November 17, 2006 - Seeing as how Casino Royale — the 21st James Bond feature — opens this coming Friday, IGN Movies decided to celebrate the occasion with a weeklong series of features spotlighting the 007 franchise.
Today, we're ranking the entries in the Bond series from worst to best. We are leaving Casino Royale off the list since most of you still haven't seen it yet but if it were on the list, it would rank within the top five for sure. Here goes:
20. The Man With the Golden Gun
If any Bond film deserves being remade, it's this 1974 entry. The film has a great concept -- 007 (Roger Moore, in his second outing) vs. the world's greatest assassin, Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) -- but the execution is sloppy and silly. Herve Villechaize plays the pint-sized henchman Nick Nack and Britt Ekland is grating as Bond girl Mary Goodnight. MWTGG features one of the coolest car stunts ever done in a Bond film but the effect is inexplicably ruined by the use of a slide whistle sound effect over it. Unforgivable. Oh, did we mention Scaramanga has three nipples?!
19. Die Another Day
Although it remains the highest grossing Bond film to date, Die Another Day represents the Bond franchise at its most bloated, self-parodying worst. The picture begins promisingly enough with 007 (Pierce Brosnan, in his last appearance as Bond) getting betrayed and imprisoned in North Korea. But the villain's over-the-top scheme, Halle Berry's blaxploitation throwback Bond girl and the inclusion of an invisible car soon make the movie collapse under its own weight.
18. Diamonds Are Forever
It's evident that Sean Connery probably didn't see On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which starred his temporary replacement George Lazenby, before he made this follow-up. In OHMSS, Bond's bride is killed by Ernst Stavro Blofeld. In DAF, Connery's Bond acts as if the worst thing Blofeld ever did to him was to steal his parking space. Connery is paunchy and disinterested throughout the film, which introduced the campiness and skimpy storytelling that would mark most of Roger Moore's films.
17. A View to a Kill
This was Roger Moore's last film as 007, thankfully, as he was too long in the tooth by this point to seem anything but unconvincing in the action scenes or creepy as a love interest to younger women. The film boasts a catchy theme song and Christopher Walken and Grace Jones as villains. Tonya Roberts is absolutely one of the dullest Bond girls ever, and the "California Girls" ski sequence is simply abominable.
16. The World is Not Enough
The first hour of TWINE is a good Bond film but it quickly goes into an unrecoverable nosedive when Denise Richards' Dr. Christmas Jones (and all the innuendoes that go with such a character) is introduced. However, this entry does offer Judi Dench's M a meatier part than she had thus far enjoyed, as M becomes a target of the film's villain, heiress Elektra King (Sophie Marceau). Naturally, 007 (Pierce Brosnan) falls for Elektra but soon realizes that she is in cahoots (and in love) with the twisted assassin Renard (Robert Carlyle). TWINE is most notable for being Desmond Llewelyn's last appearance as gadget master Q.
15. License to Kill
This was Timothy Dalton's second and last Bond film. Some fans feel critics were overly harsh on this film, which made 007 a grim rogue agent on a vendetta. But even Dalton has gone on record saying LTK was too grim and had strayed too far from the Bond formula. Carey Lowell made for a bland Bond girl but she is offset by the sizzling Talisa Soto. Robert Davi chews the scenery as the drug lord villain Sanchez but he belonged in Miami Vice more than he did a Bond film. Look for future Oscar winner Benicio Del Toro as Sanchez's right-hand man Dario.