I Rewatched Every James Bond Film Ever And Ranked Them. Fight About It.
Yes, this list includes SPECTRE, too.
14. Skyfall (2012)
We’re approaching the good stuff now, but first we must address Skyfall: the final (hopefully) in the origin trilogy of Craig’s Bond that begun with Casino Royale. Three films into Craig’s Bond and he’s still not Bond yet — seriously, enough already. It’s frustrating, and there’s a hard detour into the character’s past that turns it into Home Alone in the final act.
Skyfall also cribs heavily on blockbuster plot elements that were starting to become clichéd around the time of its release; namely, when it turns out that getting caught was part of the the villain Silva’s (Javier Bardem) plan — like Loki in The Avengers, The Joker in The Dark Knight and Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. Thankfully, Skyfall is easily the best-looking Bond thanks to cinematographer Roger Deakins, and Adele revived the Shirley Bassey-style orchestral Bond theme while working overtime to find things to rhyme with ‘Skyfall’.
Okay, this bit was pretty rad.
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13. Thunderball (1965)
Bond beats up a crossdressing SPECTRE agent at his own funeral (he’s in drag as his widow), and then escapes using a jetpack in the opening of Thunderball. The opener is a pure Bond moment that many will probably snark at now, but it’s these exact moments that draw us to Bond. There’s an attractive realism about the modern interpretations of Bond, but sometimes it’s better when he’s strapped to a jetpack.
Thunderball is all about the scuba action set pieces (slow-moving, but still great), and another beachside setting that’s just an excuse to get Claudine Auger in swimwear. An often overlooked moment of excellence in Thunderball is SPECTRE hench-woman Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi), who is more than just a ‘Bond girl’, and who saves Bond’s life while riding a gold motorcycle that shoots rockets.
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12. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
The closest the Bond franchise gets to satire, with Bond facing off with a media mogul (Johnathan Pryce basically playing Rupert Murdoch) who is intent on starting World War III to boost ratings for his news division. It works surprisingly well, and fits in with the Brosnan era’s addiction to winking at the audience.
Tomorrow Never Dies has the best action of the Brosnan films, including a cracking pre-credit sequence involving fighter jets, a motorcycle chase, and one of the best car moments in the series with Bond using a gadget-powered BMW to escape a fortified garage. They do go a little hard on the martial arts with the inclusion of Michelle Yeoh as Bond’s ally, but the series had been lacking in kung-fu, so ‘97 was better late than never.
PS – Yes, the Sheryl Crowe theme is terrible, which is why it’s not worth mentioning.
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11. License to Kill (1989)
Almost every ‘80s action film cliché is jammed into License to Kill, as the Bond franchise tries to keep up with a genre in which it’s no longer dominant. There are Road House-style bars, Robert Davi is the definition of a 1980s drug lord villain, and people die hard in a rain of bullets and exploding chests. In fact, it’s also the first Bond film to land post-Die Hard when the world was craving a more wisecracking, working-class hero with a tad more violence.
Despite how horrid this all sounds, License to Kill works. It’s fascinating watching Bond through the filter of the ‘80s and Dalton is magnetic in his second, and last, outing as 007; it becomes apparent by the end that it’s a real shame he didn’t get to do a third.
The most valuable player award, though, goes to a young Benecio del Toro who appears as a goon with a flair for the dramatic.
Lil’ Benicio.