James Bond: The Wrap-up

Wow, so it took a lot longer than expected, but we have finally gone through all the Eon-produced Bond films. Of course, as a new film is released, I will be sure to promptly review it and rank it in its proper place.  And someday I would like to review the "unofficial" Bond films, such as Never Say Never Again and 1967's Casino Royale, but I think it is a time to take a short break from our British super spy!

Watching all the films again, in order, was truly a fascinating experience.  For better or worse, the franchise changed with the times, accurately judging the latest fads that audiences were into and capitalizing on them.  Sometimes that meant you were getting lean and hungry spy thrillers, and sometimes that meant James Bond was going to space!

This flexibility is also what allowed the franchise to survive longer than any other.  Historically, most film series would chug along until the studios felt the audiences had lost interest, and then they would be put out to pasture.  Bond was different.  When Cubby Broccoli felt the audiences tuning out, he would tweak the formula to get them back in.  We see this phenomenon more often today, as old franchises are rebooted for modern sensibilities. But Eon Productions was ahead of the curve; they’ve been playing this game and playing it well for over half a century.

First things first, here is my final ranking to all the Bond films, as well as links to their individual reviews.  I don’t feel entirely confidant about the middle of the list, as some of these films really shift in their spots depending on my mood.  But I am confident about the films that are in the bottom, and even more confident about Casino Royale being at the top. It really is that terrific.

1. Casino Royale
2. Thunderball
3. From Russia With Love
4. Goldfinger
5. Skyfall
6. The Spy Who Loved Me
7. Goldeneye
8. The Living Daylights
9. Dr. No
10. Octopussy
11. For Your Eyes Only
12. Tomorrow Never Dies
13. Live and Let Die
14. License to Kill
15. Man with the Golden Gun
16. Quantum of Solace 
17. Diamonds are Forever
18. Die Another Day
19. Spectre
20. The World is Not Enough
21. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
22. Moonraker
23. You Only Live Twice
24. A View to a Kill

I also wanted to rank the actors who played Bond themselves.  I have already spent some time going into this, but thought it would be important to official rank them here at the end.  The good thing is that I feel the Bond producers have almost always hit the mark with their lead character, only having missed the target once.  I truly do not like Lazenby as Bond, even though I have liked him in other films.  The rest of the performers playing the iconic role have been excellent choices – though only two have been the perfect package.

1. Sean Connery – the first, the best, the man who made Bond what he is.  Connery perfectly embodied all the elements that Bond needed – he was ruthless and believable as both a spy and a warrior, he was charming and debonair, he could handle a good pun and was completely at home flirting with the ladies. He is universally considered the best, and for a good reason.

2. Pierce Brosnan – the man born to be Bond.  He is the only other actor who I feel really embraced all the different elements of the character.  I do feel that he took a different approach to the character, however. As mentioned in earlier reviews, I always felt that Connery was a fighter who taught himself to be a suave man of the world.  Brosnan seems to me to be the opposite.  He was a charming and roguish prep school kid who then learned how to fight.  However you come into the role, I still feel these are two actors who most embodied everything Bond could and should be.  People discount Brosnan sometimes because his movies were not the best (and two of them are close to the worst), but they should really revisit those films just to observe Brosnan himself.  He truly was born to play the role.

3. Daniel Craig – another bruiser who became debonair, like Connery.  No actor has so fully embraced the flaws in Bond’s character, especially his arrogance, as Craig has.  His Bond is not a role model.  He has deep rooted problems. Craig is dangerous and is excellent in action mode. Admittedly, I don’t think he is as strong in the lady and comedy department. While part of this is because his films are more serious, he has had some opportunities to show off Bond’s lighter side.  And he is fine at it, just not remarkable. Can he nail the one-liner like Connery, Brosnan and Moore?  Sometimes he can, but sometimes the jokes fall a bit flat. And his Bond is also missing one important component – Bond has a certain joie de vivre.  He genuinely enjoys his work.  Craig’s Bond really seems to hate it, which might be why he tries to leave MI6 every single movie. I know that is a character decision and not necessarily the fault of Craig’s performance, but on the other hand, good producers also know to play to their actor’s strengths. Creative teams see what their actor is good at and they build around it to reinforce those strengths.  And Craig’s brooding anger is a huge asset that you can build around.  It just doesn’t necessarily vibe with a character who just loves being a spy.

4. Roger Moore – talk about someone who loved being a spy! Moore was the perfect Bond for the 1970s. He could play up the absurd, and was terrific at delivering a pun.  And his flirting with the ladies was always entertaining.  Look, could anybody in real life get women to swoon the way Roger Moore’s Bond did?  No, absolutely not. It is completely unrealistic. But in the context of the insane world that Roger Moore’s Bond inhabited – with its iceberg submarines and hovercraft gondolas – yes, I absolutely believe all of these women wanted to sleep with him. Yes, the world was crazy, but Moore’s Bond was in on the joke and winked at the audience through seven movies. Could I take Moore seriously as a dangerous spy?  Not really, though he had his moments.  Were Moore’s fights sometimes clunky and not particularly exciting?  Definitely.  Moore was better at throwing a quip than a punch.  But it is hard to deny that the man was having fun, and we were having fun with him.

5. Timothy Dalton – Dalton was the polar opposite of Roger Moore. Until Daniel Craig arrived on the scene, Dalton was easily the most serious Bond, and certainly the most dangerous.  In fact, if you were to think about which Bond actor fits the mold of a real spy, I would pick Dalton hands down.  I totally believe Dalton as a Cold War superstar, whether it is assassinating KGB agents or stopping heroin smuggling in Afghanistan.  Where he faltered was the other part of Bond's character.  He wasn’t particularly funny, and his romantic scenes always seemed forced. I do understand the producers wanted to tone down Bond’s promiscuity as the headlines of the late 1980s were dominated by the AIDS crisis.  But that doesn’t change the fact that Dalton’s Bond just looks uncomfortable with the ladies.  He just doesn’t want to be there.  He’s acting like he is begrudglingly sleeping with these women because he knows it is expected of him, and he would really rather be off somewhere else, beating up bad guys.  Dalton’s Bond can be a complete stick-in-the-mud (which Craig can also be guilty of).  Though he does sometimes enjoy himself like a true Bond should (look at the sheer pleasure he gets from sliding down the side of a mountain on a cello case in The Living Daylights), that is only the case when he is in the thick of the action, which I feel is only half the equation.

6. George Lazenby – the only terrible Bond. I like all the other actors who have played Bond.  They may have some flaws, but I enjoyed all of them and thought they brought something cool to the role.  But I really do think Lazenby is awful.  And it is nothing against George Lazenby himself.  I’ve seen him in a few other movies and he is fine.  I think he is downright hilarious in his cameo appearance in Kentucky Fried Movie.  But as Bond, I just think he is dull and flat.  Maybe I can give him a pass because this was his first movie and he just didn’t know what he was doing yet.  Maybe if he had accepted that multi-picture deal, he would have grown into the part and developed into a worthy 007.  But in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, he’s just dull and I feel he brings the whole picture down with him.  I don’t believe him as a dangerous spy for a second, he’s not particularly suave or charming, he can’t really deliver a joke, his romantic scenes with Diana Rigg seem forced (apparently, the two actors didn’t like each other very much).  I will say that the man clearly knows how to throw a punch.  So I guess there’s that.

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let’s go into a few other iconic Bond “elements” that I didn’t really get into during my reviews. There are a lot of pieces of the James Bond formula, aspects that have now become just as iconic as the character himself, and it would irresponsible for me not to mention them!


Best Bond Song:

The Bond films are now famous for their opening credit songs. As every new film goes into production, people wait with anticipation to see which artist has been Selected for the opening credits.  It’s a brilliant marketing ploy to build buzz, sell soundtrack CDs, and potentially bring a new audience to your movie. Seriously, how many hardcore Adele fans do you really think would have seen Skyfall if she hadn’t performed the opening number?

Just like the films themselves, the Bond songs have kept up with the popular trends of the day, and a number of huge hits have come out of the franchise. I generally prefer the brass-heavy or faster-paced songs, but the franchise is just as well known for its slower ballads.  There are some truly great songs in the canon: Diamonds are Forever, You Know My Name, Skyfall, Goldeneye and A View to a Kill - the last of which gets a special nod because the first 20 seconds are the coolest James Bond has ever sounded.  The whole song is good, but those first 20 seconds...brilliant!

But in the end, these songs (except for the aforementioned 20 seconds) are just honorable mentions. There are two true titans of the franchise, two songs are so good they need to be separated from the rest of the pack. These songs are not just the best Bond songs, but should be considered among the best songs written for any film ever.

Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die is so dynamic and thrilling that it was used as the soundtrack for the entire film, and was somehow perfectly appropriate for both the love and action scenes.

And then there is Goldfinger – the perfect Bond song - full of towering brass and featuring the titanic vocals of Shirley Bassey.  This was also the first time that the song was dedicated to the villain of the film, which I think is just hilarious.


Opening Title Sequence:

For better or worse, the franchise has also become famous for its elaborately designed opening credit sequences, popularized by the late, great Maurice Binder.  Stylized and always heavily symbolic, these opening title sequences ranged from octopus tentacles engulfing the screen to footage of the characters projected on gold-painted belly dancers (and yes, it is just as weird as it sounds).  The title sequences were probably most famous (and infamous) during the Roger Moore years when they truly went off the rails – often featuring blue-tinted nude silhouettes dancing, bouncing on trampolines, swinging off of giant gun barrels (with the guns often serving as the ultimate phallic symbol). They are bizarre and often unintentionally funny, but I wouldn’t call them good, necessarily.

For the best title sequence, I am going to have to go with Goldeneye – it features all the hallmarks of the Bond title sequences (tinted colors and silhouetted dancers), but they are dancing on top of crumbling monuments of Cold War Russia – and in some cases, smashing these monuments apart with giant hammers.  What is a perfect symbol of the uncertain era that Bond is about to enter – a chaotic new world where it isn’t always as clear who the good guys and bad guys are.  It’s pretty brilliant.

Best Pre-Credits Sequence:

Bond was also the first franchise to feature a pre-credits tease, a little mini adventure for audiences to enjoy before the film actually gets started.  Sometimes these pre-credit sequences are connected to the main plot, sometimes they are completely random.  But you can always count on a Bond film to start with one.  There have been a number of truly superb sequences, including the stylized black & white scene in Casino Royale where a newly minted 007 gets his first kills.  But for my money, you have to go back to Goldfinger for the best.  This short adventure is Bond at his most iconic – everything we know about Bond’s character and the formula that has served is his character so well for decades is featured in this tight 5-minute sequence.

Bond sneaks into the villain’s base in a wet suit, plants some explosives and then peels off his wet suit to reveal a tuxedo underneath so he can go to a swanky night club nearby.  We have some sneaky spy work, a few well-choreographed fights and even some spare time to make out with the local belly dancer.  And who can forget Bond giving one of his best Bond puns.  After electrocuting a bad guy at the end of a fight, he looks around in disgust, mutters “shocking” to himself and walks out.  If there is a sequence that manages to literally define everything Bond is about in under 5 minutes, this is it.


Best Bond Villain:

I know the answer is supposed to be Ernst Stavro Blofeld.  As the leader of SPECTRE, Blofeld is Bond’s ultimate nemesis and has plagued him for multiple films.  But honestly, I feel the franchise has always sort of missed the mark with Blofeld.  He was at his most terrifying and powerful when he was not seen, when he was just a faceless, intimidating voice in a Board Room full of villains.  As soon as he started appearing in the films, he somehow became less scary.  Whether it was Telly Savalas, Charles Gray, Donald Pleasance or Christoph Waltz, I never thought Blofeld was a truly credible threat.  Instead, Blofeld’s henchmen were always more menacing – Dr. No, Red Grant, Fiona Volpe, even Mr. White and Silva in the Craig movies (following the logic that both worked for SPECTRE).  But they all pale in comparison to the greatest henchman in the Bond movies, and maybe in any movie: the unforgettable Oddjob! 

I have loved Oddjob, played by Hawaiian actor (and Olympic medialist!) Harold Sakata, ever since I saw him crush those golf balls with his bare hands in Goldfinger.  The guy doesn’t have a line of dialogue, but his silence, with that “I am better than you” smirk permanently plastered on his face, is sublimely and menacingly perfect.  I love that he has an unbelievable weapon (a killer hat he throws at people) that is somehow made believable by his badassness.  And I love that Bond truly cannot defeat him.  He just can’t.  Oddjob mops the floor with him.  In order to win, Bond has to cheat.  I’ve always loved that.  So for me, this really isn’t a difficult choice.  Oddjob is my favorite villain, hands down.


Best Bond Stunt: 

The franchise has also become famous for its stunt work.  Lately, thanks to the vast improvements in digital effects, Bond's stunts have become a bit less flashy.  But back in the day, there was a lot of buzz about the next big stunt - whether it was the record setting bungie jump in Goldeneye or the 18-wheel tractor trailer that pops a wheelie in License to Kill...or the entire winter sequence in For Your Eyes Only that is more imaginative and stunt-laden than most chase scenes today.

But there are a few amazing sequences that rise to the top.  Here are my picks for top three stunts in Bond history below:

Coming in at #3, is The Spy Who Loved Me.  While the franchise had employed a lot of fantastic stunt work in the past, this is the film where they really said, "hey, audiences, guess what?  We are about to blow your mind!"  And when James Bond skies off that mountaintop (another record-breaking moment for the franchise) and deploys his Union Jack parachute, audiences were given one of the most iconic stunts in movie history.  And minds were indeed blown!

Then at #2 - we have what is easily the best car stunt ever, featured in Man with the Golden Gun.  This stunt is important in movie history because it was the first stunt to ever be conceived and calculated with a computer program.  There was some debate among my friends about whether this stunt was real or not, but I assure you it was.  This was an actual car with an actual driver, a driver who thought he was going to die, and who refused to do a second take when the first take miraculously went off without a hitch.  So enjoy this awesome car stunt.  I urge you to watch this with no sound, because the stupid slide whistle pretty much ruins the whole thing!

And now, at #1, the best stunt in James Bond history!  The cargo net fight in The Living Daylights.  Sure, in the tighter shots, this is Timothy Dalton fighting in a studio.  But for the wide shots...those are literally two stunt men hanging off the back of a cargo plane...this is an incredibly dangerous and awe-inspiring stunt once you realize what those stunt men are actually doing and how life-threatening it is...well, I'll just let the video do the rest of the talking:

Best Bond Girl:

Last but not least, the Bond Girl has become an enduring and iconic part of the franchise. The Bond Girl has become such a key ingredient of the franchise that there is actually an entire documentary about the phenomenon (Bond Girls are Forever).  It’s an exclusive club – though in fairness, these actresses were often given nothing to do except to look pretty and get rescued.  There is certainly a lot of sexism in these films, and watching how many of the female characters are treated, especially in the older films, can at times be uncomfortable.  But there are also a lot of empowered and progressive Bond Girls – badasses like Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman), Xenia Onatopp (Framke Janssen), Tracy (Diana Rigg), and Agent Mai (Michelle Yeoh) who go toe-to-toe with Bond and serve as equal partners or powerful villains.

So who is the best Bond Girl? I know I am supposed to say Ursula Andress in Dr. No.  She was the first, and she has that famous entrance as she walks out of the ocean with a knife in her belt, like some sort of armed Venus de Milo.  It's an iconic moment, and rightly so.  And for that beach walk alone, she probably should go near the top of the list.  But I would never put her at No.1 because after that iconic entrance, she kinda…doesn’t do anything.  She’s just there, serving no purpose and adding nothing of value (except for her looks, of course).  So who would I pick in her place?
 
It's also tough to choose just one because the Good Bond Girls and Bad Bond Girls are so different and hard to compare to each other.  So I will pick a favorite in each of the three categories.

For the Bad Bond Girl, I love Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) from Thunderball, one of the few truly dangerous villains in Bond’s rogue’s gallery. One could argue that she is actually smarter than Bond; she’s almost always one step ahead of him.

For the Good Bond Girl, I would say Vesper Lynn (Eva Green) is terrific in Casino Royale; she is the one Bond Girl that I honestly believed the character could fall in love with.  Her arc in that film is positively heart-breaking.

But wait, I hear you say, you mentioned three categories. Was that a typo?  Definitely not!  There is of course the important third category, the Bond Girl That I Would Most Likely Fall In Love With...and that is without a doubt Solitaire from Live and Let Die, played by Jane Seymour.  Because it is Jane Seymour.  And...well, yeah, there really isn't much else to say about that.  It's Jane Seymour.

So there we go.  That’s it.  This series of reviews is over!  This has been a fun experiment, and while I hope you enjoyed revisiting this franchise as much as I did.

But I’ll be honest, I do look forward to reviewing other films again!

Until next time…

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Sean Connery did not have a pleasant experience filming You Only Live Twice.  Mobbed by fans, sometimes dangerously so, feeling undervalued and underpaid, and tired of being addressed as Mr. Bond instead of Mr. Connery, the volatile Scot was ready to call it quits.  I’m sure the fact that the films were growing increasingly over-the-top didn’t help.  With their super star leaving the franchise, producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were in a bit of a bind – basically, they had to prove that the character was bigger than the star.  And even though it was a massive hit in the box office, they also recognized that they may have gone a bit overboard with You Only Live Twice (you think?!?!). 

And so we find ourselves with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service starring a model from New Zealand, George Lazenby, in a plot that tried to stay down to Earth and follow Ian Fleming’s source novel more closely that the previous film.  Though he failed to capture Blofeld in Japan, Bond has not given up the hunt for his mortal enemy.  During his investigation, he meets Tracy, the rebellious daughter of Draco, the leader of one of Europe's major crime syndicates, who just happens to know how Bond can find Blofeld.  It seems the villainous leader of SPECTRE (played by Telly Savalas, who replaces Donald Pleasance) claims he wants to go straight, but he is clearly up to something strange.  He is petitioning the London College of Arms to be recognized as the Comte Balhazar de Bleuchamp of Switzerland, and he is also operating a secret clinic in the Swiss Alps to cure women of their allergies.  Bond goes undercover and visits the clinic pretending to be the London College of Arms expert on heraldry.  Hijinks ensue.

Okay, some spoilers coming so be ready!!!

The movie was a hit, though a modest one.  Reviews were mixed, though no one particularly loved Lazenby. For decades, it was considered a bit of a black sheep of the franchise.  But film history has been kind to On Her Majesty's Secret Service.  Critics have defended the movie, it’s more realistic approach, and a storyline that focuses more on spy work and less on gadgetry.  Critics also speak highly of Diana Rigg and Savalas, and also say that Lazenby isn’t even as bad as everyone claimed; he was just in an unfair position of being judged next to the greatest Bond of all time.  Any actor would have suffered in that situation. Now, decades later On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is usually listed among the best of the Bond films. 

Everyone seems to love it.  To which I have to say…

Everyone is wrong. 

I just think this is not a good film at all.  Let’s start with Lazenby…who is simply terrible.  He’s not bad just because he’s being compared to Connery.  He’s bad because he actually is, well, bad.  He had never acted before, and you can tell.   Look, I like Lazenby.  He’s seems like a pretty cool guy in interviews and I’ve actually really liked him in some other movies (he’s a highlight in Kentucky Fried Movie).  But he just isn’t any good here.  His line readings are stiff and he is just unbelievable for most of the movie.  He certainly knows how to throw a punch, but the editing and frame manipulation is so choppy that you can’t even enjoy the fights.  I have friends who say, “but, if you ignore Lazenby, it’s a good movie.”  Well, you can’t do that because he is James $%!$& Bond and he is in every single scene.

But even if I could ignore Lazenby, it would still be a bad film.  It would have been a bad film even with Connery.  People talk about the awesome spy stuff?  When Bond goes undercover, his disguise is basically a kilt and a pair of glasses...but that's enough to fool Blofeld, who doesn't recognize his mortal enemy – even though they just met face-to-face in the last film.  Bond meets an international bunch of ladies in Blofeld’s lair, who are being brainwashed Zoolander-style with funkadelic lighting to do Blofeld’s bidding.  And Blofeld’s master plan?  After sitting through what seems an eon of discussing earlobes and other genealogical traits, we discover his scheme is totally unrelated.  He just wants to girls to take back some formulas to make every living thing in the world infertile.  Huh?  That’s your big plan?  That’s the awesome, realistic plot that everyone is defending? 

Meanwhile, we have the “B Plot” of Bond falling in love with Tracy.  Her father basically bribes Bond to marry her because “she needs a man to tame her” which is already a bit awkward, and we are then treated to a montage of Bond and Tracy courting and falling in love while we listen to Louis Armstrong belt out “We Have All the Time in the World.”  Right.  Because romantic montages is what I want to see in a Bond film. 

But the cardinal sin of the film is that for the most part it is just plain dull.  Peter Hunt may have been a fine editor, but as a director he is out of his league, providing the film with no real pace or momentum. For most of the runtime, it’s just stagnant.  Putting a rookie director with a rookie Bond together was a big mistake.

Is it really all that bad?  No, to be fair, it isn’t.  There are moments when the film works, such as an early sequence where Bond has to crack a safe to access some crucial information.  It’s Lazenby’s best scene, actually, displaying the right balance of arrogance and nonchalance, and shows a hint of the Bond he could have perhaps grown into.  I think Diana Rigg is also terrific as Tracy.  I may not be particularly interested in that part of the plot, but she still does a great job with the character.  She is considered one of the best Bond girls, and I understand why.

SPOILER ALERT: The movie is also famous for its downer ending.  Bond actually marries Tracy (the fact that you believe this shows how good Diana Rigg actually is!), but as they drive off on their honeymoon, she is shot and killed by Blofeld and Co.  It was pretty shocking at the time.  Is that scene effective?  Sort of.  Blofeld driving away in the car while crippled in a neck brace is unintentionally funny.  But Bond's reaction is Tracy's death is appropriately tragic.  And the last shot of the film, Tracy's bloody head as seen through the cracked windshield, is superb.  All in all, it's actually a good and tragic scene.  SPOILER ALERT OVER.

What else did I like?  There are some nifty ski stunts in the second half of the film.  And then...I don't know, I guess that's it.  There are long stretches of the film that aren't bad.  They just aren't good. They are just utterly forgettable.  And that's what this movie is - utterly forgettable.  

RANKINGS:
Okay, this one is tough.  Clearly On Her Majesty's Secret Service is near the bottom of the list.  But is it the worst?  Which one is more painful, You Only Live Twice or On Her Majesty's Secret Service?  Do I select the stupid one or the boring one?  What is a more grave sin for this franchise?  If I was strapped to a chair and forced to watch one of the two, I would probably go for You Only Live Twice, but I think that is because I love Sean Connery and ninjas.  On Her Majesty's Secret Service is probably a better movie.  And in the end, I really do respect what it is trying to do, and I admire the guts it took to film that depressing ending.  So there you go.  It's a close one, but On Her Majesty's Secret Service comes in at #5.  Here's the full list so far:

1. Thunderball
2. From Russia With Love
3. Goldfinger
4. Dr. No
5. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
6. You Only Live Twice

BEST LINE:
James Bond (last lines of the movie): It's all right.  It's quite all right really.  She's just having a rest. We'll be going on soon.  There's no hurry, you see.  We have all the time in the world.  


TRIVIA:
Broccoli and Saltzman originally planned to explain the change in actors by saying that James Bond had undergone plastic surgery because his face was too recognizable to his enemies.  That would have made sense from a plot standpoint, but was going to call too much attention to the casting which was already getting too much press. So instead they decided it would be better to address the change in actor with a cheeky joke in the beginning of the film: "This never happened to the other fella."  


MVP: 
For the second straight movie, I am going with John Barry who supplies On Her Majesty's Secret Service with a thrilling score, with terrific action music and one of his better love themes, "All the Time in the World."  It's not his best Bond score certainly - that title belongs to either Goldfinger or You Only Live Twice - but this is Barry doing what he does best.  If the movie doesn't seem like a proper Bond film, it at least sounds like one! 

 

BOND...JAMES BOND

Bond is my franchise.  Let me just get that out there.  It was something I realized around the time of Casino Royale (2006).  As a child of the 1980s, I grew up in a time when franchises were really beginning to explode, and I was raised on a healthy diet of Star Wars, Star Trek, Indiana Jones and James Bond.  Since then, I have seen all of these franchises hit some dark days.  In fact, in some ways, I'm not sure I want those franchises to survive.  I think many of us would agree that the Star Wars prequels and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull almost killed Star Wars and Indiana Jones, respectively (even if they did make a lot of money).  We'll see what Disney has in store for these series moving forward, but my expectations are not that high.  And Star Trek, while I like the cast and found the first reboot to be genuinely entertaining, was not really Star Trek to me.  It felt more like J.J. Abrams' demo reel to get the Star Wars gig.

So why do I prefer Bond to those others?  Longevity and consistency.  Look, there is not a single James Bond film that is as good the original Star Wars Trilogy, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  No Bond film even comes close to hitting the triumphant peaks that those films reached.  And yet, the character and the formula of Bond endures.  And unlike other franchises, there doesn't seem to be a lot of second guessing.  If Eon Productions makes a bad Bond film, they shrug their shoulders, fix what isn't working, and then move on to the next one.  There is comfort in that consistency.

There is also the matter of Bond himself.  I hear Disney is rebooting Indiana Jones with a new actor in the lead.  That's not gonna work.  Indiana Jones is Harrison Ford.  Bond is bigger than any of the actors who played him.  He has entered the territory of Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, and other icons who are far more important than the actors who are playing them.  I think that is an important point that needs to be made.

As far as I'm concerned, the Indiana Jones series ended with The Last Crusade.  Star Wars only had three films that ended in 1983, and Star Trek was ruined by the Next Generation's cast moving to the big screen (three out of those four films were garbage, and even the good one, First Contact, was only okay).

Nope.  It's official. Bond is my franchise.

One of the longest continuing film series in history, James Bond was the literary creation of Ian Fleming, a British author who had spent time as a naval intelligence officer in World War 2.  While his war service was nowhere near as adventurous as Bond's career, it did give the books a bit of authenticity.  I always felt that Bond was the spy Fleming wished he could have been, but that might just be me reading into it too much!   Either way, the books were hits, and it didn't take long for Hollywood to come calling.

The first Bond adaptation was the Casino Royale episode of the Climax TV show.  It featured Barry Nelson as American (not British) spy James Bond and weaselly Peter Lorre as the villainous Le Chiffre.  I think most people just consider Casino Royale as an interesting side note and mark the true beginning of Bond's cinematic career when producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli teamed up in 1962 to make Dr. No.  And that is where I will begin my reviews.

I plan on watching all these films and reviewing them in order, and ranking them as I go.  It will be fascinating to watch the series change as the decades pass, always riding a wild roller coaster from fairly serious and realistic to over-the-top special effects bonanzas, and then back again, always staying current by cashing in on current trends (including even Blaxploitation, Kung Fu and the Star Wars films) and continually riding on the timeless coattails of one of the most entertaining characters in movie history.  This is going to be fun.

So let's get going!