[Sentai]

OHMSS is one of the worst Bond's ever. It's four hours long, Kojak is the villian, the story takes forever to get moving, and the love story is just... idiotic.

Lisence to Kill is just as bad. Both of his movies are, that's why he only had two movies. That dork nearly killed the whole darn franchise!

You want the absolute best Bond movie? Goldfinger. Hands down.

[ljacone]

First off, Sentai, the word is spelled either "License" (American English) or "Licence" (British English), and in the case of the Bond film the title is Licence To Kill.

Now then. I will grant you that OHMSS is overlong. But that is a criticism of a lot of the Bond films from that era -- You Only Live Twice, the preceeding film, is especially bad about this as it slows to an absolute crawl in the second half. But to say the love story is idiotic is absolutely insane. Have you ever read Ian Fleming? The adaption of OHMSS is very close to the book and the special relationship between Bond and Teresa is much the same. "We Have All the Time In The World" is best left to its instrumental cues, but I love seeing the two of them together. Diana Rigg is gorgeous and Teresa is a unique Bond girl.

Remember also that this predates Columbo by a long time. So blaming Telly Savalas for playing Columbo later is pretty nonsensical.

Licence to Kill is not one of my favorites, but it's not that bad either. It's a little jumbled but the series was clearly at a creative low point. Regarding Dalton, there was a third film planned, Property Of A Lady, and depending on who you ask, preproduction may have started on it before the film was cancelled.

Licence To Kill unfortunately had the bad luck of being released in one of the nastiest summers of my childhood, competition wise: it was up against Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, Batman, Back To The Future Part 2, Lethal Weapon 2, Ghostbusters 2, The Little Mermaid, and Honey I Shrunk The Kids. It never had a chance!

Honestly, as someone who has been a Bond novel and movie fan for 25+ years, I can say that the worst of the official Bond films are some of the modern dreck like Die Another Day and Quantum of Solace. I thought Casino Royale was fantastic and couldn't wait for QoS; what we got was just awful. The only good thing Die Another Day did was cause the change which brought us Casino Royale.

Of the classic series, You Only Live Twice is pretty poor. It's just draggy and boring, and The Spy Who Loved Me would do it a lot better a decade later. The Man With The Golden Gun is a personal favorite because I am a big fan of Scaramanga (both the character in the book and as portrayed by Christopher Lee), but it's a lackluster movie all told. Similarly, I will always have a soft spot for Moonraker, but that movie has a LOT of faults. (Ironically I just finished reading Christopher Wood's novelization and it is much better than what ended up on the screen.)

As far as best? Goldfinger is the popular choice because it is the correct answer. Just fabulous from start to finish. I am also very partial to The Spy Who Loved Me, which is as far as I am concerned the "perfect" Roger Moore Bond picture.

[Sentai]

OHMSS will never be good to me... Ever. So let's skip that, and agree to disgaree.

LtK was horrible because it's horrible. Both Dalton movies were, to be honest. The story was full of holes big enough to fly Sean Connery's baldpatch through, the one redeeming factor? Was that it was the first Bond, that I remember, not to use fantasic gadgets. He had to rely on himself.

Alot of the movies are a little on the long side, yea. You Only Live Twice, Dr. No, especailly Live and Let Die. Except Live and Let Die is good.

Moonraker is one of those movies where it's cheesy, but.. You can't hate it.

And don't correct my spelling. Only my girlfriend gets to do that, and she does things to make up for it you can't.

[areaseven]

The worst Bond movie will always be The World Is Not Enough. All it needs is Denise Richards to prove it.

[Sentai]

Quote:

Originally Posted by areaseven

The worst Bond movie will always be The World Is Not Enough. All it needs is Denise Richards to prove it.

touche.

[ljacone]

Quote:

Originally Posted by areaseven

The worst Bond movie will always be The World Is Not Enough. All it needs is Denise Richards to prove it.

I'll take TWINE over Die Another Day every day of the week and twice on Sundays. As bad as Denise Richards is, she's nowhere near as offensive to the brain as EVERYTHING HALLE BERRY SAYS AND DOES in Die Another Day. Add to that the insanely terrible CG effects, the invisible car, the guy with diamonds embedded in his face, and you have a recipe for a terrible movie.

TWINE at least had Robert Carlisle and Sophie Marceau going for it!

[Switchblade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sentai

OHMSS is one of the worst Bond's ever. It's four hours long, Kojak is the villian, the story takes forever to get moving, and the love story is just... idiotic.

Lisence to Kill is just as bad. Both of his movies are, that's why he only had two movies. That dork nearly killed the whole darn franchise!

You want the absolute best Bond movie? Goldfinger. Hands down.

More and more I am becoming convinced that you are the Britta of Tokunation.

OHMSS is fantastic for all the reasons ljacone listed. The only reason it isn't as highly regarded as From Russia with Love or Goldfinger is because it was the Lazenby film. People tend to automatically write him off because he was only in the one film, when truth be told he was... well, not bad. If Connery had been in it, though, OHMSS would be the iconic Bond film.

And like I said in the Bond Girl thread, I love Timothy Dalton's short run. By the 1980s Bond had really become kind of a joke. For Your Eyes Only was a fantastic film, but it was the last real blip of quality in the Roger Moore era. Starting with Moonraker his films just kept getting more and more ridiculous and cartoony, with Moore growing increasingly campy, to the point where I still consider him the Adam West of James Bonds. Dalton helped correct the direction of the franchise, bringing the Bond character in much closer to the books' version of him and largely jettisoning the sillier aspects of the Moore era.

I don't think The Living Daylights is that great of a film overall. There are bits that worked and bits that didn't. It was a good start for a new direction in the franchise, though. Licence to Kill, however, is my favorite Bond film. It has a good and surprisingly personal story, Dalton is at his best as an angry and ruthless Bond, Carey Lowell's Bond Girl is one of the few who can legitimately kick ass, and there are some great action pieces and locations. I know not every likes the darker revenge-driven storyline, but we get to see more dimensions to Bond in that film and I always respond positively to films that reveal more depth in the character. That's one of the main reasons why I personally regard OHMSS, Licence to Kill, and Casino Royale so highly.

Personally, I think Die Another Day and Moonraker are the worst films in the series. Moonraker I dislike slightly less because it was an amusingly naked cash grab thrown together at the last minute to draw in the Star Wars audience. I find that kind of hilarious. Die Another Day, though, is just godawful on every level and the reliance on CGI effects is a slap in the face to a franchise that had always been devoted to using practical effects, no matter how crazy shit got.

[Sentai]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

More and more I am becoming convinced that you are the Britta of Tokunation.

Youre going to have to explain that reference.

But.. Okay fine. But can we all agree the one with Madonna was horrible? Who the hell decided Halle Berry and Madonna needed in a Bond film?

And the one thing that makes Tomarrow Never Dies redeemable? Garbage doing the opening theme. I'm sorry but Miss Manson can sing every Bond theme far as I'm concerned. Especailly if she wears that slinky red dress she wore in the video.

[ZeoRangerV]

I've seen very few of the Bond films (not my cup of tea), but I can't imagine any of them are as bad as Die Another Day.

[ljacone]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

I don't think The Living Daylights is that great of a film overall. There are bits that worked and bits that didn't. It was a good start for a new direction in the franchise, though.

The uneven nature of The Living Daylights owes something to it's origins as well. The script was already mostly written when A View To A Kill was released; the tone was much in line with that film as being a light adventure movie. When Dalton came on board, Cubby Broccoli ordered the script changed around to be a little more "hard boiled." Hence we get some serious with our silly in The Living Daylights.

Quote:

Personally, I think Die Another Day and Moonraker are the worst films in the series. Moonraker I dislike slightly less because it was an amusingly naked cash grab thrown together at the last minute to draw in the Star Wars audience. I find that kind of hilarious. Die Another Day, though, is just godawful on every level and the reliance on CGI effects is a slap in the face to a franchise that had always been devoted to using practical effects, no matter how crazy shit got.

While I do not disagree with you regarding Moonraker being a naked cash grab, I will point out that it was not really "thrown together at the last minute." The intention was to do For Your Eyes Only after The Spy Who Loved Me, but remember that at that point, the Bond film cycle was every 2 years. Star Wars and TSWLM came out the same summer (1977); pre-prod was just getting underway on what would become Moonraker when Star Wars hit the big time. So the decision to change from FYEO to Moonraker came fairly early in the development cycle.

Moonraker had a very expensive and involved production; one thing you can say about it is that the money they spent is up there on the screen, between the special effects, the locales, the stunts, etc. I can even accept the third act where they are on the space station -- it's all the jokes and gags in the first 2/3rds of it which derail the movie, in my estimation. As I mentioned in another post, I just finished Christopher Wood's novelization of his script (titled "James Bond And Moonraker"), and it excises nearly all of the humor, making for a much better adventure. The gondola chase is more in live with what we would have expected, for instance; and we never see Jaws at all in the pre-credit sequence.

Oddly enough, there is one major setpiece in the novelization which is not in the script. In the movie, Moonraker 5 has a laser (or "laser torch" as they are referred to in the script and novelization) on it; in the novelization, both Moonraker 5 and the station itself are armed with them. There is a subplot about a Soviet satellite which comes close to the Drax station and is lasered before the Marines arrive. Following that, Bond has to (wait for it) EVA out of the station to get up to the gunner's tower to stop them from lasering the American shuttle. I can buy it on the printed page but for the movie that was probably best left unfilmed!

Remember also that Moonraker was a success -- it was the highest grossing of the classic Bond films, and if you correct for inflation it's like 4th all time in the series. But the expense of Moonraker coupled with middling reviews were what lead to the scaled down, lower budget FYEO, which is often cited as a favorite even among Connery purists.