Who is the Best 007?

[Shaka Zulu]

"For Your Eyes Only" is, to me, the clear winner-loser. Slow, drippy, and not even fun in a cheeseball way like "All Time High".

"For Your Eyes Only" was nominated for an Academy Award, and at the 1982 Oscars, it was preformed by Sheena Easton complete with a ridiculous (in relation to the movie) Moonraker sequence where the good guy lasers some bad guys and gets the girl (and also featuring Richard Kiel [Jaws] and Harold Sakata [Oddjob] in a final appearance before his death from cancer months later):

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6r8HdV5cO4[/yt]


Thankfully, it lost to 'Arthur's Theme (The Best That You Can Do)'.

Moonraker would have been better if they kept the plot from the book. Craig could pull it off.

If this had been done in 1979 when nukes were still a concern and England having them was controversial (and would be even more so in the 1980's), then the movie might have worked. As it is now, England having nukes isn't a big deal that way it was back in 1955 when the novel was published, and something would have to be done to make it work now.

 

[Starkers]

I'm not sure the UK having nuclear weapons was that controversial in the 70s/80s. Yes there was the rise of CND but CND had been around since the late 50s, and the UK had had nuclear weapons for several years before this. There were very specific protests at Greenham Common with regard to American cruise missiles being based there but, on the whole, I think the British population saw nuclear weapons as a neccesary evil given the Soviet threat.

This doesn't mean people weren't scared of them, just look at the success of The Fourth Protocol, but controversial? No more than in many other nuclear armed countries.

I still think there's milage in a madman wants to blow up London style plot, but it would have to be done well to avoid Austin Powers' comparisons. I guess these days people are more scared of chemical/biological attacks which is understandable, but even a low yeild atomic weapon in a large city would cause huge loss of life, with the added loss of infrastructure into the bargain.

Somehow I doubt we'd ever see Daniel Craig defusing an atomic bomb whilst dressed as a clown however...

 

[RJDiogenes]

Thankfully, it lost to 'Arthur's Theme (The Best That You Can Do)'.

Wow. "For Your Eyes Only" and "Arthur's Theme." That was a bad year.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

^'Arthur's Theme' isn't as hokey as 'For Your Eyes Only'.

 

[tighr]

Somehow I doubt we'd ever see Daniel Craig defusing an atomic bomb whilst dressed as a clown however...

What a terrible movie that could have been less terrible. Roger Moore was the worst.

 

[Starkers]

I actually quite like Octopussy. It's a "reasonably" realistic spy thriller, it's got a unique setting in India and for once they give Rog a love interest who's only young enough to be his daughter rather than his grand daughter

 

[Vasquez Rocks]

Octopussy is one I enjoy too and the scene with Roger dressed as a clown is played deadly serious from the tension of the bomb that might go off. It's actually my favorite bomb defusing scene in any of the 007 films. There's a sense of urgency that Roger plays really well along with the car chase right before it that adds to the tension mounting.

 

[CorporalClegg]

I've always seen that scene as the Broccolis acknowledging that Moore's Bond had gone completely harlequin by that point. So they literally made him a clown.

 

[VST]

Oh Octopussy is easily a favourite of mine. Genuinely bonkers but Moore is having fun, Louis Jourdan is silky smooth, Steven Berkoff is a fantastic lunatic & it has Bond fly a jet out of a horses arse. I mean what more do you really want?

 

[tighr]

It's actually my favorite bomb defusing scene in any of the 007 films.

You like it better than the bomb scene in Goldfinger?

 

[Candlelight]

Favourite Bond: Brosnan

I loved all four of his films (though the one with the newspaper magnate was a bit silly). Die Another Day is my favourite Bond movie.

"My" Bond: Moore

He was the incumbent when I first discovered the Bond series growing up. Moonraker was my childhood favourite.

Worst Bond: Craig

I can't stand his movies. It's like the powers that be watched The Bourne Identity and thought that would be a great way to change the series. I absolutely hated the scene with Q in the last one, about not making exploding pens anymore. Gadgets were a part of Bond when I was growing up and made the film fun and futuristic. Now we have boring old Craig wandering about without any charisma with just a gun. Boring.

Lazenby and Dalton I haven't watched any of their films in ages. Connery is great but I just prefer the others.

 

[Vasquez Rocks]

It's actually my favorite bomb defusing scene in any of the 007 films.

You like it better than the bomb scene in Goldfinger?

Yep. I do. Every time I watch that scene I feel the tension from Moore's performance along with the crowd and the general's reaction when they find out there is a bomb set to go off.

 

[2takesfrakes]

THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS has the hottest - and sweetest - Money Penny, like ... EVER! And the coolest car, in my opinion, too! Not so crazy about the Bond Girl in this one, but otherewise, I would rank this 007 outing as very high.

THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH has Sophie Marceau and the video Garbage did for the theme song for this movie was awesome! Denise Richards was OK, but Sophie was just ... phenomenal. I would definitely rank this one as a very close second.

 

[cardinal biggles]

I've always seen that scene as the Broccolis acknowledging that Moore's Bond had gone completely harlequin by that point. So they literally made him a clown.

...& it has Bond fly a jet out of a horses arse. I mean what more do you really want?

These two things pretty much sum up the Moore era for me.

 

[Starkers]

Favourite Bond: Brosnan

I loved all four of his films (though the one with the newspaper magnate was a bit silly). Die Another Day is my favourite Bond movie.

"My" Bond: Moore

He was the incumbent when I first discovered the Bond series growing up. Moonraker was my childhood favourite.

Worst Bond: Craig

I can't stand his movies. It's like the powers that be watched The Bourne Identity and thought that would be a great way to change the series. I absolutely hated the scene with Q in the last one, about not making exploding pens anymore. Gadgets were a part of Bond when I was growing up and made the film fun and futuristic. Now we have boring old Craig wandering about without any charisma with just a gun. Boring.

Lazenby and Dalton I haven't watched any of their films in ages. Connery is great but I just prefer the others.

Craig, like Dalton, is more suited to very dry quips. Luckily they play to his strengths, I’d have loved to have seen Dalton get the kind of dialogue Craig does (he does get some good lines, but also some very Moore’esque one liners).

The trouble with the gadgets is that what was cool and futuristic in the 60s has increasingly become stuff we can all have. Part of the problem with Jeffrey Deaver’s recent Bond novel is that Bond basically just uses his mobile phone for everything, Q has an App for every occasion, and it’s both silly and boring. I think this started to be a problem from the Brosnan era onwards, in trying to come up with things that seem increasingly futuristic they possibly went too far. I don’t have a huge problem with the invisible car, because it is technically feasible for the future, but on the whole people found it too much.

I love the scene with Q, especially given it contains homages to two previous films; the signature gun from Licence to Kill (though really Judge Dredd had one first) and the radio which is a call back to Goldfinger. And Skyfall does end up with Bond using a car fitted with machine guns

THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS has the hottest - and sweetest - Money Penny, like ... EVER! And the coolest car, in my opinion, too! Not so crazy about the Bond Girl in this one, but otherewise, I would rank this 007 outing as very high.

What!? Kara is my third favourite Bond girl (after Tracy and Xenia) and I always feel sorry for Caroline Bliss, she gets some terrible dialogue and really is the weakest Moneypenny. I do think Dalton's Aston Martin is my favourite of all of them.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I actually quite like Octopussy. It's a "reasonably" realistic spy thriller, it's got a unique setting in India and for once they give Rog a love interest who's only young enough to be his daughter rather than his grand daughter

I liked Octopussy, too. I found it a return to form after The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, both of which disappointed me (after loving both Live And Let Die and The Man With The Golden Gun).

 

[VST]

Worst Bond: Craig

I can't stand his movies. It's like the powers that be watched The Bourne Identity and thought that would be a great way to change the series. I absolutely hated the scene with Q in the last one, about not making exploding pens anymore. Gadgets were a part of Bond when I was growing up and made the film fun and futuristic. Now we have boring old Craig wandering about without any charisma with just a gun. Boring.

People always say this about the Craig-era films, that they're just Bourne-lite, and I can't help feel that's a bit unfair.

No question, EON looked at Bourne & knew that template was where modern action cinema was heading, it was certainly an influence--and a good one--but the primary rationale was getting back to Ian Fleming. CR & Skyfall have been the closest movies to Fleming since the 60's, maybe even closer - those books are not the louche, gadget-filled, cinematic superman but the cold, sexist, hard drinking tough guy Fleming gave us. It's very faithful.

Cinematic Bond needed to update. I love all the old movies with their colour & camp, but 007 would have died these days had we got three more Die Another Day's. It was all just too Austin Powers. You can drip back in those elements while keeping it tough & modern. Bond hasn't been in as good a shape as with Craig in 20 years IMO.

 

[Starkers]

I wasn't overly keen on the films becoming more Bourne like, but with Skyfall I think they've finally got the balance right. It's worth adding as well that whilst Bond started the spy trend of the 60s, over time it is Bond that has followed other trends:

Live and Let Die has a very much Blacksploitation feel to it, and it's interesting to note that 007 exhanges his PPK for a .44 Magnum in the final reel, Dirty Harry came out a couple of years earlier.

The Man with the Golden Gun, well here we have a film featuring some martial arts, just a year or so after Enter the Dragon came out.

The Spy who Loved Me, featuring a character called Jaws who actually fights a shark at the end. Of course Jaws had come out just two years earlier.

Moonraker...the most obvious one really, especially given that the end of TSWLM said Bond would return in FYEO

Flash forward to Dalton and for his second film the producers were heavily influenced by the current trend for violent US action films ala Lethal Weapon, so much as I wasn't keen on them going for a Bourne look, it did make sense.

007 has always reflected the time he's in and very specifically since Connery the films have also followed other trends, which is part of the reason the franchise is still going and the Bourne films will go the way of every other pretender to the throne

 

[VST]

^All very true indeed.

 

[MacLeod]

Well "Skyfall" must have done something right to rake in US$1.1bn at the box office, the first Bond film to take over US$1bn at the box office.

But it might have gotten a slight boost from it being the 50th Anniversary of the film series.

It'll be interesting to see what they do for Bond 24, after all Skyfall did re-indroduce some familiar things, Moneypenny, the new M's office looks a bit like the one from the Connery era. Bond's first few gadgets where basically a new gun and a tracking device.