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I've been thinking about creating a 007 movie thread for some time now, but I didn't know if there would be enough interest for it on this forum. Well, judging from the "Top _ Lists" thread, we have at least 3 other Bond movie fans here. I'm just going to copy and paste the stuff from that thread to get started.

Ziggy587 wrote:My Top 10 Favorite James Bond 007 Movies (no particular order)

1. From Russia with Love
2. You Only Live Twice
3. Diamonds are Forever
4. A View to a Kill
5. The Man with the Golden Gun
6. For Your Eyes Only
7. Live and Let Die
8. The Spy Who Loved Me
9. Goldeneye
10. Tomorrow Never Dies
11. The Living Daylights
12. Casino Royale
13. Skyfall

prfsnl_gmr wrote:The Living Daylights is a bold choice!

Ziggy587 wrote:

prfsnl_gmr wrote:The Living Daylights is a bold choice!

Is it? I really like Dalton as Bond, so at least one of his movies had to make my list. And I like Daylights more than LTK. I think a bolder choice on my list is A View to a Kill. People tend to hate on this one pretty bad because Roger Moore is way too old and it's a stunt double for half the movie. Well, those two facts weren't very apparent when I use to watch this film on VHS. It's painfully obvious now that I watch it on BD. But as a kid, Roger Moore was my favorite Bond and this was my favorite Moore Bond flick, and his age and stunt double weren't as noticeable on VHS. I mean, I realized that he was MUCH older looking than Live and Let Die, but it just didn't look as bad on VHS as it does on BD.

marurun wrote:I think Roger Moore might be my favorite Bond as well, which is a very unpopular opinion. He's more the gentleman spy than the special agent.

prfsnl_gmr wrote:Moore is one of my favorite Bonds too. The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker are classics, and the rest of his movies aren’t bad either. Lazenby is the most consistent Bond, since the one bond movie he made is pretty great. Craig is probably the most consistent after that since even his bad movies (e.g., Quantum of Solace) are still pretty good.

Top Seven Bond Actors
1. Craig
2. Connery
3. Moore
4. Lazenby
5. Brosnan
6. Dalton
7. Niven

Ziggy587 wrote:

marurun wrote:I think Roger Moore might be my favorite Bond as well, which is a very unpopular opinion. He's more the gentleman spy than the special agent.

prfsnl_gmr wrote:Moore is one of my favorite Bonds too. The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker are classics, and the rest of his movies aren’t bad either.

Moore's Bond gets all the hate because some of the movies got a little too silly. His movies are definitely a lot more lighthearted, and I'm willing to admit that it's probably why I liked them the most as a kid. It's really the laser fight in space at the end of Moonraker that gives the Moore Bond films the silly stamp. But you know what? Aside from a few stupidly silly moments (Jaws pulling the steering wheel off the boat, the pidgin doing the double look while Bond rides his car/boat in the streets) and obviously the space laser fight, Moonraker is a pretty solid movie. There's really nothing THAT silly in the rest of Moore's films.

People like to hate on the clown costume in Octopussy, which I never understand. The plot of that movie is a little all over the place, but it's otherwise a pretty solid Bond flick. The clown disguise is awesome because of the other 00 agent that gets killed in the beginning while wearing the same costume. OK, so it's a CLOWN, so a little silly inherently. But in the context of the movie it really isn't silly at all. And Octopussy has some of the best action sequences of any of the Moore films.

People like to use the Connery films as the gold standard, but ignore that fact that there's some really silly things in those movies too. Sure, Moonraker finally got Bond in space, but space wasn't a new concept to the Bond franchise. Dr. No is diverting Cape Canaveral space launches. You Only Live Twice is hijacking space crafts (something Moonraker also does) and Diamonds Are Forever is using a diamond powered laser gun in space to hold the world hostage. Speaking about laser guns, even Goldfinger (everyone's "favorite" Bond movie) has a gold powered laser gun. There's a lot of 60's campy feeling stuff going on. Perhaps the silliest thing to ever happen in a Bond film is Bond going undercover as a Japanese local, which makeup and a wig. That's WAY more silly than the clown disguise! There's really no one around to even fool with the disguise, and it disappears quickly anyway.

Anyway, my point being that the Moore films have some silly things going on but the Connery films do too. Even Moore's age in A View to a Kill. Well, Connery doesn't look nearly as good in Diamonds as he did as Bond previously. Hell, he might actually look better in Never Say Never Again than he does in Diamonds.


/rant

prfsnl_gmr wrote:Yes. Connery’s later Bond films are DIRE, and Moore really reinvigorated the franchise.

marurun wrote:As much as I love Moore, I don't always love the silliness in Bond films. I like some camp, but sometimes it feels like it's carried just a touch too far. I think that's why I enjoyed the first Austin Powers so much. I think one of my favorite Bond films is actually On Her Majesty's Secret Service. While Lazenby isn't my favorite Bond, I think this film is just very well done, and the characters feel a bit more human.

pilgrimteeth wrote:Spamming my own thread here, but felt necessary to split things up. Inspired by the Bond talk, something I love to talk about:

My Top 10 Bond Themes (In No Order):

Matt Monro - From Russia With Love
Tom Jones - Thunderball
Tina Turner - Goldeneye
Garbage - The World is Not Enough
Sheryl Crow - Tomorrow Never Dies
Chris Cornell - You Know My Name
Adele - Skyfall
Billie Eilish - No Time To Die
Radiohead - Spectre (will always be canon to me!)
Sam Smith - Writing's On The Wall

Unabashedly modern and I'll probably catch some shit for it, but god, most of the last long stretch of themes have been so great.

My Top 1 Always Skipped Bond Theme (No Offense):

Madonna - Die Another Day

My Top 5 Bond Theme Artist Wishlist:

Bjork
John Legend
DeVotchKa
Regina Spektor
Adele (Again)

prfsnl_gmr wrote:Yes. Connery’s later Bond films are DIRE, and Moore really reinvigorated the franchise.

I still like Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun, but Moore really didn't become his own bond until The Spy Who Loved Me. He's a little wooden in Live and Let Die, like he wasn't sure how to play it yet. Lots of people don't like Golden Gun and claim he was trying to be a Connery clone in it but it didn't work. I really don't mind him in either.

marurun wrote:I think one of my favorite Bond films is actually On Her Majesty's Secret Service. While Lazenby isn't my favorite Bond, I think this film is just very well done, and the characters feel a bit more human.

I think Lazenby would have been even better if he played Bond one more time. One thing I don't like about OHMSS is how Lazenby's voice is dubbed for like half the movie.

Watching all the Bonds for the first time as a kid, I was massively confused by OHMSS. "So wait, if that's Blofeld, then why doesn't he recognize James Bond?" I know now that it's because they wanted to keep it as close to the book as possible, even though that screws everything up. It either recons something, or puts OHMSS in it's own universe. Which it can't be the later because they added that seen of Lazenby looking at his mementos from previous films and playing those films' theme songs while he does it.

Usually when I watch the Bond films, I'll watch them in release order. But just recently I tried something for the first time. I skipped OHMSS and watched Diamonds Are Forever after You Only Live Twice (don't worry, I still will watch OHMSS). This is interesting because it's almost as if they made the opening to Diamonds work as a pickup to either YOLT or OHMSS, but I think it works best when directly following YOLT. Of the montage of Bond questioning people where Blofeld is, the first scene is in Japan. Which is perfect because that's where YOLT leaves off. It's as if Blofeld escapes at the end of YOLT but Bond stays hot on his trail. The only thing that doesn't work is that Blofeld goes from bald with scar to hair with no scar. But since he's making a double with that plastic mud surgery thing, I just chalk it up to that.

Which, by the way, Donald Pleasence played the best Blofeld.

The Connery films, as far as Blofeld is concerned, work better when viewed on their own. But the rest of the films after Connery seem to use OHMSS in the sense that Blofeld kills Tracy. The line in Spy Who Loved Me, "Once married..." And also in License to Kill. Then there's the opening sequence in For Your Eyes Only, where James does battle with Blofeld after visiting Tracy's grave. And Blofeld is wearing a neck brace, as he is at the end of OHMSS.

pilgrimteeth wrote:Spamming my own thread here, but felt necessary to split things up. Inspired by the Bond talk, something I love to talk about:

My Top 10 Bond Themes (In No Order):

Unabashedly modern and I'll probably catch some shit for it, but god, most of the last long stretch of themes have been so great.

My Top 1 Always Skipped Bond Theme (No Offense):

Madonna - Die Another Day

I like a lot of the modern theme songs. I also like too many of the old ones, I probably would have a hard time making a top 10 for myself.

Die Another Day... I pretend doesn't exist. When I'm watching the movies in release order, I skip this one and never watch it. I saw it twice in theaters and then ignored it for the longest while. A couple of years ago I decided to give it another watch since it's been so long. And, I think it's actually WORSE than I remember it! It is by far the worst Bond movie. Anything bad you could ever say about the Bond movies, this one beats all of it by a mile. As campy as some of the 60's stuff got, and as silly as some of the Moore stuff got, Die Another Day is still loads worse. It's like they couldn't be bothered writing a real Bond movie so they went to EA and bought one of their ideas for a video game.

Bond doesn't have funny one-liners, he has old dad jokes and the movie is littered with them. The special effects are garbage, even at it's release. There's too many recycled elements for no reason (like Honey Ryder). And the plot involves a diamond powered space laser. Hmm, where have I seen that before? I know some of the Q gadgets are a little fantastic, but they were always just this side of plausible. The invisible car just took it too far. Perhaps if the rest of the movie was good, I could just accept the invisible car. But since the rest of the movie is garbage, no, the invisible car is just too fantastic. It has a couple of almost half decent action scenes, but it's ruined by the rest of the movie around it. But it also has some really lame action scenes. And yes, the sword fight. I'm not saying James Bond can't have a sword fight, but it just felt so force. Like, "Hey, let's have Bond get in a sword fight because sword fights are cool!" - "OK, how are we gonna do that?" - "Who cares, let's just have it happen!" And it doesn't have any really nice locations or set pieces (something you come to expect in Bond films). Nothing memorable, anyway. And the ice palace at the end would have worked in a Bond game maybe but not a movie. It's as if a child wrote a Bond fan fiction and sent it into to EON production and they used it.

I've been a huge Bond fan since the 5th grade, but I just loathe Die Another Day. The only good thing to come out of that movie was Casino Royale. For Die Another Day, the pendulum swung waaaaay too far to the silly/fantastic side and Casino Royale was the reaction to it.

I kind of like Die Another Day. It’s like a Roger Moore Bond film. It’s so, so silly, and I thought it was better than the two previous films, which I found dreadfully boring.

.....

Can we talk about the books here too? I’ve read all of the Ian Fleming novels and would like some thoughts on the Bond books by other authors.

prfsnl_gmr wrote:I kind of like Die Another Day. It’s like a Roger Moore Bond film. It’s so, so silly, and I thought it was better than the two previous films, which I found dreadfully boring.

Tomorrow Never Dies and World is Not Enough had such down to Earth plots though. A media mogul profiting from starting a war, and a oil baron creating a nuclear meltdown to secure their own pipeline. As far as Bond plots go that aren't about world domination, these are great. I don't like either movie as much as Goldeneye, but I still like them a lot.

Die Another Day though, it's just too over the top. It took the silliness of Moore and cranked it up to 11.

prfsnl_gmr wrote:Can we talk about the books here too? I’ve read all of the Ian Fleming novels and would like some thoughts on the Bond books by other authors.

Sure! I love the Bond novels. I've been reading them in release order, but I've only made it to For Your Eyes Only. I know, I still have a few big ones to get to. I'm also interested in the novels by other authors, but I have to finish the Flemming novels first.

I really don't like Brosnan as Bond. He's my least favorite. I feel like the Bond franchise struggled with 90s movie sensibilities as well. The 90s bombast and special effects with that Bond camp just created an odd mix for me.

I listened to Dr No in audio book form on a long drive several years back and it was quite good. I think I also read one of the story collections but I don't recall many of the details save that they were decent suspect and action stories.

I read The Man with the Golden Gun, and the Moore film is dramatically better than the book. In truth, that might actually be my favorite film in the series because Christopher Lee is so fantastic.

Also...Timothy Dalton. I recall his films being maligned, but then the Daniel Craig run got praised for so much that Dalton had done, like get beat up and bleed, be moody and jaded, and occupy a moral grey space.

Also, Die Another Day is a remake of Diamonds are Forever with North Korea as the villain and a much worse song.

One time in a used book store I found they had half the Fleming books for a song, so I picked them up. Subsequently lost them, which makes me sad. It's interesting to compare them to the movie adaptations. Some are reasonably close, like Goldfinger. Some diverge heavily, like Moonraker. And some just used the title, like Octopussy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmK0zZI4x8M

Have you guys heard this? The Last Dinosaur theme by Nancy Wilson. Practically a Bond theme.

I bought the Flemming book box set years ago, but I never got to reading all of them. I don't have enough time to read books! I still have the books, but I switched over to reading them on Kindle since it's so much more comfortable. I was reading them in release order, and made it through Goldfinger (so the first 7 novels) and read From a View to a Kill, but haven't finished For Your Eyes Only. So I still have 5 novels and 2 short story collections to finish the Flemming stuff. If I ever finish all the Flemming books, I'd love to read the stuff that came after but there's even more of that stuff than there are Flemming books! Some of the non-Flemming stuff sounds really good though. There can't be THAT many books that got published if they weren't half decent, but I never heard anyone talk about them before.

marurun wrote:I really don't like Brosnan as Bond. He's my least favorite. I feel like the Bond franchise struggled with 90s movie sensibilities as well. The 90s bombast and special effects with that Bond camp just created an odd mix for me.

Goldeneye was actually the first Bond flick that I ever saw, and it'll always be one of my favorites. Is it one of my favorites only because it was the first one I saw? I don't know. But I love the set pieces, and I love the music! It's definitely Brosnan's best Bond movie. TND and TWINE I like because they feel like very solid classic Bond movies. Goldeneye just seems like it's in another league though.

marurun wrote:I listened to Dr No in audio book form on a long drive several years back and it was quite good. I think I also read one of the story collections but I don't recall many of the details save that they were decent suspect and action stories.

I had a pretty annoying commute for about 5 years, and I don't know what took me so long to figure out that I should do Audible. It was only during the last year I was commuting that I started to listen to Audible (after that I stopped commuting because of the pandemic) and it really made the commute so much more tolerable. So I read a bunch of King novels, which I had been wanting to for years, then I was going to finish up the Bond novels but I stopped commuting. Bitter sweet, because on one hand I HATED the commute but on the other hand I have no time allocated to read books now.

Ack wrote:I read The Man with the Golden Gun, and the Moore film is dramatically better than the book. In truth, that might actually be my favorite film in the series because Christopher Lee is so fantastic.

There's actually a few times the Bond movies were better than the book. Usually it's the other way around! From Russia with Love I feel is better than the book. The movie follows the plot very closes, but adds another sinister layer in that Red Grant is really part of SPECTRE and shadows Bond for the entire movie. And Goldfinger fixed a massive plot hole that the book had. In the book, Goldfinger was going to attempt to steal the gold from Fort Knox. This plot was criticized for it being impossible due to the time and manpower it would take to physically move that amount of gold. Bond points this out in the movie, and they changed it to Goldfinger wanting to set off a dirty bomb to make the gold supply radioactive, thus making his own gold more valuable.

Ack wrote:Also...Timothy Dalton. I recall his films being maligned, but then the Daniel Craig run got praised for so much that Dalton had done, like get beat up and bleed, be moody and jaded, and occupy a moral grey space.

The Living Daylights is a pretty standard Bond affair. Timothy Dalton just has a very mean look to him. They played that up perhaps a little too much in License to Kill, and I think that's where a lot of the criticism comes from. He wasn't nearly as rough in Daylights.

As far as "Bond doesn't bleed," here's a video on that very topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOnfaNAVeHY

MrPopo wrote:One time in a used book store I found they had half the Fleming books for a song, so I picked them up. Subsequently lost them, which makes me sad. It's interesting to compare them to the movie adaptations. Some are reasonably close, like Goldfinger. Some diverge heavily, like Moonraker. And some just used the title, like Octopussy.

Were they old hardcover editions? When I was young I use to sometimes rent a Bond novel from the library and they always had really cool old hardcover editions with neat cover art. When I got my box set, they're paperback of course but the covers are super bland and boring.

edit: Just look at how awesome the old covers were. Especially the ones that have the wooden background.

https://www.grayflannelsuit.net/blog/ev ... -1953-1966

Compared to the paperbacks that I have. I can't find a good image of the covers, but take a look at the spines in this pic. What you see on the spines is all that's on the cover. Super boring.



edit: Here's the covers...