The Bond Movies Ranked By Box Office

joxer said:

Watch them all then watch all 24 recent mainstream… trash?
Ergo, all Bond movies are good.

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I think that if we took a random selection of big budget movies, we'd likely get a lot of mediocrity, a couple of good ones, and a handful of dire ones. Which I'd say is about the same.

Ripper said:

I think that if we took a random selection of big budget movies, we'd likely get a lot of mediocrity, a couple of good ones, and a handful of dire ones. Which I'd say is about the same.

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I'm not sure what you're basing this assessment on. While we can debate the merits communal average ratings, in this instance and for the point you're making, it's about the only kind of evidence available beyond your own assertations, to which you have previously stated you don't like them, which you implied was relating to all of them, which contradicts you now saying some of them are good.

IMDB ratings have the 'worst' one at 6.1, a couple at 6.3, the majority around the 6.8 mark and quite a few at 7 and above, peaking at one with an 8.

Dire movies are usually indicated by a 5.9 score or lower and genius movies are usually indicated by 8+, to which 6-8 is that standard for a good movie, in and around 7 for almost the entire series suggests a remarkably consistent mark of quality for such a long series. One might even say unprecedented until the Marvel movies appeared.

lackblogger said:

to which you have previously stated you don't like them, which you implied was relating to all of them, which contradicts you now saying some of them are good.

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I first said that only a couple of them were actually good films - heresy in the sense that I don't regard it all as some classic collection. There is no contradiction in what I said above.

The above was a reply, as you can see, to Joxer's challenge to watch them all, followed by a selection of more modern films, by way of a comparison. I'm saying that I think that would not yield the implied results, at least as far as I'm concerned.

Ripper said:

I first said that only a couple of them were actually good films - heresy in the sense that I don't regard it all as some classic collection. There is no contradiction in what I said above.

The above was a reply, as you can see, to Joxer's challenge to watch them all, followed by a selection of more modern films, by way of a comparison. I'm saying that I think that would not yield the implied results, at least as far as I'm concerned.

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Oh right, I see what you mean now. It's perfectly ok to like just some of them, I don't think anyone called that guy who only likes Goldfinger a heretic. My point still stands that there's no dire ones though, and that's pretty much the point of both my post and Joxer's. Die Another Day is certainly straddling that line, but it's not unsalvageable, it just has a few crappy scenes, which are crappy mostly for bond-related reasons as oppose to general film criticism reasons.

So which ones did you like?

I liked the early Connery ones (not so much Dr. No), where the tone was kind of Cold War spy thriller, with extra gadgets. I'd rate most all the middle era as mediocre, with a couple of the Moore ones, and certainly Die Another Day, as bad films. I did think Golden Eye was pretty good, and then Craig's first outing was pretty much a winner. Skyfall was decent, the other two pretty grim.

That sounds like a fairly normal run down of the series, quite the opposite of heretical, lol. I guess the confusion is how you're applying a more strict perspective with regards to small deviations in quality when you apply your descriptors of good, mediocre and bad, in that for that entire range your basically only in the 6-8 range kind of IMDB rating.

Excluding subjectivity, the production values and production ethics of a Bond film have never changed, one benefit of the no.1 producer always being either the same person or his daughter, who's motto is "don't let them fuck it up". As a result, the set design is always great, the locations are always great, the stunts are always real (except that one scene in die another day *cough*), the special effects are preferred to be miniatures rather than CGI, casting is usually exceptional, costumes, etc etc etc, to which the end result then depends on small variations in the subjectivity of how all that is delivered as a package, hence the very close margin of ratings.

Compare that to something like the Superman series, which is all over the place, or the Predator series, or practically all other movie series apart from Marvel where the differences between good, bad and mediocre are vastly more distinct and obvious. I mean, Bond has never gone Batman and Robin or Superman 4 has it.

I'm a big Casino Royale fan. The pacing in the movie is excellent and the production values top notch. The story line is also quite believable (for a bond movie).

An impressive piece of work, lackblogger. Very interesting.

I've seen a couple of Bond movies and they were … OK. I can understand why they're so popular, but personally … they don't do anything for me. Which actually surprises me a bit, but that's how it is.

pibbur who, if he expected mr Bond to die, would (based on experience) do what was necessary immediately, and in the simplest possible way. Which of course would result in a very short movie.

bjon045 said:

I'm a big Casino Royale fan. The pacing in the movie is excellent and the production values top notch. The story line is also quite believable (for a bond movie).

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Yes, Casino Royale is popular with non-pulp fiction fans. Bond is not supposed to be a realism series though, it's always, from its roots in pulp fiction, supposed to be a fantasised reality. It's more a matter of finding that fine line between too little fantasy and too much as oppose to aiming for air-tight plots based on hard reality. There are a few other entries in the series which were specifically made with more realism in mind and this quote is a meme for the production team:

"We always set out to make From Russia With Love and then end up making Thunderball".

I don't know if you'd be interested in being informed on the entries that are known for their greater sense of grounding or not, but generally, ones acceptance of fantasy in a movie is usually a good guide to the extent of critical reception rather than popular reception.

I don't think Ian Fleming's books are considered pulp fiction. I'd say he fits better in the camp with with Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle (very comparable to Doyle, in many ways). I'd agree that there is a strong element of the fantastic, or at least the far-fetched, but I don't think that puts in it the category of pulp fiction.

Ripper said:

I don't think Ian Fleming's books are considered pulp fiction. I'd say he fits better in the camp with with Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle (very comparable to Doyle, in many ways). I'd agree that there is a strong element of the fantastic, or at least the far-fetched, but I don't think that puts in it the category of pulp fiction.

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I agree with your comparisons, I'd say exactly the same. The ideal word to ues for this category is indeed debatable as there are so many definitions of paperback fiction:

"pulp novels, trash fiction, detective stories, adventure tales, spy fiction, etc".

The one I like is the one Bill Nighy uses to differentiate serious movies from the less serious movies, he calls stuff like Bond, Christie etc "Genre Movies".

pibbur who said:

pibbur who, if he expected mr Bond to die, would (based on experience) do what was necessary immediately, and in the simplest possible way. Which of course would result in a very short movie.

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Relevant to this discussion:

Lol, that's a good one too.

Funnily enough, QoS, aside from the silly name, which actually was a real short story by Fleming, so don't blame the production team, actually has a much tighter and less plot-holed story, even though it was made during the writer's strike, than Casino Royale, but it gets more mockery because it was the first Bond movie to require lots of knowledge of the previous movie for the plot to make sense, most which people had forgotten about when it came out.

I have no real objections to QoS, it's a fine Bond movie only slightly let down by the jump-cutty action scenes from those Bourne people.

Although they fared poorly at the box office, the two Timothy Dalton films have grown on me over the years. Certainly he made a better Bond than Roger Moore.

lackblogger said:

Yes, Casino Royale is popular with non-pulp fiction fans. Bond is not supposed to be a realism series though, it's always, from its roots in pulp fiction, supposed to be a fantasised reality. It's more a matter of finding that fine line between too little fantasy and too much as oppose to aiming for air-tight plots based on hard reality. There are a few other entries in the series which were specifically made with more realism in mind and this quote is a meme for the production team:

"We always set out to make From Russia With Love and then end up making Thunderball".

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Most interesting and I think an element of truth for me. When I was younger I enjoyed the rest of the movies more and as I have gotten older my preference for realism and moved closer to realistic over fantasy. Unless of cause, the movie is pure fantasy/alternative reality.

rjshae said:

Although they fared poorly at the box office, the two Timothy Dalton films have grown on me over the years. Certainly he made a better Bond than Roger Moore.

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Indeed, here we see a Bond movie doing Mad Max: Fury Road some 25 years before Fury Road, and one might even argue topping Fury Road 25 years before Fury Road, while simultaneously making records for explosions and also keeping the story and plot one of the least fantasised in the series.

Also: Benicio Tel Toro's first serious movie performance (his first movie appearance was in a Pee Wee Herman film, so I'm not sure that really counts...)

Pee Wee Herman films most definitely count! Those I find highly amusing, if you go into them with a Monty Python state of mind.

And here we see Bond doing Tarzan.

Ripper said:

And here we see Bond doing Tarzan.

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Nah, that's not him doing tarzan, that's just a throwaway joke (that likely would have got a good laugh in the theatres), though I admit, it also makes for a good throwaway joke on any forums discussing Bond

As Moore said:

If you don't have humour, then you may as well nail the coffin lid down now.

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And that was one of the problems that caused Licence to Kill to not perform as well as the other Bond films. By taking out a lot of the more cliché but comfortably familiar Bond movieisms, and trying too hard to be book-straight, the main criticism of the movie became "What makes this different to any other action movie I could watch?" and Bond movies shouldn't be 'just another action movie'.

When it was released, Licence to Kill was competing with quite a crowd of action legends, from Die Hard to Lethal Weapon, Stallone to Schwarzenegger, et al, and at this precise moment, when Bond really needed to be something radically different from the crowd, they hired the Bond who wanted to be a purist book-bond and the production team was desperate to move away from the, at that point, clichés of the Moore era.

On top of this, 1989 was just when the outrage industry was starting to notice the boom in action films, hence the unusually harsh adult rating for Licence to Kill.

The franchise was then halted due to legal squabbles for 6 years. He was offered Goldeneye but turned it down.

Hence, poor old Dalton just got whacked with bad timing. As did the bravery to be more book-bond serious.

Even today watching Licence to Kill, it does come across as more of a generic 80s action film than a Bond film, a really good one but one nonetheless. And this is why I like Moonraker so much, and why people love Octopussy even with its Tarzan gag, because, damn, at least they stand out, at least they're unique, at least they're unparalleled *trumpets and ticker tape*. For people who like that kind of thing, of course.