Best to worst of Bond

Number 1 Bond of all time IMHO. The only Bond where the movie is not only close to the book but even substantially improves on it. Great cast, very good plot. Only one bad point: the weak teaser, it is embarassing. But from there, it has few weak points.

The blueprint for many later Bonds, the smash hit that set the style with the mix of humor and action, complete with gadgets, with great characters as Goldfinger, Oddjob and Solo. If this one isn't high on your list, then you don't really like Bond at all. I love the golf scenes, possibly the greatest Bond-villain interaction ever.

"Bond in India", the most solid Moore-Bond, one of the best plots in any Bond movie. It gets a bit silly at times (with girl and clown jokes), but overall it is one of the best Bonds ever.

"Bond saves the world" is the better of the two "save the world" Bonds, with a fabulous teaser. Lots of fun scenes, Jaws is a great monster-villain here, and the quest for clues is really good. Despite the over-the-top plot the movie is really well told and one of the best.

"Magic Bond". It really is totally off course for Bond, with all the magic, but the offense actually works, due to the humor and well-cast actors. The ending of Samedi and Katanga is a bit of a letdown, though, but I think that is part of the problem, the conflict between the magic and the more realistic Bond world. The boat chase - far from the magic - is great fun. The best title tune ever, with Paul McCartney & Wings, helps keeping the tension up.

Very good Moore-Bond, save for a few stupid filler-action scenes in the middle. The overall story about Scaramanga is very good, and stands out as a story with very few but well done villains.

Underrated Bond, where Lazenby has no part of the movie's failure. Rather, Lazenby and Telly Savalas (as Blofeld) are carrying the movie very well. The movie really only has two weaknesses: A particularly dull first half hour (with a poor teaser and a dull theme) and the bad acting from the leading lady. But from there this is a perfectly fine Bond, up to the best ending of all Bonds.

The first Bond is very good up to a point, the stupid nuclear power ending. Very good casting, with the superb Anthony Dawson as one of the bad guys.

The first Dalton was terrific, with a pretty good plot, action, humor, and good actors for the most part. The Afghanistan part feels wrong today, after what happened later.

"For your eyes only" is the back-to-basics Bond that actually works. After two over-the-top save-the-world movies, this was vital, and the movie is mostly very good, apart for some silly scenes in the Alps, the hockey scene in particular.

"Underwater Bond" was sensational when it came, and it is partially good, but I feel less enthusiastic about it than the other early Bonds. It has a straight-forward and easy storytelling in its favor, but the underwater scenes can be rather confusing.

"Bond in Japan" is entertaining, but has some rather embarassing moments. The opening is bad, not really called for, and the ending seems too much like a copy of Goldfinger. The book has a particularly sharp ending which they didn't dare to use here, and a better plot. But it still works and is a pretty good Bond.

Pretty terrible script, but it is saved by some good scenes, by Connery, and by Wint and Kidd, and several other good characters. It is more a sequence of loosely connected action/thriller scenes than a real story, with plenty of script mistakes.

Roger Moore's last is not his best, but still good entertainment. Grace Jones is terrible, can't act at all, but except for that the story is pretty good, with a good plot (although quite predictable at times), avoiding yet another save-the-world scenario but still saving the world from a disaster. The Golden Gate scene is great.

"Bond in space" is too much a copy of "The spy who loved me" to be interesting, and the space scenes weren't good even for the time. After all, this is made after "Star Wars"! The movie is still entertaining, some fun scenes with an increasingly goofy Jaws, and has a great teaser.

The remake of Thunderball has Rowan Atkinson in its favor, but goes over the top several times with silly scenes that got dated quickly. The teaser as well as the world domination game are particularly bad.

"Bond in the news." The best Brosnan movie, best plot and best acting. Like most Brosnan-Bonds, it is not as well written as the earlier ones and relies too much on overdone action, but it has some points in its favor. The villain (Jonathan Pryce) is pretty good, but Vincent Schiavelli (as Dr Kaufmann) is the best actor in the whole movie, a true character actor who gives his character more depth in seconds than others do in hours. The plot is quite smart, although the ending is so stupid and predictable that it is embarassing.

Brosnan stepped in, with a rather poor first. It is forced and overdone in many ways. The female villain is a carbon copy of the one in "Never say never again", only more tasteless, and the villain (Sean Bean) is dull and anonymous, not suitable for a Bond. The best villain actor is John Gottfried (Orumov), the only real character actor. Alan Cumming (Boris Grishenko) also does a good job, a much needed comic sidekick. The tank-chase is fun but not enough to make the movie great.

After the great first Dalton movie, this was a total letdown. It is hard to say what went wrong, with all the action as well as interaction between Bond and the villain, and it is complete with gadgets and some humor. It seems to me that the problem really was the storytelling, and the uninteresting plot. We have already done drug dealing, in "Live and let die", but this was drug dealing without finesse.

The first Bond episode is still the best Casino Royale, but that is for lack of competition. Worth watching as curiosity but not really good. A fairly good try, in a way, but it is very, very wrong to make Bond american.

I would calls this "The action is not enough". The feeling of overdone, dull and uninteresting gets worse. The script is pretty terrible with several inexcusable turns, really badly told story, and can't even make the submarine scenes exciting. And the villains are really dull, how about some acting? The final appearance by Desmond Llewellyn is hardly enough to justify it.

This is the movie that convinced me to stop following the Bond series. Only the middle part, the casino part, is excusable. The beginning and the end are terrible, awfully acted and scripted. For a while I thought Craig was a poor actor, but in the middle I saw that the problem was the lack of a good story, because he could act once the tempo allowed it. If you like a lot of running, lots of shooting on flat and dull opponents, no humor, bad casting and a badly told story, this is for you. But not for me.

"Bond on ice", the last Brosnan-Bond, is close to unwatchable, predictable, with over-use of computer graphics for overdone action, unrealistic effects (invisible car) and cheesy camera moves. The story has all the weaknesses of other late Bonds, poorly told story with dull villains without personality, and unnecessary unrealistic violence. Not even the interaction Bond-villain (which is vital) works here. In the movie's favor: Battle between two super-cars, a fun idea in a way, plus perhaps the appearance of John Cleese.

I have tried watching this nonsense a few times but never managed to finish it. I like good comedies but I found nothing to laugh at. The waste of talent is significant. If you want a good Bond parody, try "Our man Flint" or "Get Smart" instead.

Utter rubbish, high-budget rubbish. I don't know what is worst, the confusing action scenes or that they kill off Mathis, a main original Bond character from Fleming's novels, one of the few that were left after writing out both Moneypenny and Q. In particular, the movie seems to make an effort to waste great special effects by cutting them from impressive to confusing. Several times, great special effects are given just a split second, with no time to grasp how good it was.