The 25th movie in the storied James Bond franchise is scheduled to come out in late 2019. In the meantime, how about we rank the 24 other films? If we are going to do so, we need to determine what we are looking for in a good James Bond adventure.
Action:🧔 James is a man who likes to jump out of airplanes or chase 🌄bad guys with a tank in the middle of a busy street. A good movie will have great action sequences.
Fights: A good Bond movie also𒁏 sees its hero get into aꦯ few solid fights.
Espionage: Ho♛w much spying is James Bond actually doing in this movie? Is the plot sufficiently intriguing?
Over the top: James Bond does everything in extremes. The gadgets need to push just a bit past the realm of reality, just enough to make you wonder if such a thing could really exist one da🥃y. The mission needs to push the limits of plausibility, but still make sense. It needs to be crazy without being silly.
Memorable characters: How good is the villain? How about thꦡe henchmen, or the sidekicks?
With these criteria established, we can now come up with a good ranking. This list will bꦫe ordered from worst to best, so if you don’t see your favourite movie right away, that’s good news! In the end, don’t forget to let us know on Facebook how your own list com﷽pares to this one.
24 One Movie Too Many ജ
It hurts to put a Sean Connery movie at the bottom, but even the classic Bond has a stinker to his name. Diamonds Are Forever marks Connery’s return after George Lazenby’s lone appearance, and he makes the most of every minute he is given o༒n screen. Unfortunately, he is l🌸et down by a boring story.
It is one of the few movies where you never feel like Bond is in any danger at all.
James just follows a bunch of smugglers while fighting completely ineffective henchmen. It’s also Blofeld’s last true appearance though he would reappear, nameless, nearly a decade later, in an unnecessary cameo. The only real Bond moment in the entire movie is the car chase in Las Vegas. We can point at this movie when it comes to the🥀 start of a long slump for the character.
23 💖 🍨 The Master Of Disguise
Even if you disregard the completely absurd title (which is pushing it in terms of obvious puns, even for James Bond), Octopussy is one of the most laughable movies in the series. While you do want Bond to be able to take a joke, this one is nothing but a series of bizarre set pieces which are memorable for all the 🤪wrong reasons. In one scene, Bond swings through the trees and yells like Tarzan. In another one, he dons a gorilla suit to hitch a ride with a circus. Finally, he dresses up in the infamous clown suit which would have been the series' jumping-the-shark moment if Roger Moore wasn’t so close to being replaced. It’s ridiculous without actually fun🌜ny. It’s over the top without being grandiose. Other Roger Moore movies are generally bad, but they at least commit to their mediocrity.
22 🍸 A Waste Of A🀅 Good Villain
If we start with the lone positive, Christopher Lee does a terrific job as Scaramanga, the villain of the film. In any other movie, he would be seen as a serious threat, but The Man With The Golden Gunꦕ is, unfortunately💎, a Roger Moore outing, so we can’t even think for a minute that Bond might ever be in trouble.
The story lacks any real punch because of Moore’s inability to bring drama to his performance.
We should feel at least a little bit of nervousness at the fact that Bond is being pursued ꧟by this overconfident maniac. It’s one of the few times where Bond’s nemesis can actually measure up to his skills, but scenes are too often played for a laugh. I mean, can you really take anything involving Nick Nack seriously?
21 He's🌄 Got A Girlfriend Now 🎐
Oh boy. This is Roger Moore at his campiest, which has always made me hate the movie. Plus, Moonraker takes one of the franchise’s most memorable villain (the almighty Jaws!) and turns him into a doofus. The whole subplot with his girlfriend might have looked cute on paper, but it destroys the character's mystique. Bond going to space could have been cool if they had stuck a prop♌er story onto the action sequences, which are neat enough to almost make the movie enjoyable. Instead, Hugo Drax comes off as an idiot with a plan full of holes, so once you are done gawking at the special effects (which were great for the time), you are le𒅌ft with nothing. Moore’s performance, where he might as well be winking straight into the camera at this point, will make you roll your eyes to the point of straining.
20 😼 Saved By The Bird 🗹
For Your Eyes Only has many problems, the biggest of which is a completely uninteresting villain. It’s hard to care about 🙈Kristatos as he goes around doing mundane smuggler stuff. Also, James Bond is especially bad at spying this time around: he seems clueless for most of the movie, stumbling into important info desp🎃ite himself.
He only figures out Kristatos’ final destination because he hears it from a parrot!
The only reason why the movie isn’t any lower is because of the great stunts, and even that takes a w🍌eird turn when Bond has to fight hockey players on a rink, with the scoreboard keeping track of the fight. Finally, I’m not an ageist when it comes to the actor portraying Bond, but they should at leas🤡t keep in proper shape to look believable. Moore at that point looks like he’d rather be in a rocking chair at home sipping a cup of tea.
19 Jinxed
It’s a shame that this movie loses most of its steam about a third of the way in, because it has such a cool start. Die Another Day starts with the unexpected plot twist of James Bond actually being captured and held prisoner for over a year. The film then destroys the goodwill accumulated with a bunch of baffling decisions. Let’s start with the villain’s plot, which is so farfetched that you would think it has been imagined by Dr. Evil. Plus, it’s another satellite, except that this time it uses solar power instead of lasers, which I guess changes everything. The diamond-encrusted henchman looks cool but doesn’t do much to earn his paycheck. Finally, let's mention Halle Berry's turn as Jinx. She's usually a good actress, but she's in Catwoman mode this time around. She looks like s📖he just didn't wa♍nt to be in the movie at all.
18 🌠 Great Song, At Least
Live and Let Die is Roger Moore’s first try at portraying James Bond, which means that he is still figuring out his own style. So his Bond still has enough grittiness to be believable in fights, but you can already see hints of what would soon become his trademark cartoonish portrayal. The story feels like it belongs in a different kind of movieඣ, as Bond faces with a run-of-the-mill dealer instead of his usual supervillains. The only memorable thing that happens is that the main bad guy's demise:
He blows up like a balloon and floats to the ceiling, completely defying the laws of physics.
The movie is saved from being ranked near the bottom of the barrel because it has one of the best theme songs in the entire series. Paul McCart💟ney and Wings created a t🥃une which goes past the simple “might get nominated at the Oscars” quality to become a mainstay of rock radio.
17 It's Not Rocket Science ꧂
The World Is Not Enough stars Robert Carlyle as Renard, a good vill♓ain with a hook which make him more than a match for Bond: Renard simply cannot feel pain, and will pass away soon enough that he does not care about his life. Unfortunately, he is 🤪let down by a confusing story, one which goes so far as to ask viewers to believe that Denise Richards is a nuclear physicist. She is not a good enough actress to be anything else than “Denise Richards in a lab coat”, and we are taken out of the story any time she is on screen. Thankfully, Pierce Brosnan wasn’t bored yet, so he tries as hard as he can to make his part of the film as interesting as the villains. Still, it is not enough to make the movie more than an average Bond outing.
16 🦩 The Original 🔥
Though we are not yet halfway through the list, I believe that everything starting here is at the very least “good”. As the first James Bond in the official Eon Productions canon, Dr. No obviously still has some kinks toꦇ work out, but it estaওblishes the basis for the rest of the series right away.
Over the years, the movie's legacy seems to have been defined by one thing: the iconic shot of Ursula Andress coming out of the ocean in a bikini.
The rest is standard fare for the series, though everything was still fresh at that point. James Bond is simultaneously charming and intimidating, depending on what the situation calls for. It is significantly slower than most other movies in the series but has enough espionage to keep things interesting. It showed what could be expected from James Bond from this point forward: exotic locations, the Bond girls, a cr♛azy villain, and cool stunts.
15 🤪 A Pool Full Of Sharks, But No Laser Beam
Thunderball is not as inventive as other Sean Connery entries, but that is only if we look at it in a mo♉dern light. The atomic bomb plot, which has become almost a Bond trope at this point, was still fresh at the time and appropriately terrifying considering the political climate at the time. Emilio Largo, Number Two at SPECTRE, has the look which makes for a great Bond villain (and he has a pool full of sharks!), but ends up being kind of a pushover at the end. The movie is dragged down by the never-ending underwater scenes, which I am sure were seen as an incredible technical achievement at the time of release, but which just stop the action dead in its track.