Best 007 James Bond film by far?

[Thaluikhain]

As serious movies that are somewhat believable and have plots, From Russia With Love and Licence to Kill, followed somewhat by The Living Daylights and Tomorrow Never Dies. Also, movies about Afghanistan from the 80s are amusing in hindsight.

As watchably bad movies, You Only Live Twice. Followed by interchangeable Roger Moore films.

Craig's stuff don't seem to know if they want to be gritty and realistic or silly and OtT, so they lose balance and fall into a hole.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

The Kingsmen. (Kingsmen? The?) Best of them all so far.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

First few Sean Connery movies, pretty much all of the Pierce Brosnan movies (bar Tomorrow Never Dies) and 2006 Casino Royale.

 

[Catnip1024]

Die Another Day.

Yes, I know all the critics slammed it as corny and terrible. The critics don't know what Bond is about. Bond isn't about realism and product placement. Bond is about swordfights which get progressively more ridiculous, and people outrunning space lasers in a car.

Skyfall was also pretty good, as far as the new ones go.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

I've seen so many of the movies and many of them so often - but i still can't put the right name onto the right movie.

But i know that i prefer Connery and Moore. Though i always thought Brosnan defined the look of Bond the best. And GoldenEye has a speical place in my heart because of the N64 game

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

The Kingsmen. (Kingsmen? The?) Best of them all so far.

Kingsmen: The Secret Service is, I believe, the proper title of the movie. And yes, it is a great Bond movie, even if it doesn't have Bond himself.

Die Another Day.

Yes, I know all the critics slammed it as corny and terrible. The critics don't know what Bond is about. Bond isn't about realism and product placement. Bond is about swordfights which get progressively more ridiculous, and people outrunning space lasers in a car.

Skyfall was also pretty good, as far as the new ones go.

I would heavily, heavily debate you on Die Another Day. As a Bond fan who has seen almost every Bond movie (only exception is Spectre, and that is because I didn't have money to see it in theaters at the time), Die Another Day's biggest flaw is that every single one of its plot elements was something that had been done in another Bond movie...and the majority of the time, been done better in that movie.

Killer satellite? Take your pick between Diamonds are Forever, The Man With the Golden Gun, and GoldenEye. Villain someone from Bond's past, who has changed his appearance with plastic surgery? Diamonds are Forever. A villain who was formerly part of MI6? GoldenEye. A female secret agent on Bond's side? The Man With the Golden Gun (although I highly doubt anyone seriously takes Mary Goodnight as a secret agent) and Tomorrow Never Dies. Rogue Bond? Licence to Kill.

Bond movies have always been, to a degree, formulaic, but Die Another Day was terrible about ripping off former Bond movies.

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

Skyfall, GoldenEye or Casion Royale.

Hey, i was about to say that.

And yes, in that exact order.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Goldeneye was good. But not that good at all. I just rewatched it very recently. It has the highest body count of the 007 movies according to IMDb and holy crap, there's some idiocy that happens in that movie. The enemy soldiers that are getting gunned down like crazy are in full stormtrooper mode, running in, not taking ANY cover, blasting wildly and never hitting ANYTHING. Seriously, rewatch it sometime. It's pretty ridiculous.

I do love Natalya though as a character. She's strongly written.

 

[Nazulu]

I've only seen about 7 James Bond movies, but so far it's definitely Golden Eye for me. It's the most fun I reckon with all the creative action scenes.

 

[Kyrian007]

I have seen all of the Bond films. There are really good ones and really bad ones. But my favorite... Thunderball. It's the absolute most "bond-iest" Bond film there is. It's not the first Bond film, but it has ALL the "bond tropes" that define a Bond movie. In essence... its the most stereotypically "bond" Bond movie.

Second is probably On Her Majesty's Secret Service. For nearly the opposite reason, it goes far away from its predecessors to do its own thing. It tries to forge its own identity. The problem with everything after the Moore era... they only adapt Bond for whatever is popular in action movies that year. Tim Dalton was Bond as a Stallone/Schwarzenegger style Bond. It worked a little better for Goldeneye because the popular action movie style had changed to Die Hard, and they went back to "bond classic" because Bond does not work as a put upon everyman hero. Not sure what they were trying to do with the rest of the Brosnan movies. And every single new Bond movie is an approximation (or just a ripoff) of a popular action movie that came out earlier. It actually worked for Casino Royale and Skyfall, not so much for the others. But it does mean that none are "the best."

 

[DocJ]

The new Casino Royale. I've always preferred Daniel Craig, and that's not just cause I'm a young bastard, I've watched and read just about everything 007. I really like him, and I'd be happy to see him keep the role for a while. Casino Royale was a really good one in my opinion, probably due to my penchant for poker. The intro sequence continues to be one of the best in the series in my opinion, I sang it karaoke once at a bar. And of course the one liners were great, just a shame the poker scenes were a little cliche.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Die Another Day has a great sword fight.

 

[Bobular]

I saw this thread and my first thought was to say Golden Eye because it was my first Bond movie and so is what I compare all other Bond movies to.

I liked Craig's Casino Royal, but other than that one I didn't really like any of the latest movies, saw Skyfall last Christmas and was board throughout it.

 

[BaronVH]

I love all the Craig Bond films, yes, all of them. But my absolute favorite has always been Thunderball. It has everything I like in a Bond film: SPECTRE, tropical location, large extremely unrealistic battle, and gadgets. Interestingly enough, it is one of the highest grossing movies of all time when adjusted for inflation. Dang it, I may go watch it today.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

My vote always goes to the much/unfairly maligned Quantum Of Solace. Perhaps I'm in the minority because it's such an un-Bond Bond film - and I've always found the series blandly crass.

QoS was technically and conceptually very accomplished, and spent more time subverting or exposing the awful tropes than indulging in them. There was a darkness and a melancholy to it, too, which set is apart from the usual fluff. Plus, I admired the platonic bond between--- well, Bond and Camille - equals in many ways, but chiefly in - as the antagonist even points out - just how damaged they both were.

Most Bond films are 'about' nothing whatsoever. QoS? At least dares to give some substance to the character, with Bond and Camille both believably (for a Hollywood action film, at least) on a path of hoped-for catharsis.

Skyfall was a colossal letdown afterwards. Old Bond films can be dumb as fuck because they were little more than camp or cheese. But Skyfall? You can't 'ground' Bond in a quasi-realist sense and then pull of that kind of nonsense. Gorgeously filmed, sure, and with a cracking theme choon. But on so many levels I think that's a rather detestable film (if QoS can be seen as rather progressive, then Skyfall was a hard reverse from that).

 

[Post Tenebrae Morte]

Casino royal has been my favorite, with Goldfinger and License to Kill being my other 2. Haven't seen the ones after casino, but I did play and adore the Craig version of Goldeneye. It was far better to me than the film itself. I like pierce brosnan, but he is my least favorite bond.

 

[Mangod]

SNIP.

Anyone who claims that Spectre was a "thinking-mans Bond" is talking into his nightcap.

I liked Casino Royale, because it was suitably grounded. I liked the Moore movies because they were silly fun; in retrospect, the middleground between the Connery movies and Johnny English.

But bringing back S.P.E.C.T.R.E? I'm sorry, but that's an organization that doesn't work unless they're building a Moonlaser (TM), or... like you said, they've literally already won.