The 411 Top 5: Week 36

Posted by Trevor Snyder on 11.23.2006

The Top 5 Worst Bond Films

I had a couple people expresse their surprise last week when I included The Man with the Golden Gun as one of my Top 5 Bond films (and although he didn't say as much, I would guess that Bryan Kristopowitz was among those confused by my decision, judging from his list this week). What can I say – as much as I recognize how amazingly cheesy the film is, there's something about it that works for me. However, anyone who still feels I made a mistake including it in my Top 5 will be happy to know that it has now been bumped out of their by the excellent Casino Royale, which rocked to Bond heaven. I'm not ready to proclaim Daniel Craig the best Bond ever yet, but he's certainly off to a great start, delivering one of the franchise's best films in his very first outing.

Still, no matter how good Casino Royale was, it's no guarantee that the next film will be any good. Remember, this series is no stranger to delivering the goods and then coming right back with a stinker. As evidence, we present the counterpart to last week's look at the good, with this week's look at the bad, and the ugly. That's right, it's time for:

THE TOP 5 WORST BOND FILMS




Trevor Snyder

5) Never Say Never Again - You could argue that I shouldn't even bother including this one, since, like the original Casino Royale, it's not even an official entry in the series. The problem is, there are quite a lot of people out there who seem to think it is, most likely due to the fact that it stars Sean Connery. You'd think the fact that it's nothing more than a remake of Thunderball would clue everyone in on the fact that it doesn't belong. Speaking of which, what exactly was the point of making this movie, really? Yes, I know the whole story about how Kevin McClory won the rights to make his very own Bond movie, as long as it was just another version of Thunderball. But let's stop right there, because that's exactly the problem. If you were able to make your very own Bond movie, but it had to be a remake of a previous entry in the series, would you even bother? Maybe you would, but I bet you would at least get someone different to play Bond than in the original version, so it would it at least seem like you were attempting something new with the material. I mean, why did Connery want to make the exact same movie again? And what were the producers really hoping for with this one? Did they really intend to kick off a brand new Bond series, with an increasingly aging Bond continuing the good fight until he was in a gadget-filled wheelchair? I'll give this movie some credit for being the only Bond film to even acknowledge the possibility of Bond getting old (something the Moore films should have done, considering he looked pretty haggard in his last few outings), but other than that this simply has nothing going for it.

4) A View to a Kill - A cool Duran Duran theme song and Christopher freakin' Walken as the villain? This must be good, right? Yeah, well, as anyone who has seen it will tell you, that's not quite the case. By this point Roger Moore should no longer have been playing Bond anyway – not only did he look a little too old for the part, but his "wink, wink – look how clever I am" comedic take on the character had long since worn thin (of course, the producers response to this wasn't much better, but more on that when we get to my next film). It's been a long time since I've watched this one, and I don't really have much intention to do so again anytime soon, but I do remember being bored out of my mind watching it. And speaking of bored out of my mind…

3) The Living Daylights - When the Bond producers finally realized it was time for a change from the increasingly lame comedy of the Moore films, they decided to darken things up a bit, and return Bond to his literary roots. Kinda sounds like what just happened with Casino Royale, right? Except, while this time we were lucky enough to get Daniel Craig, in 1987 we got stuck with Timothy Dalton. Don't get me wrong, Dalton has shown in other films that he's a fine actor, but as Bond he was just boring. Of course, it doesn't help that the producers made the decision of eliminating almost all of the character's humor (hey, I hated how goofy the Moore films were, too, but you don't need to go to the complete opposite end of the spectrum), not to mention making him less of a womanizing cad who sleeps with every woman he meets – which some have suggest was the series attempt to acknowledge the AIDS crisis. Whatever their reasons, the end result was two bland Bond films. I know Dalton has his supporters, who like to point out that his Bond might have been closest to Fleming's actual literary character. Maybe so, but perhaps that just goes to show why it's the more cinematic and flamboyant version of the character, created by Connery, that has become iconic. Besides, Daniel Craig is currently showing that you can have both the humor and the gritty nature of the character. Maybe if the producers had realized that in 1987, we would have two better Bond films starring Dalton. Maybe. Of the two Dalton films, I'll give the slight edge to License to Kill; at least that one had an intriguing concept, with Bond forced to work as a rogue agent. The Living Daylights has pretty much nothing to redeem itself, apart from a mildly entertaining ski chase.

2) The World is Not Enough - The latest issue of Entertainment Weekly ranked The World is Not Enough as the absolute worst Bond film, and while obviously I'm not going that far, there's no doubt it's very, very bad. Which is a shame, since it's lengthy pre-credit action sequence, the thrilling speedboat chase on the Thames River, is one of the series most exiting scenes ever. It's all downhill from there, though. The Entertainment Weekly issue also mentions how Brosnan himself has admitted that he really had no idea what was going on in this movie. I was glad to hear that; I was confused as all hell while watching the movie – it makes me feel a little better to know that the lead actor himself was in the same boat. I know Brosnan's last film, Die Another Day, has its detractors, but I'm sure Brosnan is thankful to have finished up his time on the series with that entry, rather than let this piece of dreck be his swan song with the character.

1) Moonraker - What can I say about this movie that hasn't been said already (or won't be said by fellow 411 writers later in this column)? By 1979 the Bond series had already proven to be one of films most popular and enduring franchises, and yet for some reason the producers panicked and decided they wouldn't be able to survive unless they jumped on the Star Wars bandwagon. Good call, guys. OK, I guess it technically was, since the movie did make a buttload of money. But that doesn't change the fact that this film is incredibly laughable, with some of the cheesiest FX the series has ever delivered, and an absolutely cringe-worthy subplot involving the romance between Jaws and the nerdy girl – which even results in Jaws turning good! Ugh.





Bryan Kristopowitz

This is an even harder list to put together because, as I said in the last "Top 5," I'm a Bond fanatic and, in essence, I like all of the Bond flicks. I'd rather watch them than most other action flicks, new and old. But, here is my list of Bond flicks that just aren't my favorites, if the criteria is just James Bond movies.

Honorable Mentions

- You Only Live Twice (1967)- I'm loathe to put this on a "worst of" list because it has so much good stuff in it. Donald Pleasance puts in a great, iconic performance as SPECTRE bad man Blofeld, the piranha pool, the final siege of Blofeld's lair, and it's got Sean Connery as James Bond. And it's got Bond getting "killed" at the beginning. But for some reason the movie doesn't always hit on all cylinders. The whole bit where Bond disguises himself as Japanese feels like it takes forever. I actually like this movie, but it's not as good as others. You understand why Connery left the role after this movie (he did come back after Lazenby's turn to do Diamonds are Forever).

- Thunderball (1965)- The fourth James Bond flick that was eventually remade in 1983. Never Say Never Again is a better version of the story. Thunderball is decent, sure, but the one eyed villain, Largo, isn't as good as Goldfinger or even Blofeld himself. And the flick, while it features an excellent underwater fight, also features that part where Bond loses his mask underwater, then puts it on again underwater and he doesn't get water in his eyes. It's probably possible to do that, sure, but it doesn't look good on the screen. It looks ridiculous. But go see it.



5. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)- At my crappy "paying" job I hear the title song to this flick every day, which is quite good, and it's got a much better storyline compared to the disaster that is The Man with the Golden Gun, its predecessor. It's got the great villain "Jaws," but the execution just isn't there. I've only seen this flick on ABC and Spike, with commercials, so maybe I'm being too hard on it. That could be the case. But, everything I remember about this flick is "boredom." By the end, I marveled at how interested I was in whether or not Bond and his female Soviet partner would find the missiles and the submarines, at how cool Jaws was, but for some reason by the end I couldn't care less. I think I need to see this flick in its regular, non commercial version.

4. Moonraker (1979)- James Bond trying to cash in on the whole Star Wars thing. It almost succeeds. Almost. The final space battle, with the space soldiers and the space fights and whatnot are quite fun, but the premise of the whole things isn't credible at all. I don't remember anyone talking about how extensive the space program was, so when the soldiers "fly" into space it's insane. And the return of Jaws, while in essence welcome, is also ridiculous. It would have been better if he simply appeared in the beginning of the flick and then just end him. The death of Drax, too, is a bit boring. It might have been better if the producers somehow made this a more "serious" movie. I don't know. Perhaps it's too "tongue in cheek." Go see it, though.

3. The World is Not Enough (1999)- This is the least fun of the Pierce Brosnan movies. The plot is boring, the villain (the guy who can't feel anything) isn't mean and nasty enough, and the Bond women, Denise Richards and Sophie Marceau, are not that appealing. I know this has been brought up a million times, but why exactly did Michael Apted agree to put Richards in the movie? She's terrible. Robbie Coltrane's Russian gangster, the first appearance of John Cleese as R, and that giant saw blade on the helicopter make for fun stuff, but as a whole the thing just doesn't work. Look at the big ski chase set piece. I can't remember a more boring chase sequence in a Bond movie.

2. A View to a Kill (1985)- The final Roger Moore flick. Christopher Walken as the bad guy, freakshow Grace Jones as an evil assassin hechwoman, Dolph Lundgren, and a great opening skiing sequence. How can this movie fail? One, Moore looks like he's a million years old. And Tanya Roberts, while nice to look at, is one of the worst Bond women in history. She's worse than Denise Richards, which is amazing when you think about it. The movie just doesn't work. I can't even remember what the heck Walken's Zoran was even interested in doing. The plane execution thing was pretty neat, though.

1. The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)- Oh, good God. Scaramanga (the great Christopher Lee), the man with the golden gun and the superfluous third nipple, hired to kill James Bond in his noted style: one bullet, one shot, one kill. This is a great premise for a Bond movie, a potentially smaller story that's much more intimate and scary. Scaramanga is the best assassin in the world. Who wouldn't be scared? But then he's got a midget henchman (freaking Tattoo) and a little weird brown car that turns into an airplane. None of it works the way it should. It's still way better than most action movies, sure, but, as a Bond flick, it's just pee poor. But, then I only saw this on ABC and Spike, not in a non commercial form. Maybe I should see it like that?



Arnold Furious

5) For Your Eyes Only (1981). This would mark the start of Roger Moore's run of films where he just looked too old for the part. Not as old as Sean Connery did two years later in Never Say Never Again, but Moore was definitely starting to gain Muppet-like facial characteristics. More wrinkles than a sharpei's neck. While the two Bond films he starred in after this, Octopussy and A View To a Kill, had redeeming features (the fight on the plane wing, Christopher Walken, Duran Duran), FYEO was a flat out disappointment. The limits of the technological gadgetry was crossbows and grappling hooks. To the normal man on the street, who doesn't own crossbows and grappling hooks, this is pretty cool stuff. But for Bond? Pah, children's toys! They also went in for some skiing scenes to try and recapture the dizzying brilliance of The Spy Who Loved Me, but it was too soon and nowhere near as good. Plus it was merely backdrop for a slack ice skating bit. Give me a reason to care! For Your Eyes Only has to be the most instantly forgettable Bond film ever made. Name the villain? Anyone? The Bond girl? Not even the title sequence is any good. While it's not an awful film it just lacks any kind of character or personality. It's too fucking bland.

4) Thunderball (1965). About the only thing of interest in Thunderball is the jet pack Bond uses in the opening scene. After that you could probably take a nap for two hours and not miss anything of interest. The plot lacks depth so everything else is padded out with generic spy thriller stuff. The producers rather foolishly jettison Blofeld in favor of Largo, another of SPECTRE's leading bad guys. The problem with Largo as a chief bad guy is he just feels like an underling. A middle man, a nobody and, at worst, too comical or mediocre to ever pose a threat. They ended up spending the majority of the budget, a large budget at that, on underwater stuff. None of which works. Having half the film take place underwater is just asking for trouble. And boredom. And it delivers both. The plot is too slow and too obvious. The result is a hideously boring film. It almost defies reason to make a Bond film this slow. Imagine making this in modern times? It'd get slated to hell. If Sean Connery wasn't in Thunderball it could possibly be the worst Bond movie of all time. It's only his suave performance that holds together a worthless plot. And as if this wasn't bad enough, THEY MADE THE SAME FILM AGAIN! Why not remake a film like On Her Majesty's Secret Service? No one watches it because it's the one with the Australian in it, but at the same time the plot and characters were strong. Thunderball was just boring.

3) Never Say Never Again (1983). So speaking of making the same film again, here it is. Sean Connery returns as Bond in a rival franchise 10 years after he looked young enough to play the role. And it made $160M worldwide. You motherfuckers! You, the audience, this is YOUR fault. This was unoriginal, uninspired and entirely the fault of Kevin McClory. He's owned the rights to Thunderball, because he wrote it, so he managed to get another company to bankroll this. Eventually MGM blocked any further Bond movies coming from him as they'd all be remakes of Thunderball. That's right folks! Kevin McClory wanted to either do a TV series based on Thunderball or remake the film AGAIN. Connery was just onboard for the pay check here and it shows. While during Thunderball he was able to save the paper thin plot by being Bond, here he's just Sean Connery. Also along merely for the pay check are Kim Basinger and Max Von Sydow. Oh, Max, what shit have they got you saying in this script? The plot is virtually identical to Thunderball. So much so that most Bond fans don't even consider Never Say Never Again to be a Bond film. Hell, if we're including this, why not the original Casino Royale with David Niven? Just totally lacking anything that would make it look like a Bond film, bar a few characters and Sean Connery wandering around. Back to the box office, to close my comments though, for comparisons between this and Roger Moore's Octopussy, which is a better film with better action sequences, which were both released the same year. Octopussy cost less and made more. Hell, it got back its budget with American rentals alone. It ended up taking $187M at the box office. While the race was probably closer than it should have been, considering how poor this effort was, at least the right horse won.

2) Die Another Day (2002). Oh good lord, this whole concept was so dumb it's hard to know where to start. Ok, so to celebrate DOD being the 20th Bond film they inserted references to all previous 19 Bond films. The only good thing to come out of this was Halle Berry in Ursula Andress' tiny bikini from Dr No. Everything else was terrible. In particular I'll reference the thing that everyone else hates when they point out how bad Die Another Day is – invisible car. Yeah, what the fuck is that? You just say it out loud and it sounds stupid. Not only was it stupid, it lead to some truly ridiculous chase sequences, one involving a giant laser, which was all done with CGI. Some people don't seem to get the problem with a Bond movie using oodles of CGI. It's not original. It dates the film. Bond has always been about great stunt work. Some of my favorite Bond moments are down to tremendous stunt work. Not shonky looking CGI. Blatantly fake, horrible to look at and people turn off in droves. It killed Pierce Brosnan's career as Bond (they say he was too old but being associated with this crap didn't help matters) and it nearly took down Halle Berry with it. She suddenly developed an inability to pick good scripts after making this and nearly flushed her entire career away. Catwoman? Gothika? This film screwed with her head, I swear. If it wasn't for my #1 choice this film would mark Bond's lowest point and its worst descent in horrible self parody, money wasting and bad decisions. I guess this was their answer to the whole XXX thing of an American Bond. But they tried to fight action with action instead of fighting it with substance and reasoning for the action. Or for that matter – good action. There's nothing more terminally rubbish than a bad action film. This is the Rambo III of Bond movies, the Batman & Robin of Bond movies. The one where they try to fit so much crap into the film that they forget what the hell is the point of it is. Aside from Moonraker is has the worst plot of all the Bond films, which features Bond easily beaten and then held as a prisoner for over a year. Way to make the coolest spy on the planet look like a total bitch. Then he doesn't even escape. He's traded. BOOO! A total waste of time.

1) Moonraker (1979). While Moonraker does have a weird car crash feel to it, in that it's SO bad you can't help but look, that doesn't redeem it from taking top spot. The only reason Moonraker even exists is because Star Wars did so well at the box office. The producers felt that the world was ready for a sci-fi film starring James Bond. But they didn't know anything about sci-fi. No problem, no one knows about space, we'll just make it up. That's if you even make it that far into Moonraker without switching off. Let's face it, the plot doesn't start well and tail off! Its starts bad and stays there. Drax is the bad guy. He's out to remove the best and smartest of Earth's citizens, and evilest naturally, and fly them into space while he destroys the Earth and repopulate it with his chosen ones after the radiation clouds have died down or whatever. Ahem. Not only does Drax feel the need to take down the entire world, he also feels the need to emasculate Jaws, one of my favorite henchmen in the Bond series, by making him his little personal bitch. Jaws, however, turns babyface because he falls in love with a weird looking girl with braces. See, because they both have metal on their teeth! Get it! If all this sounds stupid it has NOTHING on the conclusion of the feature. Lots of guys wearing rocket packs shooting each other with lasers. Complete with a total misunderstanding of how space works. Not that they even understood how basic flight works, as Bond and a pilot battle in a plane earlier in the film. The door comes off and they happily keep fighting toe to toe. At 30,000 feet the plane fails to depressurize. Anyway, back to the ending. The majority of the last 30 minutes or so are taken up with painfully slow space sequences, which attempt vaguely to adhere to space travel laws. Which unfortunately is hideously boring, because the whole thing is like the 2001 sequence with the space station moving. Only it's not for a few minutes, it's for about 20 minutes. And it's not to set the scene; it's to finish the film on a high. Bond is a total joke in this film, and that's the worst part of it. Roger Moore does every cheesy little thing to make this as farcical and weak as possible. Although, he's probably not helped along by a brutal script and the idiot producers. Of course, what the fuck do I know – Moonraker made $200M worldwide. The problem in the end isn't the choice to go sci-fi, it's the decision to go with too much comedy in the process. It makes Bond look weak, it makes Jaws look like crap and it makes Moonraker a truly dire film. The only thing it really has going for it is how truly bad it is. Watch it for how daft it becomes as the film progresses. Yes, laugh for now, but fear the almighty Hollywood producer, because one day they might green light another piece of crap Bond film like this. Although I think they learned their lesson from Moonraker not to do BOND IN SPAAAAAAAACE again.

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And thus concludes our two-week look at Britain's most famous special agent. I guess if we've learned anything from all this it's that you can't really have a movie series go for over 40 years and 21 films without your fair share of both classics and duds. Where the Bond series goes from here is anyone's guess, but I think it's safe to say it will live on for a long time, and in a couple decades we'll probably be able to do these lists again and have completely different results.

And, of course, you can't really talk about the Bond series without mentioning Casino Royale's surprising defeat at the box-office by the dancing penguins of Happy Feet. Well, OK, you can talk about Bond without mentioning that – but, hey, I need some way to lead into my preview of next week's column, in which I'll begrudgingly reward Happy Feet's victory by hosting a look at the Top 5 Animated Films of All Time. Will your favorites make the lists? Come back next week to find out.