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5 Worst James Bond Movies In 60 Years Of 007 Lore, Ranked
With 25 films over the course of nearly 65 years, James Bond has had one seriously impressive cinematic career. However, it is more than a little fair to say they haven’t all been full-on winners. Some eras are well-known to be better than others, with Sean Connery and Daniel Craig’s tenures often held in a higher regard than Timothy Dalton or Pierce Brosnan’s. But even in the goofy ’70s Roger Moore era, there were some great installments, like The Spy Who Loved Me and underrated installments, like For Your Eyes Only and, bear with us, A View to a Kill. But what about the Bond adventures that are just about universally agreed upon as lesser entries? Those are the ones that follow. However, we left off the unofficial movies, Never Say Never Again and the 1967 spoof version of Casino Royale. Though, were we to include those two, you could definitely expect Never Say Never Again to get itself an entry.
Just missing the cut were Diamonds Are Forever, Octopussy, The Living Daylights, Licence to Kill, and Spectre. They’re not great, but they fall just short of being able to truly rank amongst the worst.
5) Quantum of Solace
Spectre gets a half-pass for two reasons. One, it wasn’t lacking in ambition. Two, Léa Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann was a wonderful addition to the 007 canon.
Quantum of Solace has neither of those elements and its failure to be so much as coherent is even more painful considering Casino Royale is one of the best Bond movies. To some it flat-out is the best. Quantum of Solace doesn’t even feel much like a Bond movie, it feels like a Jason Bourne movie with it’s too-quickly-edited fight sequences. The film was made during a Writers Guild of America strike and boy does it show.
Stream Quantum of Solace on Prime Video.
4) Moonraker
Roger Moore’s fourth Bond movie, Moonraker, isn’t sure what it wants to be. If any installment of the franchise has an issue with tone, it’s this one.
This is a movie where the villain, Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale, very good in the role), sends a pack of teeth-gnashing dogs to chase down and rip apart a young woman used by Bond to get sensitive information on her employer. It’s also a movie where a villain from the previous adventure stops trying to break Bond’s back and instead links up with a Pippi Longstocking type. Oh yeah, and it’s also a movie with laser gun battles. It’s the 007 version of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, which went through a long sequence at a dimly lit drug and sex den before ultimately ending up on a planet inhabited by space teddy bears.
Stream Moonraker on Prime Video.
3) The World Is Not Enough
GoldenEye was a perfect mixture of old and new and exactly what the franchise needed after two dour Timothy Dalton movies. Tomorrow Never Dies was a step down but still fun and had solid performances by Michelle Yeoh and Jonathan Pryce.
From its opening sequence, The World Is Not Enough announces itself as simply too much. It’s all style no substance. That trajectory would continue to its absolute breaking point with the next and final Brosnan Bond adventure, but this was the beginning of the problem right here. Also, casting Denise Richards as a doctor was an odd enough decision but calling her Christmas Jones? Come on, take yourself at least a little bit seriously. That said, The World Is Not Enough deserves some credit for putting so much focus on Judi Dench’s M, which was a tactic that worked here and worked even better in Skyfall.
Stream The World Is Not Enough on Prime Video.
2) The Man with the Golden Gun
The Man with the Golden Gun feels tonally similar to the underrated Live and Let Die but leaves behind the tension and pacing that made that film work and retains the aspects that most certainly did not. Most notably its campiness and the horrendous character of Sheriff J.W. Pepper, the most irritating individual to ever disgrace a Bond adventure.
The Man with the Golden Gun really only has three highpoints. One is Roger Moore’s still youthful and energetic take on Bond, two are the funhouse manhunting sequences, and Christopher Lee’s performance as Francisco Scaramanga. However, the less said about Nick Nack the better. In spite of Hervé Villechaize’s best efforts he’s just written as too much of a caricature to be taken remotely seriously.
Stream The Man with the Golden Gun on Prime Video.
1) Die Another Day
Pierce Brosnan is still giving the 007 role his all, but everything else about Die Another Day is a trainwreck. It’s loaded with scenes that are too far removed from reality, much of the writing is over-the-top, and its villain falls flat. Well, one of its villains because, much to her credit, Rosamund Pike makes the most out of the thinly written secondary villain Miranda Frost.
Die Another Day almost plays as a parody of James Bond movies. It can’t go 30 seconds without a winking joke or an extra ridiculous gadget or a sequence like the swiftly melting ice castle. It all exists in such a heightened reality you can’t help but feel somewhat alienated by it. You can stream Die Another Day on Prime Video.
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