Best to Worst: Ranking James Bond Movies
In our series Best to Worst we look at rankings of popular entertainment products from a single creator. Our focus is on how critics have ranked an artist’s entire body of work. Ranking James Bond Movies looks at the how critics rank the 24 James Bond films released between 1962 and 2015.
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About Our Rankings
The COVID-19 quarantine has forced us to stay at home. To keep sanity, this has been a perfect time to watch television shows, movies, play games and listen to music.
Best of lists are extremely popular so we have started our own. To make our best of lists different we are actually curating best of lists from other critics to come up with the Best of the Best.
Many best of lists rely on reader polls/crowd ranking or critic ranking sites like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic. This is a fine general indicator, but it does not consider an artist’s entire body of work. Reader polls tend to be popularity contests while critic ranking sites like Metacritic measure reaction at the time a work is released.
Our goal is to look through multiple lists where a person or entity has taken the time to go through an artist’s entire body of work and make their own judgment and create a list of best to worst.
See more details in our methodology section at the bottom.
Artist Overview
James Bond has been an icon for generations. Bond got his start in the 1950s with novels from Ian Fleming, a former British Intelligence Officer.
Written near the start of the Cold War, the focus of the initial books was on James Bond fighting SMERSH, a Soviet secret service agency. This later involved Bond fighting master villains that were part of SPECTRE, a criminal organization with no political ideology. Original SPECTRE villains often had past ties to Nazi ideology.
James Bond is best known for his movies, starting with Dr. No in 1962. Ian Fleming passed away in 1964, right about the time the Bond legacy exploded with the release of Goldfinger.
The initial films actually somewhat followed the Fleming novels. However, later films (with the exception of Casino Royale in 2006) have no resemblance to the books.
Starting with Sean Connery six actors have played James Bond. In 2020, No Time to Die will be the 25th Bond movie. It will be the 5th movie to star Daniel Craig. Craig says it will be his last Bond film and current speculation is on who will be his replacement
Best to Worst Ranking James Bond Movies
James Bond Movies Ranked Best to Worst
| Movie | Score | High | Low | Difference | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Goldfinger | 189 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1964 |
| From Russia with Love | 175 | 2 | 6 | 4 | 1963 |
| Casino Royale | 175 | 1 | 6 | 5 | 2006 |
| On Her Majesty's Secret Service | 165 | 2 | 8 | 6 | 1969 |
| Skyfall | 153 | 1 | 10 | 9 | 2012 |
| Dr. No | 144 | 4 | 13 | 9 | 1962 |
| The Spy Who Loved Me | 128 | 5 | 10 | 5 | 1977 |
| Thunderball | 128 | 5 | 15 | 10 | 1965 |
| GoldenEye | 128 | 5 | 20 | 15 | 1995 |
| You Only Live Twice | 111 | 4 | 20 | 16 | 1967 |
| License to Kill | 93 | 9 | 23 | 14 | 1989 |
| Live and Let Die | 89 | 10 | 21 | 11 | 1973 |
| For Your Eyes Only | 84 | 9 | 18 | 9 | 1981 |
| The Man with the Golden Gun | 82 | 9 | 20 | 11 | 1974 |
| The Living Daylights | 76 | 5 | 21 | 16 | 1987 |
| Diamonds Are Forever | 74 | 9 | 19 | 10 | 1971 |
| Spectre | 73 | 8 | 22 | 14 | 2015 |
| A View to a Kill | 57 | 12 | 24 | 12 | 1985 |
| Tomorrow Never Dies | 54 | 12 | 23 | 11 | 1997 |
| Moonraker | 52 | 14 | 24 | 10 | 1979 |
| The World Is Not Enough | 44 | 11 | 23 | 12 | 1999 |
| Octopussy | 36 | 10 | 23 | 13 | 1983 |
| Quantum of Solace | 33 | 15 | 24 | 9 | 2008 |
| Die Another Day | 32 | 11 | 24 | 13 | 2002 |
8 lists were used. The highest possible score is 192. The lowest possible score is 8.
Note there are two James Bond films we have not included because they are not considered official and not included on most lists. These include the 1967 version of Casino Royale, which was a spoof and the 1983 remake of Thunderball, Never Say Never Again.
Casino Royale received terrible reviews. Never Say Never Again, which had a return of Sean Connery, received mediocre reviews and lists that include it tend to have it towards the bottom middle of the pack.
Our Opinion
I started watching James Bond movies when they aired on television in the 1970s. The first movie I saw in the theater was The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977. From 1977 to A View to a Kill in 1985, I saw every Bond movie in the theater.
By the time A View to a Kill came out, I was exhausted with the silliness of the Bond franchise. Over the years, I have seen most of the Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan movies. However, with the exception of GoldenEye, they all tend to run together.
Casino Royale, the first Daniel Craig was a huge comeback for the franchise. This movie actually followed along the plot of the original 1953 book. I loved it but have yet to watch the follow-up movies. The immediate sequel, Quantum of Solace, is considered one of the worst Bond movies of all-time.
From the ratings it is clear there is enormous diversity in opinion on Bond movies. However, the 10 best movies tend to score significantly higher than the lower portion of the list.
This falls in line with my opinion. I enjoy all the top 10 movies (I haven’t seen Skyfall) up to You Only Live Twice. Past You Only Live Twice, only Live and Let Die and Diamonds are Forever really standout. Both those movies were childhood favorites of mine but the do border on parody.
Among the top movies, I might have some disagreement with Goldfinger as number one. It has some classic Bond scenes and characters and is faithful to the novel. However, even as kid, I had some problems with the plot holes.
From Russia With Love and even the 2006 Casino Royale have slightly more realistic plots, which I appreciate. In my early days On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and The Spy Who Loved Me were my favorites. These movies hold up well, although The Spy Who Loved Me is more a product of its time. The movie Jaws was a huge hit at the time, and this is played up in the movie. Viewers today are not as likely to be as terrified as I was in 1977.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was the only movie to star George Lazenby. Lazenby was an Australian car mechanic who somehow talked himself into the role. However, he walked away from fame and returned to Australia. This fascinating story was told in a 2017 Hulu documentary, Becoming Bond.
No Time to Die was supposed to release in April 2020. However, the movie has been pushed to November 2020 because of coronavirus.
No Time to Die will be interesting because Daniel Craig has said it will be his last Bond film. In addition, Phoebe Waller-Bridge was brought on to polish the script. Waller-Bridge is best known for the show Fleabag. However, she is also behind the recent spy thriller series Killing Eve. Killing Eve features a female hero working within MI6, the same British Intelligence agency as James Bond (the villain., who has Russian connections, is also female).
Of course, James Bond is often seen as an example a sex-crazed misogynistic male. This is clearly out of fashion with the current times. The challenge the franchise faces is updating the character for the times without totally killing him off.
Recommendations
If you are really interested in James Bond, I suggest starting at the beginning with Dr. No and watch the first few in order. All the movies up until The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977 are enjoyable. However, the movies get increasingly silly starting with Diamonds are Forever in 1971.
I bought the full Blu-ray collection of James Bond movies and my plan is to re-watch them in order. However, Moonraker in 1979 is the point where the movies started to get a little ridiculous for my tastes.
The full collection is pretty pricey because it has 24 movies. A more budget friendly option is to start with the Sean Connery Volume 1 collection of the first three films. Sean Connery Volume 2 has three more films but skips On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
If you find the broad humor of Diamonds are Forever or Live and Let Die are not to your taste, skip ahead. The Spy Who Loved Me and Goldeneye are definitely solid, but for a first-time viewer I would skip most of the other movies and go right to Casino Royale and the Daniel Craig era. The Daniel Craig films have their own collection.
Other collections tend to bundle a hodgepodge of films together. Personally I would avoid those collections unless they are on sale. Of course, many of the films are available on streaming service or can be bought individually for a low price
From the start, James Bond movies have been about escapist entertainment. The original films hold up quite well and remain full of memorable scenes and characters. The later films tend to blend together up until Casino Royale. I plan to update my recommendations after a full viewing of all the films.
Methodology
The goal is to pick 5 to 10 lists of Best to Worst of a given series of films, books, music or games. The requirement for these lists is that they are based on reviewers who have considered the entire body of work as a whole and drawing comparisons. Lists that are reader polls or aggregate reviews from sites like Metacritic are NOT considered.
Each item on a list is scored based on how it ranks with 1 point being assigned to the worst product, 2 to the next worst and so on. In a list of 10 items the top product would receive 10 points, the second-best product 9 points continuing to the worst product which would get 1 point.
The scores are down for each list and scores for all lists are combined. So if there were 5 lists with 10 items each the maximum score would be 50 (5 lists ranking the item as number 1 for 10 points each). The minimum score would be 5 (5 lists ranking the item as number 10 for 1 point each).
We also factor in the spread of the ranking. This indicates how much consensus there is around a item. If all lists tend to rank a certain item near the top or bottom there is a great deal of consensus. If some lists have an item near the top, while others have it one the bottom, obviously there is a difference of opinion.
The Lists
We used the following 8 lists to get our rankings
- Collider
- ScreenRant (includes 1967 Casino Royale and Never Say Never Again)
- Rolling Stone
- TimeOut
- GameSpot
- ScreenCrush
- Entertainment Weekly
- Parade
