top 3 on your personal list of Best Bond Songs, then you shouldn’t be making lists or listening to songs.
The Best Bond Scene: Okay, it’s a dumb scene, but the part where Bond runs across a bunch of crocodiles is pretty great. The jazz funerals are funny as hell. Other than that, there really isn’t much to like here.
My Bond Take: This movie is dumb, plodding, racist, boring, convoluted, kind of rapey, racist, racist, and, also, racist. Moore’s first outing as 007 attempted to capitalize on the blaxploitation trend that was popular at the time, emphasis on the “ploitation” part. I never get tired of hearing somebody get called a “honky,” but this movie pushes me to the brink on that front. Bond rigs a tarot card deck to get Solitaire to sleep with him. This movie introduced J.W. Pepper to the world, and that alone should have gotten the producers executed for crimes against humanity.
16. Spectre (2015)
The Bond Plot: Daniel Craig finally gets to fight Blofeld because the producers finally got the rights to their own franchise back.
The Bond: Daniel Craig in probably his worst performance as 007. I don’t know if it’s because he had an off day, or if it’s because he read the script and thought “LOL who gives a shit?” but this is a sleepy performance that lacks the intensity that characterized the Craig version of Bond up to this point.
The Bond Bad Guy: Ugh.
Christoph Waltz as the worst Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Blofeld is the head of SPECTRE, which was finally free to use, rendering Quantum expendable (Quantum is now a “subsidiary” of SPECTRE). Blofeld reveals that every other movie bad guy had been acting on Blofeld’s orders, DERPY RETCON ALERT. Even worse is that, in this continuity, he’s Bond’s brother. You know, like Dr. Evil ended up being Austin Powers’s brother? Yeah, like that, with the same amount of dramatic impact.
I can’t stand Waltz, his kobold-like features, his horrendous acting, or his goofy accent, and the way the Academy tosses awards to this yutz just baffles me.
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| If only Quentin Tarantino had directed this, I’d have three statues! |
The Bond Bad Guy’s Plan: Uh, to reveal himself to Bond, I think, and to be Blofeld, so that the producers didn’t have to pretend that they cared about Quantum anymore and could finally say “HEY IT’S SPECTRE, ‘MEMBER THEM?”
Yeah, 30 years ago it was fantastic. Not this time. Blofeld’s real plan involves disbanding MI6 so he can have his henchman, a guy who has infiltrated the new Joint Intelligence Service, launch something called “Nine Eyes” which totally doesn’t sound like a HYDRA plot, thereby giving SPECTRE access to basically all the world’s intelligence.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Henchman: Dave Bautista as Dave Bautista. Oh, hold on, that character had a name, and it’s Mr. Hinx. Hinx? That can’t be right. Did they just put a bunch of names on a dart board, start tossing darts, and pick the first one they hit? Bautista has a legitimately intimidating presence and is a charismatic guy, and Hinx couldn’t have had a better introduction: he bashes a guy’s head in and then gouges out his eyes with his metal fingernails (seriously? They couldn’t have called this guy Nails?). Unfortunately, Hinx doesn’t do much else for the rest of the movie, and his only line is “Shit,” spoken right before he dies.
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| The Animal, Batista (his wrestling name omits the “u,” because wrestling reasons). |
The Bond Girl: I have to mention the disturbingly beautiful Monica Bellucci as Lucia Sciarra, widow of an assassin Bond whacks at the beginning of the movie. She exists simply to allow Daniel Craig to bed Monica Bellucci, and that is as good a reason as any to have a character played by Monica Bellucci.
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| So. Much. Thirst. |
The real Bond girl is Dr. Madeleine Swann, daughter of previous head baddie Mr. White, portrayed by Léa Seydoux. Dr. Swann is a psychologist who needs to be rescued a lot, and at one point tells Bond she’ll kill him if he tries to get sexy with her (GOOD ON YOU GIRL), only to promptly lose her resolve a few scenes later after a (what else?) train fight.
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I don’t kiss on the first date, at least not until after a fight scene on a train. |
The Bond Car: Aston Martin DB10. An update on the certified classic DB5, this car shows how to update Bond without getting all Brosnan-y.
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| THAT is a Bond car. |
The Bond Song: “Writing’s on the Wall,” a forgettable song by a forgettable singer, Sam Smith. The song sounds like something written to win an Oscar, and it did. I’m assuming Randy Newman’s phone wasn’t on the day the producers were picking an artist to perform the theme here, because Newman at least would have given us something memorable and distinctive. “Writing’s on the Wall” is a dull, meandering pop ballad that is the equivalent of aural mayonnaise, much like its singer, a dull, meandering Brit who seems to believe that whiny crooning over generic orchestral music is the same as having an artistic identity. The British blue-eyed soul movement needed to die years ago, and dinks like this are the reason we can’t have nice things.
The Best Bond Scene: The part where Hinx kills the guy who thinks he’s about to be the top assassin in SPECTRE. Hinx bashes his skull in, gouges out his eyes, then breaks his damn neck.
Good shit.
My Bond Take: Boring. Huge let down. Too much Christoph Waltz, not enough Dave Bautista. This movie was a massive misfire, with way too much exposition and winking at nostalgia. It felt like the producers thought that audiences would be so thrilled to see Blofeld and SPECTRE again that they would forgive this lumbering, and frankly yawn-inducing movie; apparently the producers forgot that nobody really gives a damn about Bond’s villains, even the “iconic” ones.
15. You Only Live Twice (1967)
The Bond Plot: There’s a space plot in this one, but it doesn’t involve a laser, thank god. Instead, you get to watch a space shuttle eat other space shuttles. MI6 fakes 007’s death so he can investigate the space shuttle nonsense, but it’s pretty unnecessary and only seems to exist so they can call the movie You Only Live Twice. This movie isn’t great, is borderline bad, but it does have one redeeming quality that puts it above a lot of the other bad movies on this list.
The Bond: Sean Connery, in what was supposed to be his final performance. Connery isn’t as bad here as he is in Diamonds Are Forever, but he’s clearly grown tired of the role by now, and it shows in his performance. Let us not forget that this is the one where Sean Connery passes as a Japanese man with zero facial effects. Seriously.
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| This will trick the bad guys, unless they use their eyeballs. |
The Bond Bad Guy: HAIL TO THE KING, BABY!!!
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That’s my guy. |
The great Donald Pleasence as the only version of Ernst Stavro Blofeld worth thinking about. This is the performance that started all the memes and stock tropes of evil would-be world dictators: the bald head, the pale complexion, the dueling scar and monocle, the white cat, the Mao suit, the habit of feeding people to marine life for the lolz. Nobody did creepy and intense at the same time better than Pleasence, and nobody has done a better Blofeld.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Plan: Something to do with space, but, mercifully, not with lasers.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Henchman: There are so many henchmen in this one.
We’ve got Helga Brandt/No. 11, a SPECTRE assassin posing as a secretary to Japanese industrialist Mr. Osato (himself a SPECTRE associate). Then there's Number 3, played by Burt Kwouk (you know him as Kato from The Pink Panther), Number 4 played by Michael Chow (you know him as the founder of the Mr. Chow restaurant chain), and Hans, Blofeld's bodyguard, played by Ronald Rich, who looks like this:
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| You know him from laxative commercials. |
I’d be remiss not to mention some of James Bond’s henchmen in this one (I guess if they’re good guys, they’re not henchmen, they’re “allies”).
First, let’s pour one out for Charles Gray’s Dikko Henderson, and get another look at those glorious cheekbones and that manhood-threatening jaw:
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| THIS IS A MAN. |
Next up is Tetsuro Tamba's Tiger Tanaka, which is totally something I believe a Japanese cop/spy/superhero would call himself. However, I’ve read lots of manga, which I have to believe is a totally spot-on representation of Japanese culture, so I’m surprised that Tanaka isn’t named after an item of food (Tofurky Tanaka?).
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| I actually really wish he was called Tofurky Tanaka. |
The Bond Girl: Kissy Suzuki, played by Mie Hama, and voiced by Nikki van der Zyl. Kissy has almost no dialog and exists to be 007's Japanese "wife" when he goes "undercover." Kissy is a ninja who works for Tanaka, who is the head of the Japanese Secret Intelligence Service. There's also Aki, played by Akiko Wakabayashi, who is also a ninja with JSIS. She dies via poisoning, but her role is actually much larger than Kissy's. Hama and Wakabayashi orignally were cast in the other's role, but because Hama couldn't speak English very well, they swapped. That pretty much sums up the importance of Kissy Suzuki.
The Bond Car: Toyota 2000 GT, which is actually fairly sweet. See below:
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| It's better than a Mini Moke, at least. |
The Bond Song: “You Only Live Twice,” sung by Nancy Sinatra. Sinatra was said to be so nervous during recording that it took 25 different takes to put the final theme together, and apparently, she hated how she sounded on the end product. This is a good song, and a decent Bond theme. Fun fact: this song is what Robbie Williams ripped off for the music in the song “Millennium.”
The Best Bond Scene: It's a toss-up between our introduction to Dikko and our introduction to Blofeld. Yeah, Blofeld is more important, but THOSE CHEEKBONES.
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| They say God rested on the 7th day, but we all know he created that face. |
My Bond Take: At least there wasn’t a space laser. This movie was written by Roald Dahl, and was the first Bond flick to jettison most of Ian Fleming’s source material. You Only Live Twice isn’t terrible, and, at times, is quite passable, but time has not been kind to this movie, and some consider this one of the worst Bonds ever made.
14. Thunderball (1965)
The Bond Plot: Scuba diving. LOTS of scuba diving.
The Bond: Sean Connery in his fourth outing as Bond, and the fatigue is starting to set in. I won’t say Connery totally slept-walked through this movie, but he just seemed done with the role here. Bond in this movie is still cool, because Sean Connery, but the intensity is decidedly lacking in this performance. Maybe because of ALL THE GODDAMN SCUBA DIVING.
The Bond Bad Guy: Adolfo Celli’s Emilio Largo, complete with needless eyepatch. Celli had a heckuva screen presence, and made Largo a decent nemesis to Bond, but Largo really never comes off as more than a mini-boss. Sure, he's a high-level henchman, but he's still a henchman, and you should never make a henchman the big bad.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Plan: Largo comes up with the brilliant idea to steal two atomic bombs from the Royal Air Force during a Routine Training Exercise and then demand $100,000,000 in diamonds from Nato. Sure, why not?
The Bond Bad Guy’s Henchman: Let's see, there's Count Lippe, who recruits Angelo Palazzi, who is helped by Fiona Volpe. Palazzi asks for more money to do the job, so once the job is done, SPECTRE kills him. Lippe gets recognized by Bond, so SPECTRE kills him. Volpe is evil and female, which means she has sex with Bond, and then SPECTRE kills her. Not a great "henchman" flick, but Volpe's death is at least hilarious; she's dancing with 007 (after they've had sex, and after they both know damn well who the other is) and one of her henchmen tries to shoot Bond, and he dances Volpe into the path of the bullet. No pictures for these goofs.
The Bond Girl: Claudine Auger as Domino Derval, Largo's mistress and eventual killer, getting revenge for the murder of her brother earlier in the movie. Domino is perfectly fine, better than some Bond girls, but doesn't make much of an impression, and is one of many in a disturbing trend of women who are stunned to find out being the girlfriend of an international sociopath isn't such a great idea after all.
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| She wears black and white because "Domino," get it? |
The Bond Car: The Aston Martin DB5, which is perfection in vehicle form. A welcome sight anytime it appears, it’s the best-known Bond car, having appeared in 6 Bond flicks, and is set to reappear in No Time to Die. Gorgeous, classy, sleek, and powerful, it's everything a Bond car should be.
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| One of these cars is about to explode. Can you guess which one? Hint: it's not the Aston Martin. |
The Bond Song: "Thunderball" by Tom Jones. This song is fine, but again, there was a better version out there: "Thunderball" by motherfucking Johnny By God Cash. I've never heard that song and I'm 100% positive it is much better than Tom Jones's version, because it's by motherfucking Johnny By God Cash.
The Best Bond Scene: That's easy. Bond and Largo meet at a card table, and Bond drops the following line:
“I thought I saw a SPECTRE at your shoulder.”
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| HE SAID IT, HE SAID THE THING. |
My Bond Take: Good lord this movie is boring; and this movie has a fucking jetpack in it. How do you make a jetpack boring? The scuba diving goes on forever, and the plot is just plain stupid. Yes, we get to see the second-in-command of SPECTRE, but who cares, really? We could have skipped Largo and gone straight to Blofeld and not missed a beat. The fulton system used at the end was cutting edge at the time, but beyond that, Thunderball is notable mainly for being the catalyst that led to years of litigation and bad blood between a Bond writer and EON, and ultimately gave us Never Say Never Again (YMMV on whether that is a good or bad thing).
THE “NOT HILARIOUSLY BAD ENOUGH OR ANYWHERE CLOSE TO GOOD ENOUGH TO BE WORTH IT, BUT NOT TOTALLY OFFENSIVE, AND MAYBE EVEN SOMEWHAT WATCHABLE” TIER
13. Skyfall (2012)
The Bond Plot: There really isn't a traditional Bond plot here. The villain wants revenge against M, so he engineers his own capture, and counts on Q being a fucking moron. I'm not a fan of this movie, and don't understand why it's consistently so highly rated. It's not bad, but it never rises above "meh."
The Bond: Daniel Craig, coming off the divisive Quantum of Solace. Craig is very good here, plays off Javier Bardem well, and reminds us why he's the best Bond actor for most of this movie's (checks notes) 143-minute runtime.
The Bond Bad Guy: Raoul Silva aka Tiago Rodriguez aka Javier Bardem, played by Javier Bardem. An overrated, hammy performance from a great actor that gets overpraised as one of the great Bond villains. Silva is fine, but I've never understood the love for a character who's main selling points are "holds a homicidal grudge against M because he, Silva, disobeyed M's orders and suffered for it," and "sexually confusing."
The Bond Bad Guy’s Plan: To kill M, and, possibly, have sex with James Bond. The former is unforgivable, the latter is understandable.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Henchman: This guy, whose name is Patrice, which is lame, but he's actually pretty badass as played by Ola Rapace. Patrice kills numerous MI6 agents and cops, and is the first bad guy fought in the movie on (of course) top of a train in one of the series' best moments, and remains a sinister presence furthering Silva's goals until his death. He even remains badass upon his death by refusing to tell Bond anything, preferring to fall, screaming, to his demise.
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| Good henchman, even if he always looks like he just witnessed genocide. |
The Bond Girl: Uh, Sévérine, I guess? Played by Bérénice Marlohe, Sévérine is a former sex slave who works for Silva, ends up helping Bond, and gets killed for her trouble. Apparently some people thought Bond's bedding of the character after discovering that she was a former sex slave was cringey, and disliked 007's icy reaction to her demise. Others defended Sévérine's story as necessary for Bond's character arc. To which I reply: it's a Bond movie. If you want subtlety, watch a not-Bond movie.
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| Yep, looks like a Bond girl, alright. |
The Bond Car: The Aston Martin DB5. If there's one constant about Daniel Craig's tenure on the franchise, it's that he understands the cars James Bond should be driving. No buses or "Mini Mokes" for this man. It's the Aston Martin or he's fucking walking.
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| That is a fine automobile. |
The Bond Song: “Skyfall,” by Adele. This is a rocking tune, everything that “You Know My Name” should have been: a signature Bond theme performed by one of the great voices of that artist’s generation. "Skyfall" sets the tone for what is to come, which, to most folks, is a truly great Bond movie. I don’t agree with that assessment of the movie, but this song is always welcome in my ears.
The Best Bond Scene: The opening scene is nearly perfect. Yes, it’s another train fight, but the tension between Moneypenny (finally given something to do) and M hammers home the nature of their work, and M’s willingness to sacrifice Bond to get the job done is nailed by Judi Dench’s untouchable performance.
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| Whoopsie. |
My Bond Take: I just don’t get it. I watched this movie twice to try to figure out what I was missing, to try to glean why this movie is so praised, and I fell asleep both times. That is about as damning a charge I can level against any movie, but a Bond movie? Bond movies should NOT be putting me to sleep.
12. Quantum of Solace (2008)
The Bond Plot: REVENGE!!!!! Acutally, it's more like "Revenge? Wait, some Bond stuff popped up, I'll get back to it later."
The Bond: Daniel Craig, going full Timothy Dalton on a largely unsuspecting movie audience. It’s glorious. Craig is basically nothing but scowls and grunts, and the only feelings he experiences are I’m Going to Kill You, and Now You’ve Made Me Angry.
The Bond Bad Guy: Environmentalist Dominic Greene (lol) played by Mathieu Amalric, who is as threatening as an environmentalist named Dominic Greene played by Mathieu Amalric can possibly be, which is to say, not very. Greene has no presence, Bond stumbles across him by accident, and his plan is pretty pedestrian for a Bond bad guy. There's also General Medrano, who is a caricature of a South American generalissimo stereotype.
Which is to say, Medrano is way better than Greene.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Plan: Greene is working with/subtly betraying General Medrano, to make the general the head of Bolivia, while Greene becomes the country's sole water provider at way jacked up prices. He doesn't even want to rule the world. Wtf? This is not a good plot.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Henchman: This dude:
His name is Elvis, he has a bowl cut, and the first time you see him he unsuccessfully tries to stop Camille from barging in on Greene's dock party or whatever it is. Needless to say, this Swiss Moe Howard is not the most threatening henchman in the franchise.
The Bond Girl: Strawberry Fields, played by Gemma Arterton, whose job is to: 1) have sex with 007, and 2) die.
The real Bond girl here is Camille Montes, played by Olga Kurylenko. Camille is pretty badass; her whole family was killed by Medrano and she's out for, uh, revenge (of course), and unlike 007, doesn't put her quest for vengeance on hold because something shiny crosses her path.
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| One of the best Bond girls in one of the not best Bond movies. |
The Bond Car: Same car as in Casino Royale, the Aston Martin DBS. Absolutely gorgeous, classy, and slick, and absolutely Bond. Craig knows his cars when it comes to this franchise.
The Bond Song: "Another Way to Die," by Jack White and Alicia Keys. This is a song I should like way more than I do; I love both artists, and I love Bond, but this song, much like this movie, is, at best, lukewarm. Nothing special or memorable about it, and not even bad enough to offend, it's the worst kind of Bond theme: there for the sake of being there, because the movie has to have a theme song.
The Best Bond Scene: Bond chasing the MI6 mole, Mitchell, across the rooftops of Siena after Mitchell shoots M's bodyguard, but not M, or Bond, for some reason. Great scene, but Dominic Greene's "we have operatives everywhere" line is really undermined by Mitchell killing a random red shirt and not taking out the super spy that's been dismantling their operation for months.
My Bond Take: YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT, QUANTUM IS ABOVE SKYFALL. FIGHT ME. I didn’t like Quantum the first time I saw it, because it isn't very good, but I gave it another try at a friend’s suggestion, who told me to watch it as a throwback/homage to the Dalton era (which is what Craig’s performance is, after all). Once I watched it through that lens, it clicked. A gritty, rage-fueled revenge flick that solidified Craig as the finest James Bond to date, Quantum of Solace is an underappreciated movie, and the second-best movie of the Craig era, although it pales in comparison to the best Craig movie (then again, all of Craig’s sequels, and most other Bond movies, pale in comparison to that movie).
11. Goldeneye (1995)
The Bond Plot: 007 vs. 006, because greed, and revenge for what happened to the Cossacks. The plot is pretty flimsy, the central conflict is pretty decent.
The Bond: Pierce Brosnan, portraying the Timothy Dalton version of the character. Brosnan is…fine. Really, he is. The material in Goldeneye gives him more to work with than any of his sequels, and if I’m being honest, the Bond franchise would probably have been dead in the water if Goldeneye and Brosnan’s popular take on 007 hadn’t debuted when they did.
The Bond Bad Guy: 006, aka Janus, aka Alec Trevelyan, played by Sean Bean. 006 is the much cooler character than 007 in this movie, if for no other reason than 006 is Sean Bean, and 007 is not. Bean had auditioned for the role of 007, but the producers decided he was a better fit to portray 006, I’m assuming because 006 dies. Trevelyan is a great bad guy who is a match for Bond in every way, has a solid if somewhat esoteric motivation (getting revenge for the Cossacks? A little late for that, buddy), his plan isn’t terrible, and he’s totally believable in the physical scenes. Only knock I have on 006 is his anger at Bond for what happened to his face; after faking his own death, 006 was surprised that Bond tried to complete the mission and get out alive? C’mon, you knew that was coming.
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| The movie needed him to be stupid so they could call him Janus. |
The Bond Bad Guy’s Plan: Use a space laser called Goldeneye to cripple the British economy, get rich, and take revenge for what happened to the Lienz-Cossacks. The repatriation and oppression of the Cossacks was a real thing, as was the British betrayal at Lienz, so at least the writers got that right. On the other hand, they had to use a space laser. SIGH let’s get another one up on the big board, please.
I think that’s the last one, which would, by my calculations, mean that there are space lasers in 15.38% of all Bond movies. That’s fucking nuts.
The Bond Bad Guy’s Henchman: Ok, let’s get the “kills dudes during sex with her thighs” chick out of the way now: Xenia Onatopp as played by Famke Janssen, who kills dudes during sex with her thighs. When I was younger, I thought this was cool, and I’m not above admitting I found the character mildly arousing (there are worse ways to go out). Now, I’m not sure whether her name or MO is the stupider part of the character. Also, she dies by getting pressed against a tree. Much like this movie, this character seems great at first glance, but on a rewatch, it’s really just a bunch of tropes glued together without any real depth to make the character interesting.
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| I know what deadlift and squat thighs look like. That ain’t them. |
Somewhat better henchman: General Ourumov, portrayed by the late Gottfried John. Ourumov and Bond have a grudge against each other, dating all the way back to the opening scene of Goldeneye, because Ourumov killed 006 (except he didn’t). Ourumov is delightfully slimy, but also very sweaty, and definitely falls into the “too stupid to live” category of villains (he’s about to become a billionaire and he cares that Janus is descended from Cossacks? Please). Ourumov is a fairly generic Bond Russian bad guy elevated by a damn good performance.
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GODDAMN COMMUNISTS…I mean, GODDAMN CAPITALISTS! |
Much better henchman: Boris Grishenko, who holds an unfair advantage over the other henchmen: he’s played by Alan Cumming. Boris is a sniveling, perverted, arrogant douchebag, and, in my opinion, one of the few parts of this movie worth paying attention to. When he’s first introduced, you like the guy in spite of yourself, which makes his betrayal hurt more than it should (the character practically screams “I’m going to sell out as soon as we get to Act II”), and he’s legitimately funny, even if all the jokes are boob-related. Finally, as someone who twirls pens like a boss, I have to give it up to the GOAT: nobody can twirl a pen like Boris, at least until the pen explodes in his face.
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| I AM INVINCIBLE unless you find my weakness: sub-zero temperatures. |
The Bond Girl: Some Russian chick named Natalya, because they’re all named Natalya. She knows computers, works at the Goldeneye facility, and is the only witness to the massacre there, and…that’s it. Natalya is portrayed by Izabella Scorupco, whose other credits include Reign of Fire, a bad movie I enjoyed far more than I should have; Vertical Limit, a bad movie I enjoyed far more than I should have; and Exorcist: The Beginning, one of two god-awful Exorcist prequels released in the same year that I enjoyed exactly as much as somebody should enjoy any Exorcist prequel.
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| Yes, I'm aware this is from the video game. |
The Bond Car: Yes, there’s a tank, but let’s point out the gorgeous Aston Martin DB5 (once again) that Bond drives when he races Xenia Onatopp towards the beginning of the movie, and then has sex in, because of course he does, he’s James Bond.
The Bond Song: “Goldeneye” by Tina Turner, a song that I thought was badass as a kid, and I still think is badass. I’m always surprised when I see this one rank low on rankings of the Bond themes. This song is mysterious, sultry, and is sung by Tina Turner. What the hell more do you want out of a Bond theme? This song might have nothing to do with the movie, lyrically speaking, but from the very first notes, you know you’re listening to a Bond theme, and a damn good one at that.
The Best Bond Scene: Valentine Zukovsky. Mic drop.
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| Why couldn’t we have just had a movies series about this guy? |
My Bond Take: Shockingly boring movie on a rewatch. Brosnan plays a version of the character in Goldeneye that would promptly vanish in the sequel, and I’m not certain why. Brosnan isn’t anywhere near as good as Dalton is at tortured and intimidating, but at least he puts effort into the role in this movie. The problem with Goldeneye is that rose-colored nostalgia glasses cause us to view this one as being much better than it truly is. Beyond Brosnan being by far the worst James Bond ever, Goldeneye is just kind of there. 006 becomes Janus because we need a reason for Bond to go to Russia. Valentine, while awesome, is completely unnecessary to the story, but if “needing a way to get Bond to Janus” is a reason to put Robbie Coltrane in a movie, I’m actually ok with that. Xenia Onatopp exists for sex jokes and no other reason. Natalya isn’t the most useless Bond girl, but she’s close. Lots of shooting. So much shooting. Brosnan’s James Bond used firearms more than any other James Bond. Bond drives a tank through St. Petersburg in one of the most overpraised scenes of all time. While the villain doesn’t inexplicably treat Bond to dinner, which is good, 006 does do the whole “silly trap instead of shooting 007 in the face” thing, which you’d think 006 would know better, right? Really hurts the character’s presentation as this criminal mastermind who knows Bond’s every move. The “swerve” that 006 is actually the bad guy probably only fooled anyone who wasn’t watching the movie. Don’t get me wrong, Goldeneye is fine, and it’s a perfectly serviceable action flick, but the concept that this is one of the best Bond movies ever is laughable, and Goldeneye is way worse than most people want to admit.
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