What a
pleasantly surprising start this all was! My recollection of Brosnan as Bond is
that Goldeneye was good and everything else was pretty much trash barring the
odd scene. So I wasn’t really looking forward to any of the Sunday morning!
Tomorrow
Never Dies was actually really good and had one of the best villains for me.
I’d have liked to have seen him as a modern day Blofeld, pulling the strings in
the background over a couple of films. Taking him down ultimately wasn’t that
exciting but it would have been really cool as an over-arching element while
something else was going on. Some good henchmen in this one too with Stamper
and Dr Kaufman.
The World is
Not Enough surprised me. Denise Richards is actually quite good although never
likely to threaten for top Bond girl spot. Some good villains, M more involved
and some emotional beats that often lacked in the other films, i.e. M’s
relationship with Elektra King, Bond having to kill her even though he seemed
to have feelings for her, Zukovsky dying and giving up his vendetta against
Bond to save the day. Really good film. I’ve been unfairly biased against it
for too long.
Die Another
Day wasn’t boding well when Ian told me that he was looking for a good line
from the script to use as a title but couldn’t find a single one. The first
half of this is actually really decent. All of the bad stuff early on is as
easy to forgive as the bad stuff from any other of Brosnan’s films but then the
second half is just painfully bad. It is a cliché now to blame the invisible
car but the scene where he goes to collect it does seem to be the turning point
in the film. A reboot and re-cast was really the only option at this point.
Casino
Royale was awesome and took a few of my favourites, including best film
overall. Everything just seems to have more impact than previous films. The
Vesper tragedy feels earned by the end in a way that Tracey’s death in Her Majesty’s
Secret Service wasn’t. You could see why he fell for Vesper whereas he just
seemed to have spent more than 5 minutes with Tracey and that was enough.
Beautiful locations well shot. Eva Green does swirly things to my tummy.
Amazing fight on the stairs; even more brutal than Bond Vs Grant on the train
in From Russia With Love for me.
Quantum of
Solace was slightly better than I remember it. I was always thought it was
pretty decent. It gets a bad rap for being more like an epilogue to Casino
Royale which is kinda true I guess. It was a film that needed to happen though
otherwise we would have just got back to the Bond formula with Bond forgetting
all about Vesper.
Skyfall is
amazing. Not quite topping Casino Royale for me but it’s not a million miles away.
Top 5 for sure. I won’t go into too much detail seeing as I already did on the
Skyfall article comments section. I will say that it almost had the best
villain (and might be the best after another viewing), almost had the best Bond
girl in Naomi Harris, almost had the best locations and almost had the best
pre-credits sequence in terms of action. It was a brilliant end to the
marathon.
I’m not sure
I can put every film in order but I would say that my top 5 (best first) are:
1.
Casino Royale
2.
Live and Let Die
3.
Licence to Kill
4.
Skyfall
5.
GoldenEye
Skyfall and
Licence to Kill could end up swapping places and when we do this again for Bond
24 maybe Dr No will sneak in there.
The bottom 3
from worst to ‘best’:
1.
Die Another Day
2.
Octopussy
3.
Moonraker
