You probably didn’t see Thunderball when it originally came out in 1965. It was like going to see the Beatles. The lobby had life size posters of Sean Connery. The news was full of stories the military developing flying backpacks. Every boy had to have the Matchbox Bond Car. This was *THE *Bond movie that made him big. Disney even trotted out Darby O’Gill and the Little People!!
So, having ranked them, when are we going to be able to buy just the good ones on DVD again, instead of those mixed-bag boxed sets?
Og, please! As if I’m really going to pay $60 for one good Bond film, one halfway decent one, and three clunkers of the Moore and Brosnan era.
Stranger
Update:
I have seen Casino Royale.
It nudges *The Living Daylights * out of my **Top Seven ** and into the Middle Seven.
Did you really think you’d get some kind of consensus with this?
But let us remember that even the worst Bond film–whatever we each hold that to be–is still leagues ahead of anything starring Stallone, Norris, Seagal, or Willis (except Die Hard) or anything directed by Tony Scott, Michael Bay, or any of those hacks who make video game movies.
I wouldn’t go that far. I think *Enemy of the State * (the most watchable Tony Scott flick, IMO) is a heck of a lot better than A View to a Kill. Of course, so is watching a bowl of cold oatmeal for two and a half hours.
Interesting that *You Only Live Twice * and the Dalton films seem to generate the most disagreement. I guess my top four would be Goldfinger, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Dr. No, and From Russia With Love. The rest of the Connery films would follow that, and from there it becomes hard to decide. I’m not a big Timothy Dalton fan, but both of the movies themselves were technically superior to most of the Roger Moore ones. However, I’d be more likely to watch *Live and Let Die * or even Moonraker again, just because of the “so bad it’s good” factor. In my house, the easier it is to “do an MST3K” on a movie, the more likely we’ll watch it.
Of course, *A View to a Kill * fails even that litmus test.
I must be the only person alive who has Diamonds are Forever as his favourite Bond film.
Excellent stunts, great theme tune, really quotable dialogue (“the plans changed; we need tree alive!”… “Thats… most annoying”; “Nice shot”…“I dodnt know there was a pool there”) and a hot redhead Bond Girl? Bambi and Thumper? And Blofeld in uber kitty stroking action?
Remind me why people hate this?
bubastis:
The people who hate this like their Bond as a super-serious badass. That view tends to predominate on this message board.
For those of us who like Bond to be a little more fun, Diamonds Are Forever is up there with the best. It’s # 7 in my ranking, above.
Connery was fat (and despite the toupee, clearly balding), Jill St. John was fatuous, Blofeld (this time played by Charles Gray) was fey, the F/X were pretty laughable (even by the standards of the day) and the ending was anticlimactic. Bambi and Thumper were entertaining eye candy (but are we seriously supposed to believe that they kept Willard Whyte prisoner for years on end?) and Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint were parodies of themselves. The whole thing came off as a rather tired affair, with the major appeal being the Shirley Bassey-voiced title song. It doesn’t even have the silly, cartoonish humor of, say, The Spy Who Loved Me or Moonraker. It’s just tedious.
I’m trying to remember the “excellent stunts”; I recall Bond escaping away in a moon rover (on which the wheel comes off as it goes out of frame) and driving a Mustang on two wheels through a narrow alley (on the other side as it exits, it seems to have somehow flipped to the other side) but I don’t recall anything else. I can easily think of a half dozen other Bond films with more memorable stunt sequences.
To each his own, but I rate it as being by far the worst of the Connery Bonds.
Stranger
I’m in agreement with most of what Stranger said about Diamonds, but for me the main reason it ranks as the lowest Connery Bond is that Connery clearly isn’t into the role. I mean, the man couldn’t give a truly bad performance if he tried, but in this movie it’s very clear that he doesn’t really want to be playing Bond again. cmkeller mentioned that Diamonds is more for people who like their Bond to be fun, but when the star is clearly not having fun with the role, that detracts a lot from the fun the audience can have.
On the other hand, stunts. The fight in the elvator ranks as one of the best fight sequences in any Bond film. The quarters are close, the fighting is intense, and Connery makes it clear that Bond is struggling; he’s not a super-hero that knocks the bad guy out with one punch.