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Ranking the Bond Movies: Part 007 (The Best of Bond)

(Screencap courtesy of MGM.)

With this year marking the 60th anniversary of the James Bond movie franchise, I’m ranking all 26 Bond movies (and the Bonds!).

These lists aren’t meant to be definitive — how could they be? — but to be a fun look back at an iconic series… and maybe engage in some not-too-heated discussion over my worst picks.

Welcome to Part 007: The Best of Bond.

This is such rarified air that only two Bond movies can breathe it.

Before we begin, though, a quick correction.

The more I think about it, the more I realize Skyfall belongs in Part 006 — Classic Bond — instead of in Part 005 with the Bond movies that weren’t quite classics.

I’d been hesitant to include two of Daniel Craig’s five movies in with the classics, but clearly that was a mistake.

Skyfall is just that good.

With that out of the way, shall we begin?

Casino Royale (2006)
Casino Royale
“Yes, considerably.” (Screencap courtesy of MGM.)

Archetypal characters don’t need a backstory.

The Star Wars standalone Solo flick could have been good, had they just given us a fun Han and Chewie adventure, instead of needlessly (and often stupidly) explaining every little detail of how Han came to be.

Or imagine a reboot of the Clint Eastwood/Sergio Leone “Man With No Name” trilogy in which we learn that his name is actually Gary and he got into gunslinging because of his hurt feelings when his wife left him for an anti-gun rights lesbian.

On second thought, don’t imagine that. Sorry I even mentioned it.

We know who Han Solo is. We know who The Man With No Name is. We know who James Bond is.

We know them the first time we meet them.

The whole point of an archetype is that they require no explanation: They exist in perfect wholeness from the moment of their creation.

Just like James Bond existed in the movies from 1962 to 2005.

Needless to say, I wasn’t impressed when I read that the first Daniel Craig movie was going to give Bond a backstory. Other people were all upset that Craig was blond or that he wasn’t traditionally handsome enough. But I’d read just enough about good movie writing to know that you don’t give a backstory to an archetypal character like Bond…

…unless you do it very well.

As Bond himself said in the first Ian Fleming novel, “I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made.”

Casino Royale is very strong and very cold and very well-made.

It nails Bond’s backstory. The Bond we meet is not the Bond we know… but by the end of the movie, he is.

We don’t get the whole backstory, just enough to entice and entertain. (We got more — just the right amount of more — in Skyfall, as you can read in Part 005.)

Here’s our introduction to Bond:

Craig’s wry delivery of “Yes, considerably” stands in such contrast to his brutal difficulty in killing Fisher that we’re seeing James Bond take his first big step towards becoming “Bond, James Bond.”

Not coincidentally, the first time we hear Craig say the famous introduction it’s the last line of Casino Royale.

Structurally, that’s perfect movie writing. Dramatically, I still get a thrill thinking about it.

If Casino Royale drags a bit in the third act — and after multiple viewings, it does — it’s on purpose. Before Bond can become Bond, we need to see his heart shattered by the woman he loves. And audiences won’t buy that until they’ve seen him madly, truly, deeply in love with Vesper Lind.

Don’t even get me started on the delectable and sharp Eva Green as Vesper or we’ll be here all day. Every man in the audience fell in love with Vesper, including the gay men.

Finally, for anybody who thinks blond, “ugly” Craig doesn’t look like Bond, he sure as hell does in those final frames, wearing his Saville Row suit, holding his rifle, and standing mockingly above his wounded quarry.

Casino Royale earns its spot in the Top Two for daring to do what no Bond movie should have ever done, and then for executing it flawlessly.

For that reason, Casino Royale is the Bond I’ve watched more than any other…

…except for this next (and final) Bond selection.

Goldfinger (1964)
Goldfinger
“No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.” (Screencap courtesy of MGM.)

Everything about Goldfinger — the third Bond feature, but the first perfect one — is iconic.

Let’s run down the Official VodkaPundit Bond Checklist™.

Opens with a thrilling action sequence unrelated to the plot?

Check.

Sexy opening credits with an iconic song?

Check. GoldFINGer… bah bah bah BAH bah!

MI6 gets wind of an improbable evil scheme and summons Bond for a briefing?

Check.

Bond gets gadgets from Q?

CHECK!!! Q’s gadgets include that Aston-Martin DB5 with flippable license plates, tire shredders, bullet-proof shield, oil slicks, and an ejector seat. When I was eight years old, that ejector seat was the coolest thing in the world. I’m closing in on 53 and it still is. I even have the Lego set on the shelves behind my desk. God bless those Lego designers: The toy ejector seat works.

But back to the checklist…

An impossibly wealthy megalomaniac with a strange weakness?

Check: Auric Goldfinger has a secret lair with radar and laser beams but still cheats at gin.

A murderous henchman?

Oh, hell, check! Harold Sakata’s Odd Job pretty much defined the evil henchman for decades to come.

Bond is captured, threatened with a hideous death, but somehow escapes?

Check. With a fricken laser beam.

Stunning Bond girls?

Check, check, and check. We get Shirley Eaton as Jill Masterson, Tania Mallet
as Tilly Masterson, and (growl!) Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore.

An impossibly huge and action-packed third act in which Bond saves the day and beds the girl?

Check. Naturally.

Unlikely but well-deserved ends for both the villain and his henchman?

Check.

And let’s not forget Guy Hamilton’s sure direction. He uses a light touch that never once descends into camp.

And Sean Connery…

The James Bond that Craig spent three movies becoming was the James Bond that Connery was from the very first frame in his very first picture, distilled to 80-proof perfection in Goldfinger.

Goldfinger earns its top spot by being the first Bond movie to bring us all the Bond thrills we’d come to know, love, and expect.

Maybe some other Bond movie is technically better or more exciting in this way or that. But Goldfinger was the first one to do it all — and no other Bond will ever do it all first.

Let me wrap up this 007-part series with a few thoughts about where the Bond movie franchise ought to go next.

EON Productions shouldn’t start making new movies right away. They ought to let some of this woke madness subside before they reboot.

After all those sometimes goofy sci-fi elements, it’s time to reimagine Bond again, to get away from the gadgets and the trillionaire supervillains trying to take over the world. No more nuclear blackmail, no more nanobots, no more space stations, no more undersea lairs.

Give us a grown-up movie with grounded villains, and real-world spy/assassin thrills.

Be true to the character. Be true to the crazy and dangerous times we live in.

Yes, that would mean not going woke with a handicapped gay black female Bond.

Yes, that would mean not being politically correct by sometimes making the bad guys Islamic terrorists or revolutionary Leftists.

The new Bond should be unapologetically pro-British. And his old friend and ally at the CIA, Felix Leiter, should be just as pro-American.

Whatever Hollywood’s doubts, I guarantee audiences would flock to this vision of Bond.

But there’s no rush. It’s been 60 years. 60 thrilling years. We can wait a while.

EON can take a pause, think it over. And then, only when the time is right, bring back Bond right.

EON doesn’t just owe that to audiences or even just to their own bottom line.

They owe it to Bond…

James Bond.

Also: Ranking the Bond Movies: Part 001 (The Bonds, James Bonds)

Also: Ranking the Bond Movies: Part 002 (The Ones That Really Blofeld)

Also: Ranking the Bond Movies: Part 003 (Neither Shaken Nor Stirred)

Also: Ranking the Bond Movies: Part 004 (Popcorn Thrills)

Also: Ranking the Bond Movies: Part 005 (Shaken and Stirring)

Also: Ranking the Bond Movies: Part 006 (Bond, Essential Bond)

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