‘Skyfall’ first look: Ben Whishaw is the new Q! — EXCLUSIVE – EW.com Pinterest Image Credit: Rhythm & Hues The first two James Bond films starring Daniel Craig famously took things back to basics — no cartoonishly eccentric über-villain, no wildly over-the-top secret lair, and no over-elaborate sci-fi gadgetry. Most of the changes were quite welcome, but that last one also meant the loss of one of the franchise’s most beloved characters: Q, the master of spy technology at MI6 and a sharp comic foil for Agent 007. EW is happy to confirm that Q will return in the latest James Bond film, Skyfall, as played by actor Ben Whishaw (Bright Star, I’m Not There, Perfume). Q will aid Bond’s mission to help save MI6 after it comes under attack thanks to a looming threat in M’s (Judi Dench) past. Check out this exclusive first look at Whishaw as the character below: Image Credit: Francois Duhamel[/caption] Whishaw is the fourth actor to take on the role of Q. The first was actor Peter Burton in the very first Bond film, Dr.

No: In the next Bond film, From Russia with Love, and 16 subsequent films, Q was played by the inimitable Desmond Llewelyn, the only actor to appear alongside all the actors who’ve played 007 other than Craig: Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan. In The World is Not Enough, Q took on an assistant, R, played by John Cleese. After Llewelyn passed away in 1999, Cleese was promoted to Q for 2002’s Die Another Day. All the actors who’ve embodied Q have one thing in common: They were all older than the actor playing James Bond, often considerably so. It would appear, for Daniel Craig’s 21st century 007, technical geekery is very much a young man’s game. Skyfall arrives in theaters Nov. 9. Q (Character) - Quotes Q (Character) from Goldfinger (1964) The content of this page was created by users. It has not been screened or verified by IMDb staff.

Skyfall (2012) [from trailer] Q : The Walther PPK/S nine-millimeter short. It's been coded to your palmprint so only you can fire it. Less of a random killing machine, more of a personal statement. Q : It always makes me feel a bit melancholy. Grand old war ship. being ignominiously haunted away to scrap... The inevitability of time, don't you think? What do you see? James Bond : A bloody big ship. Excuse me. Q : 007. I'm your new Quartermaster. James Bond : You must be joking. Q : Why, because I'm not wearing a lab coat? James Bond : Because you still have spots. Q : My complexion is hardly relevant. James Bond : Your competence is. Q : Age is no guarantee of efficiency. James Bond : And youth is no guarantee of innovation. Q : Well, I'll hazard I can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pajamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field. James Bond : Oh, so why do you need me? Q : Every now and then a trigger has to be pulled.

James Bond : Or not pulled. It's hard to know which in your pajamas. Q. James Bond : A gun and a radio. It's not exactly Christmas, is it? Q : Were you expecting an exploding pen? We don't really go in for that anymore. Q : I'm guessing this is not official. James Bond : Not even remotely. Q : So much for my promising career in espionage. Q : There are only about six people in the world who could set up fail-safes like this. James Bond : Can you get past them? Q : I invented them. Q : Why are the doors opening? [Bond runs] Q : Oh, no. Can someone tell me how he got into our system? Raoul Silva : [program from his computer] Not such a clever boy. Q : Oh, shit. Oh, shit, shit, shit. He hacked us. [At Q's lab, Q and Tanner try to create a false trail for Silva to follow] Q : It's a fine line. If the breadcrumb's too small, then he might miss it. Too big, and Silva will smell a rat. Tanner : Yes, but you'd think even Silva will be able to spot that.

Q : He's the only one who could. [Tanner turns and sees Mallory standing behind them] Gareth Mallory : What are you doing? Q : We're just... monitoring. Gareth Mallory : Creating a false tracking signal for Silva to follow. Tanner : Well, sir, um... Q : Well, no... Gareth Mallory : Excellent thinking, get him isolated. Send him on the A9. It's a direct route. You can monitor his progress more accurately and confirm it with the traffic cameras. Q : But, uh... what if PM finds out? Gareth Mallory : Then we're all buggered. Carry on. [Bond is chasing Silva who escaped, trying to open a door] James Bond : It won't open. Q : Of course it will, put your back into it. James Bond : Why don't you come down here and put your back into it? Q : [Via Bond's earpiece] Where are you? James Bond : [He's on the train] Take a wild guess, Q. Q : Good luck out there in the field... And please return the equipment in one piece. James Bond : You know, you're cleverer than you look.

Q : Still, better than looking cleverer than you are. Q : I wish I could make you vanish. James Bond : You must be joking. Q : As I learned from my predecessor, Bond, I never joke about my work. James Bond : Check the tape. You'll find he's dead and she only has a flesh wound. Q : There's always an excuse, isn't there, Double-O-Zero? James Bond : Give me the old fashioned target range, Quartermaster. Q : Yes, well, it's called the future, so get used to it. [Q and Bond enter Q's office as Bond looks around at the vast array of devices left over from previous cases] James Bond : So, this is where they keep the old relics, then, eh? Q : I'll have you know our TOP cutting-edge technology is designed here. James Bond : [releasing the knife from the briefcase used in the From Russia With Love affair and fingering a blade] Point taken... Q : Must you touch everything? James Bond : [seeing his Thunderball jet pack] Hey, does this still work? [James activates the jet pack, and Q struggles to subdue it] Q : Now look...

James Bond : [holding up the knife-studded shoe worn by Rosa Klebb years ago] So where is this cutting-edge stuff? Q : I'm trying to get to it. Miss Moneypenny : [Moneypenny is typing a disinformative newspaper report in her office, when 007 walks in] James! [Continue kissing, when all of a sudden... ] Q : [walking in] Moneypenny? [Moneypenny sits up abruptly and removes a pair of virtual reality simulation centre glasses] Miss Moneypenny : Um... I was... um... just testing it out. [She blushes and buttons her blouse] Q : Oh, it's rather hard, isn't it? Q : [Explaining the Aston Martin] ... Your new transportation [nothing visible on the platform] James Bond : I think you've been down here too long... Q : [after a virtual reality shootout exercise] A perfect marksman isn't really supposed to shoot his own boss. James Bond : Check the replay. You'll find he's dead and she's only got a flesh wound. Q : There's always an excuse, isn't there, 00-zero. Q : Now, a new watch.

This should be your 20th, I believe. James Bond : How time flies. Q : Yes, well 007, why don't you establish a record by actually returning this one. Q : [Explaining to Bond his new "adaptive camouflage" Aston Martin] To the casual eye, it's as good as invisible. Plus all the usual refinements: eject seat torpedoes, target seeking shotguns to shoot down mobile objects. James Bond : Could you do one more thing for me? Q : And that would be? James Bond : Make me disappear. James Bond : [Q hands Bond a watch] What does it do? Q : It tells the time. Might help with your punctuality issues. James Bond : M's idea? Q : Precisely. Oh, one word of warning, the alarm is rather loud... if you know what I mean. James Bond : I think I do. [last lines] Q : I thought you were done. James Bond : I am. I just need one more thing. [Bond notices the shell of the DB5] Q : Oh, yes. That old thing is taking quite a bit of time.

Mind you, there wasn't much left to work, only a steering wheel. I believe I said, "Bring it back in one piece," not, "Bring back one piece." [Q laughs at his own joke] Q : Well it's lovely to see you, 007. Lovely. Um, now I meant to tell you, the Smart Blood program is obviously still in its developmental phase. So we may experience the odd drop in coverage during the first 24 hours... [Bond glares at him] Q : 48 hours after administration, but after that it should work perfectly. [Bond smiles] Q : Please don't. Q : May I remind you that I answer directly to M. I also have a mortgage and two cats to feed. James Bond : Well, then I suggest you trust me, for the sake of the cats. Q : [notices the drink Bond left because he took the car] Ooohh... Shit! GoldenEye (1995) Q : Right. Now pay attention 007. First, your new car. BMW Agile 54 with gears. All points radar. Self destruct system. And, naturally, all the usual refinements.

Now, this I'm particularly proud of - behind the headlights, stinger missiles! James Bond : Excellent, just the thing for unwinding after a rough day at the office. Q : Need I remind you, 007, that you have a licence to kill, not to break the traffic laws. [Q has blown up a dummy with an explosive pen] Q : Don't say it... James Bond : The writing is on the wall. Q : Along with the rest of him. Q : A pen. This is a Class 4 grenade. Three clicks arms the four-second fuse, another three disarms it. [Bond takes the pen, clicks three times] James Bond : How long did you say the fuse was? [Q takes the pen back and disarms it] Q : Oh grow up, 007. James Bond : They always said the pen was mightier than the sword. Q : Thanks to me they were right! Q : Now, a typical leather belt... male, size 34 buckle, notch. [Bond is playing with a computer] Q : Are you finished? Q : Good. A typical leather belt...

[Q appears, wheelchair-bound with his leg in a cast] James Bond : Morning Q. Sorry about the leg. Skiing? [Q's leg "cast" fires a rocket across the room] [Bond picks up a sandwich roll, studying it like a gadget] Q : Don't touch that! It's my lunch! Q : A typical leather belt, size... James Bond : Q, I'm familiar with that device. Octopussy (1983) Vijay : Is he still there? Q : You must be joking! 007 on an island populated exclusively by women? We won't see him till dawn! [Bond and Q are floating in a hot air balloon] James Bond : I trust you can handle this contraption, Q? Q : It goes by hot air. James Bond : Oh, then you can. Q : [being kissed by Octopussy's girls after knocking out a bandit] Cut it out! We don't have time for that! Later perhaps. Q : [Q is demonstrating a pen filled with acid] Dissolves all metals. James Bond : Wonderful for poison pen letters... Q : Pay attention, 007!

James Bond : [Q's mechanized version of the "Indian Rope Trick" malfunctions] Having problems keeping it up, Q? Q : Experimental model! James Bond : Ah, Q - how are you? Q : Most unhappy, 007, thanks to you. How can I be expected to maintain the quality of my work? Sent out here at a moment's notice! No proper facilities! James Bond : Yes, well, you wouldn't have a small piece of thread, now. Somebody seems to have stuck a knife in my wallet. Q : Ah, they missed you. What a pity! James Bond : I've also mislaid my PPK. James Bond : No, that's all Q. Q : Really, 007! Look, I haven't time for these adolescent antics! Never Say Never Again (1983) Q : Good to see you Mr. Bond. Things've been awfully dull 'round here. Bureaucrats running the whole place. Everything done by the book. Can't make a decision unless the computer gives you the go ahead. Now you're on this. I hope we're going to have some gratuitous sex and violence!

James Bond : I certainly hope so too. James Bond : We're both humble servants of the Crown, Alge. Q : If the CIA made me an offer, I'd be off like a shot! Unlimited resources. Air conditioning. Twenty-eight flavors of ice cream in the restaurant. Q : Wait a minute, I've got something in here that could be useful. The prototype came from a KGB defector. A bit of a whiz kid in their technical section. Not a bad chap. Though I thought a bit is prone to melancholy. I suppose it's all that vodka and English weather. Q : Rather tasty this is. It looks like a watch, but, it's really a laser. It keeps perfect time. James Bond : But, for how long? Q : At least your lifetime. James Bond : I won't need one of these where I'm going. Q : Where's that or - are you not allowed to say? James Bond : The Bahamas. Q : Oh, lucky, bloody you! Q : [Talking to Bond, in his lab] I wish I had a new contract. They slashed my budget. You can't get the spare parts.

And when you can, there's usually some strike that stops delivery. Look at this place. They keep it bloody freezing down here. Plays havoc with my sinuses. James Bond : [In the lab, curious about yet another one of Q's interesting little spy gadgets] What is this for? Q : I'll show you. You unscrew it... then stick it up your nose. Q : [as he sticks the inhaler up his nose and sniffs] For my sinus. James Bond : And why not? Q : Because you release this section of the roof and engage and fire the passenger ejector seat. Whoosh! James Bond : Ejector seat, you're joking? Q : I never joke about my work, 007. Q : Ah, 007, we have some new equipment for you. Have you met my new assistant, Miss Nagai? Bond, James : I don't believe I've had the pleasure. Q : And you won't if I have any say in the matter. Q : Now, 007, do try to return this equipment in pristine condition. Bond, James : I'll do my best. Q : That's what I was afraid of.

Q : [Bond escapes Peru on aboard an aeroplane] Congratulations 007. You saved the girl and destroyed most of my equipment. I hope you're happy 007? Bond, James : Better than saving the equipment and losing the girl, don't you agree? Q : [annoyed] Oh, 007 I give up! Q : Time is short 007. We only had time to upgrade your grenades. Bond, James : [Miss Nagai hands him a coin, which is a grenade] More change, Q? Miss Nagai : This grenade sends out an eletric magnetic pluse, destroying any eletronic device near the blast. Bond, James : [throws the coin near some monitors and detonates the grenade, destroying the monitors] A Stunning development. Q : [annoyed] Oh, grow up. Q : [after reaching the plane] Congradulations 007. You saved the girl and destroyed most of my equipment. Bond, James : That's better than saving the equipment and losing the girl, don't you agree? Q : [Slightly annoyed] Oh, 007 I give up. M : Where is he?

What's he doing? Q : Just cleaning up a few details. Q : She must take a lot of vitamins! James Bond : Yes, and perhaps Pegasus does too. M : Now that we're all here, you can get on with the briefing, Q. Q : Very good, sir. Gentlemen, a silicon integrated circuit. The essential part of all modern computers. M : No lecture, Q. We're all aware of the usefulness of the microchip. Q : Well, now, until recently, all microchips were susceptible to damage from the intense magnetic pulse of a nuclear explosion. M : Magnetic pulse? James Bond : Yes, Minister. I burst in outer space over the UK and everything with a microchip in it, from, well, the modern toaster to the most sophisticated computers in our defense systems would we rendered absolutely useless. Q : One of our private defense contractors came up with this: a chip totally impervious to magnetic pulse damage. Now, if I place it on the micro-comparator and compare it with a chip that Commander Bond recovered from the body of 003 in Siberia, when I bring the two images together... James Bond : They're identical.

The KGB must have pipeline into that research company. Q : Try to be a little less than your frivolous self, 007. Q : It is to be handled with special care! James Bond : Everything you give me... Q : ...is treated with equal contempt. Yes, I know. Q : Ah, 007. Bond : [Sarcastically] What a wonderful surprise. Q : Well, for me too. I must say, I find this business of equipping you in the field, on the run, as it were, highly irregular. Here we have a geiger counter... Q : It closes to a convenient pocket size. Bond : Assuming one has a convenient pocket. Q : Oh, grow up 007! James Bond : You're not retiring anytime soon - are you? Q : Now, pay attention 007. I've always tried to teach you two things. First, never let them see you bleed. James Bond : And the second? Q : Always have an escape plan. James Bond : I suppose we all have to pay the piper sometime. Right, Q? Q : Oh, pipe down, 007! James Bond : Was it something I said?

Q : No, something you destroyed. My fishing boat! For my retirement, away from you! R : As I was saying, the very latest in interception countermeasures. Titanium armor. A multi-tasking heads up display. And six beverage cup holders. All in all, rather stocked. Q : Fully loaded. I think is the term. Lieutenant Hip : In Goodnight's handbag, sir. M : [shakes head] Where's Miss Goodnight now? James Bond : Well, we don't know sir. Communications aren't picking up the signal from the homer she was supplied by Q. Q : [indignantly] Rubbish! They're simply not stepping up the reception sufficiently to enable... M : [cuts him off] Oh, shut up! Of all the fouled-up, half-witted operations... Colthorpe : [trying to trace origins of a golden bullet] Lazar? Q : Lazar? Hmm, imaginative, highly specialised... Yes! I concur. James Bond : Well, what the hell is Lazar? Colthorpe : Not "what", "who". Portuguese. Lives in Macau. Q : Chap who made the bullet, 007!

Every James Bond Movie Ranked From Worst to First Matt Singer | November 4, 2015 @ 8:54 AM This Friday, James Bond returns to movie theaters in Spectre , starring Daniel Craig as Ian Fleming’s secret agent 007, license to kill. In this installment, Bond will do battle with the forces of SPECTRE, a criminal organization hellbent on world domination. He’ll also have to do battle with a different sort of ghost: The audience’s accumulated memories from 23 previous movies, stretching back more than half a century. So how does Spectre rate with all those other James Bond movies? The staff of ScreenCrush decided this was the perfect time to figure that out. And, in keeping with our subject, we had to do it big, by ranking every movie in the series from worst to first . We took everything into account; the gadgets, the titles, the song, the stars, the action, the women, even the fashion.

We also provided a handy at-a-glance guide to all the villains, the best moments, and every weird skill James Bond inexplicably exhibits over the course of his many outings, just in case you ever need to know when 007 suddenly became an authority on butterflies. (For the record, that’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.) You’ll note we didn’t include Never Say Never Again, since that doesn’t belong to the official Eon Productions canon. But we rewatched and reconsidered everything else — up to and including Spectre, which you’ll find below — to bring you this ultimate James Bond ranking. Some choices may leave you shaken; others will no doubt stir you into a commenting frenzy. And just like Bond himself, these rankings are likely to change over time. But as of November 2015, here’s the best and worst of Bond. 24. Die Another Day Writers: Neal Purvis and Robert Wade James Bond Is Played By: Pierce Brosnan (Fourth time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Hovercraft driver; fencer. The Villain Is: Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens), a North Korean colonel who uses gene therapy to become a British diamond merchant.

(NOTE: This movie is really stupid.) Best Sequence: Honestly, there aren’t too many highlights if you’re not a fan of invisible cars and tsunami parasailing. Bond does get one legitimately cool gadget: A ring that doubles as a “ultra-high frequency single-digit sonic agitator unit” that can shatter even the most unbreakable glass with ear-piercing sound. Bond uses it to clever effect a few times in the movie, including breaking his own car’s windshield to rescue NSA agent Jinx (Halle Berry) from drowning. Why It’s #24: This movie’s a mess. When Halle Berry and Pierce Brosnan flirt together it’s a hot mess, but it’s still a mess. Things start to fall apart when Bond tracks shady diamond dealer (and also satellite inventor and also aspiring Olympic fencer) Gustav Graves to his Icelandic ice palace, where guests party in chilly luxury, and marvel at a giant space laser, drawing unflattering comparisons to the overblown kitsch of Batman and Robin. Hadn’t Austin Powers made fun of lasers several times at this point? When Mike Myers is spoofing something, it’s time to retire it.

The whole movie feels informed by the worst mega-blockbusters of the early 2000s, with tons of overly complicated set-pieces and bad CGI completely divorced from character or story. Also the main villain’s primary motivation is revenge against James Bond for almost murdering him, but that sorta-killing is precisely what allows him to become a wealthy British playboy, so if anything he should thank Bond, not try to drown him in a melting ice castle. By the end, Graves winds up dressed like North Korean Iron Man and has electricity powers like Emperor Palpatine. On his silliest day, Roger Moore never got this silly. 23. The World Is Not Enough Year: 1999 Writers: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Bruce Feirstein James Bond Is Played By: Pierce Brosnan (Third time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Experimental boat captain. The Villain Is: Renard (Robert Carlyle), deranged former KGB agent and current terrorist who cannot feel pain, thanks to a bullet that is permanently lodged in his brain. Because that’s how bullets work. Best Sequence: The World Is Not Enough was Desmond Llewelyn’s final appearance as Q, James Bond’s gadget supplier.

Though Llewelyn claimed he wanted to keep playing the character, Q’s standard briefing scene introduces his replacement, jokingly referred to as “R” (John Cleese), which turned out to be prophetic; Llewelyn died in a car crash a few weeks after The World Is Not Enough’s premiere. Most actors in this series get replaced in unceremonious fashion, and rarely receive any kind of acknowledgement or curtain call upon their departure. It was nice that Llewelyn got to go out in classy and surprisingly poignant style. (Watch the scene on YouTube here .) Why It’s #23: Denise Richards gets a lot of flack for her performance as Dr. Christmas Jones, nuclear scientist and short shorts enthusiasts. In her defense, it ain’t like the rest of the movie is Citizen Kane. Even the crummiest Bonds usually have a great line or a really impressive chase to remember them by; The World Is Not Enough has almost nothing going for it. Robert Carlyle’s Renard could have been a terrific Bond villain, but he doesn’t even appear for the first hour, and is barely a factor in the story.

The luckiest person in this whole thing is Sophie Marceau, who tends to get forgotten among rankings of bad Bond girls because she’s standing next to Richards when, in fact, they’re both pretty crummy. The world may not be enough, but I’ve had my fill; let’s move on. 22. Octopussy Writers: George MacDonald Fraser, Richard Maibaum, Michael G. Wilson James Bond Is Played By: Roger Moore (Sixth time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Backgammon player; circus clown. The Villain Is: Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan), who’s engaged in a baffling scheme to smuggle priceless jewels out of Russia with a deranged Soviet general who wants to heat up the Cold War. Best Sequence: In a race to prevent a nuclear explosion, Bond gets into a chase with a bunch of Russians. The soldiers shoot out his tires, so he takes his car and its now empty rims onto the train tracks and pursues the bomb that way. Even by James Bond standards, this is a pretty baller move.

(The YouTube clip of this scene can’t be embedded, so watch it here .) Why It’s #22: What do Fabergé eggs, octopus cults, deadly yo-yos, nuclear bombs, backgammon, and robotic crocodiles have to do with one another? Absolutely nothing, but Octopussy throws them together into an incoherent slog with too many villains and not enough reasons to care about any of them. Its not much crazier or more outlandish than the better Moore installments; what’s lacking for most of the film is a clear sense of stakes. Most of it really is Bond just wandering through India, playing board games and screwing with a snoody guy who wants a fancy tchotchke. With mere minutes to prevent a nuclear explosion that could start a world war, Bond actually wastes precious time disguising himself as a clown, and even puts on all the makeup (see above). That’s a pretty good symbol of everything wrong with 007 by this point in the series. Sorry, Rita Coolidge; this is anything but an all-time high . 21.

Quantum of Solace Writers: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis James Bond Is Played By: Daniel Craig (Second time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Parachute-free skydiver. The Villain Is: Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), an environmentalist who wants to control the Bolivian water supply. Best Sequence: James Bond goes searching for the men behind his troubles in Casino Royale, and discovers a shadowy organization known as Quantum (rendering the title of this film amusingly literal). In this scene, Bond listens in as Quantum bigwigs discuss their business in plain sight, and then interrupts as only 007 can. Why It’s #21: A writers’ strike sent this Casino Royale sequel into production without a finished script, dooming it right from the start ( According to Daniel Craig , he and director Marc Forster were rewriting the screenplay on the fly on set.) Forster compounded his problems by pushing Bond too far into Jason Bourne territory, with an overly dour hero and overly choppy chase and fight sequences.

(The film sorely misses the steady hand of editor Stuart Baird, the unsung hero of the Daniel Craig Bonds who cut Casino Royale and Skyfall.) Adding depth and dimension to James Bond is a noble goal, but without a fully realized screenplay, Quantum of Solace’s never give 007 a valid license to sulk. 20. Moonraker James Bond Is Played By: Roger Moore (Fourth time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Astronaut. The Villain Is: Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), a deranged industrialist who wants to destroy the human race from space and then repopulate the planet with a genetically superior version. Best Sequence: “You missed, Mr. Bond.” “Did I?” James Bond does not miss, bro. Why It’s #20: This space-set Bond has very little to do with its Fleming source material and everything to do with Star Wars becoming the biggest movie in the galaxy just a few years prior.

The setup’s stale, with yet another crazy businessman who wants to blow up civilization so he recreate it in his own image, and the scale is way overblown; by the end, Bond’s literally involved in a laser battle in outer space (this comes a few scenes after a pigeon does a double take as he drives by in a convertible Venetian gondola). At least Ken Adam returned to design the incredible sets; I find it’s best to ignore the dozens of indistinguishable jumpsuited thugs blasting at each other in zero-gravity slo-mo, and just bask in Hugo Drax’s amazing space station. 19. Live and Let Die Year: 1973 James Bond Is Played By: Roger Moore (First time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Crocodile jumper. The Villain Is: Dr. Kananga (Yaphet Kotto), a deranged dictator of a Caribbean island who wants to flood the America with cheap drugs to gain a stranglehold over the market for heroin. Best Sequence: Macca himself showed up to welcome Roger Moore to the world of 007.

Almost everything about Live and Let Die looks pretty dated in 2015, but Paul McCartney’s operatic theme song still holds up. Plus, every time the song swells, flaming skulls explode from Maurice Binder’s opening titles. Bond goes heavy metal! (Watch the scene on YouTube here .) Why It’s #19: It’s an exaggeration to say that Live and Let Die portrays every black man in America as part of a vast criminal conspiracy — but only slightly (Bond does get a brief assist from an African American CIA agent). Roger Moore’s Bond debut was heavily inspired by the blaxploitation movement, but in all the wrong ways, with 007 surrounded by heroin dealers, voodoo ceremonies, and dialogue about honkies and pimpmobiles (their words, not mine). Questionable racial politics aside, the story and action are tepid at best, although the sequence where Bond escapes from a crocodile pen and then leads Kanaga’s henchmen on a boat chase through the Louisiana swamps is aces (at least the parts that don’t involve the single most loathsome character in all of Bonddom, Clifton James’ bumbling redneck sheriff J.W. Pepper).

To his credit, Roger Moore looked instantly comfortable in the role of James Bond, and the filmmakers quickly began to exploit his gift for for making even the dirtiest double entendres sound innocent. (When Jane Seymour’s Solitaire asks Bond to return to bed rather than venturing back out into danger, he dryly replies “Of course. There’s no sense going out half-cocked.”) Ironically, that’s exactly how much of Live and Let Die feels; a Bond theme this good deserved a better movie. 18. For Your Eyes Only Year: 1981 Writers: Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson James Bond Is Played By: Roger Moore (Fifth time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Ocean cartographer; rock climber. The Villain Is: Aristotle Kristatos (Julian Glover), a smuggler who wants to retrieve a lost British ATAC unit (a fancy targeting computer, basically) and sell it to the Soviet Union. Best Sequence: Surrounded by bad guys, Bond makes a cunning escape by performing a ski jump and then leading his enemies on a mad chase through the slopes, and even onto a bobsled track in the middle of a race.

Why It’s #18: It says something about the tenor of Roger Moore’s Bond outings that this film — where he gets into ski chase with a motorcycle on a bobsled track and Margaret Thatcher carries on a phone conversation with a parrot — is considered his “serious” one. “Perfunctory” would be more accurate; For Your Eyes Only lacks both the intensity of a great Connery or Craig Bond and the gonzo gusto of Moore’s really outrageous installments. The villain, gadgets, sidekicks, and female co-stars are all forgettable, as is the storyline. (Something about a stolen missile launcher? Who cares.) At least the ski chase through the bobsled track, absurd as it is, is terrific (and very well-shot by John Glen’s action team). Also, if I can be indulged in some absolute and uncritical superficiality for a moment: James Bond’s never dressed more poorly than he does in this movie. A puffy belted snowsuit ? A quilted gilet ? #notmyBond. 17. Licence to Kill Writers: Richard Maibaum and Michael G.

Wilson James Bond Is Played By: Timothy Dalton (Second time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Big rig driver. The Villain Is: Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi), a deranged drug dealer who’s invented a new technology to smuggle cocaine into the United States. Best Sequence: Even Licence to Kill haters have to admit the final truck chase, where Bond pops a freaking wheelie in a gas tanker, is pretty impressive. (Watch the scene on YouTube here .) Why It’s #17: Timothy Dalton’s second Bond adventure was an atypical one; for most of the movie Bond is a free agent rather than a secret one — he resigns his post in MI6 and goes rogue on a mission of revenge after a Latin American drug lord maims his buddy Felix Leiter (David Hedison). The plot owes more to Yojimbo than any of Fleming’s novels; Bond cons his way into Sanchez’s organization, then slowly destroys it from within. What’s missing is Kurosawa’s (or most Bond movies’) sense of malevolent fun. The big action finale is the clear highlight; otherwise it’s just a bunch of people fighting over some cocaine hidden inside a couple of gasoline tankers.

Licence to Kill was the last Bond film for six years (legal disputes over rights held up production on its sequel), and it came to represent a changing of the guard; it was not only Dalton’s final film, but also the last movie featuring contributions from title designer Maurice Binder, screenwriter Richard Maibaum, and director John Glen. Though this entry’s unusually nasty spirit has its defenders, I think the franchise’s old stalwarts were clearly running out of gas. 16. Tomorrow Never Dies James Bond Is Played By: Pierce Brosnan (Second time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Fighter pilot. The Villain Is: Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce), a deranged media mogul who wants to start a world war to boost ratings to gain a stranglehold over the market for news in China. Best Sequence: Bond’s car in Tomorrow Never Dies is a BMW he can drive from the backseat with a remote control, which serves as the basis for this cool chase. Why It’s #16: 007 versus Rupert Murdoch, basically, and about as exciting as it sounds — but at least its vision of a world of consolidated mass media controlled by the whims of a handful of wealthy elites wasn’t entirely off-base.

This is a pretty standard Bond right down the line; not bad but not exceptional either. The car chase above is a standout, as is Michelle Yeoh as one of the first Bond girls capable of kicking a little ass herself (she plays a Chinese secret agent who teams up with Bond to stop Elliot Carver in his attempt to destabilize her country). Tomorrow Never Dies is fairly representative of the Brosnan Bonds as a whole: Handsome, noisy, overblown, and lacking a distinctive personality. 15. You Only Live Twice Year: 1967 James Bond Is Played By: Sean Connery (Fifth time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Ninja. The Villain Is: Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasence), deranged leader of the terrorist organization SPECTRE, who’s stealing rockets from both the U.S. and Russia in the hopes of provoking a world war. Best Sequence: It’s never a good idea to disappoint Blofeld, especially in the vicinity of his man-eating piranha. (Watch the scene on YouTube here .) Why It’s #15: Maybe the single most iconic Bond movie — and definitely the most racist.

James Bond goes to Japan to foil a SPECTRE plot to jumpstart World War III, and for some reason he winds up “disguised” as a Japanese peasant. (Connery looks more like a hunchback cosplaying as Mr. Spock ). If the whole thing contributed something meaningful to the story, maybe you could find some way to justify it, but it doesn’t; the movie stalls for 20 minutes while 007 trains to be a ninja (because I guess the world’s greatest secret agent wasn’t qualified enough to raid a bad guy’s secret base?) and then participates in an elaborate Japanese marriage ceremony. It’s too bad because Ken Adam’s production design is off-the-charts gorgeous. Every interior is magnificent, culminating in the justly famous volcano lair that was 150 feet tall and included a working monorail. Susie Allnutt Writers: John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Jez Butterworth James Bond Is Played By: Daniel Craig (Fourth time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Orphan.

The Villain Is: Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz), deranged leader of the terrorist organization SPECTRE (or just Spectre now, because Caps Lock is so 1962), who loves to ruin James Bond’s life. Best Sequence: The opening sequence, a massive chase and fight in and around a Day of the Dead parade in Mexico, is a franchise highlight. You can see parts of it in the film’s trailer. Why It’s #14: For that, see my full Spectre review . Kobal Collection Writers: Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz James Bond Is Played By: Sean Connery (Sixth time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Sommelier. The Villain Is: Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Charles Gray), deranged leader of the terrorist organization SPECTRE, who needs diamonds to fuel a space laser (say it like this ). Best Sequence: My favorite example of the sort of thing that prompted me to include a section for James Bond’s surprising skills in each movie. Here James Bond’s served a glass of sherry and he can tell the year it was made by the taste.

That’s not the year the sherry was made (sherry has no year), that’s the vintage of the original wine that was then turned into sherry. James Bond, master spy and exceptional palate. (Watch the scene on YouTube here .) Why It’s #13: Diamonds are forever, but the actors who play Bond tend to have a much shorter shelf life. Sean Connery hung up his Walther PPK after You Only Live Twice, but was coaxed out of retirement for one final (official) Bond film after the tepid response to his replacement, George Lazenby, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. His motive was very simple: Money, specifically a salary of £1.25 million, which was a record in its day. How fitting that he returned for a story about the pursuit of diamonds through Las Vegas, which the film captures in all its sleazy early ’70s glory. Connery’s past his prime, and even less engaged than in You Only Live Twice, but his slightly disinterested quality kind of suits the Bond of this movie, who’s lost his wife, killed her murderer (or so he thinks), and generally doesn’t care much about his job. 12.

A View to a Kill Year: 1985 Writers: Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson James Bond Is Played By: Roger Moore (Seventh time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Show jumper; snowboarder; quiche baker. The Villain Is: Max Zorin (Christopher Walken), a deranged industrialist who wants to destroy Silicon Valley to gain a stranglehold over the market for computer chips. Best Sequence: I’m very partial to the scene where Bond escapes certain drowning by sucking the air out a car’s tires, but since I can’t find a clip of that online, here’s some top-shelf Christopher Walken crazy. Just after this scene he and Grace Jones actually say the title of the movie onscreen as they fly over the Golden Gate Bridge. (“What a view…” “To a kill!”) Why It’s #12: A lot of the complaints about this underrated picture, which routinely ranks at the bottom of most Bond lists, strike me as ageist — as if dudes in their 50s aren’t allowed to have boners and lust after Grace Jones. Give me a break.

Was Roger Moore too old to the world’s greatest secret agent at 57? Maybe, if A View to a Kill was intended as a realistic depiction of international espionage. But it’s not; at this point in the series, Bond had about as much to do with real spy work as Danger Mouse. Duran Duran supply a killer theme song (John Barry’s orchestral score of it is really lovely as well), and every moment shared by Christopher Walken as Zorin and Jones as his henchwoman May Day is a small treasure. And even in late middle age, Moore looks like he’s still having a fabulous time saving the world and baking quiches for beautiful young women. (He’s certainly more invested than Connery was in his last couple movies.) Moore was the perfect man for this Bond, a lightly comic adventure about a globe-trotting action grandfather. Where most Bond films appeal to boys’ desires, A View to a Kill feels like an old man’s fantasy, and a pretty good one. That’s probably why I like it more every time I watch it. 11.

Thunderball Writers: Richard Maibaum and John Hopkins James Bond Is Played By: Sean Connery (Fourth time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Scuba diver. The Villain Is: Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi), deranged second-in-command of the terrorist organization SPECTRE, who are holding the globe ransom for £100 million in diamonds. Best Sequence: There may not be a more succinct summation of James Bond’s attitude and style as this brief exchange with a gorgeous woman (secretly a member of SPECTRE) who wants him to hand her something to wear as she climbs out of the bathtub (seen here in a YouTube video named, appropriately, “Best James Bond Moment Ever”). Why It’s #11: Legal disputes around this novel dragged on for years; producer Kevin McClory sued Ian Fleming for turning the unmade screenplay they’d written together into the original Thunderball book, and a court case eventually gave McClory the film rights to the story, which enabled him to remake it with Sean Connery in the off-brand Bond, Never Say Never Again.

But you’d never know the production was rocky from the film itself, which moves with the smooth precision of Bond’s Rolex Submariner. In addition to the scene above there’s at least one more all-time classic Bond moment in Thunderball; when Bond goes to visit the widow of a SPECTRE operative, offers her his condolences, and then punches her square in the mouth. (The operative’s alive, disguised as his wife.) The only thing really keeping this from being a top-flight 007 film is the extensive (and excessive) underwater footage; SPECTRE’s hiding several nuclear bombs at the bottom of a coral reef off the Bahamas, and the scenes of them pilfering, retrieving, moving, and then fighting over these bombs go on and on and on. While some of these sequences are pretty spectacular, one slow-motion underwater sequence after another almost sinks the entire movie. 10. The Spy Who Loved Me Year: 1977 Writers: Richard Maibaum and Christopher Wood James Bond Is Played By: Roger Moore (Third time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: BASE jumper.

The Villain Is: Karl Stromberg (Curd Jürgens), a deranged shipping tycoon who wants to start a world war to wipe out civilization so he can begin his own society underwater. Best Sequence: No compilation of great Bond moments is complete without the opening sequence to The Spy Who Loved Me, where Bond is pursued down a ski slope, and then escapes by making a daring leap from a cliff, followed by a last-second deployment of … a Union Jack parachute. (Watch the scene on YouTube here .) Why It’s #10: It’s widely regarded as Roger Moore’s best Bond — and with good reason. What the franchise had lost in ferocity by this point it made up for with sheer, imaginative spectacle, including that mind-boggling ski jump stunt, and Bond’s famous Lotus Esprit , which could transform into a submarine. The film has nothing to do with the Fleming novel of the same name, which could explain the somewhat cookie-cutter quality of its story, which is largely recycled from You Only Live Twice (madman in a gorgeous but precarious lair tries to pit world superpowers against one another so that he can rule over the remains of a cataclysmic nuclear war).

The Spy Who Loved Me may be formulaic, but it’s pleasantly familiar; like a beloved dish cooked from a treasured recipe. 9. The Man with the Golden Gun Year: 1974 Writers: Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz James Bond Is Played By: Roger Moore (Second time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Solar energy expert. The Villain Is: Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), a deranged assassin for hire who wants a “Solex agitator” to gain a stranglehold over the market for solar power. Best Sequence: Roger Moore gets a lot of flack for the heightened campiness of his Bond, but in the movies where the filmmakers found the right balance between comedy and action, he’s second-to-none. Check out his solid stunt work in this fight scene, and then his top-notch kiss-off line to the belly dancer whose lucky “charm” (actually a golden bullet) he’s accidentally swallowed.

(Watch the scene on YouTube here .) Why It’s #9: Bond pictures are only as good as their villains, and The Man with the Golden Gun features one of the series’ best: Francisco Scaramanga, a mythic hit man who is essentially James Bond’s evil double. His plan’s mercifully simple (seize control of the market for solar energy at the height of the ’70s energy crisis) and his island home is a classic piece of Bond production design (by Peter Murton, Ken Adam’s former art director). There’s an agreeably and unusually nightmarish streak running through the movie, most of it around Scaramanga and his preferred method of killing his victims by letting them wander through his private haunted house, and even the increasingly obligatory pop-culture pandering works this time around. (Kung-fu movies were on the ascendance in the mid-1970s, so Bond naturally gets dropped into the middle of a karate school for a demonstration.) The only major knocks against it: A disappointing Bond girl (Britt Eklund as the bumbling Mary Goodnight), a returning appearance by dreadful redneck Sheriff J.W.

Pepper, and the fact that Scaramanga’s golden gun doesn’t have magic auto-kill powers, the way it does in the GoldenEye Nintendo 64 game. 8. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service Year: 1969 James Bond Is Played By: George Lazenby (First time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Lepidopterist; genealogist. The Villain Is: Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas), deranged leader of the terrorist organization SPECTRE, who’s holding the globe’s food supply ransom for amnesty and the title “Count de Bleuchamp.” Best Sequence: Lazenby does occasionally seem ill at ease trying to fill Sean Connery’s enormous shoes. But when the movie leans into his discomfort, as in this hilarious scene at Blofeld’s allergy clinic, it really works. (Watch the scene on YouTube here .) Why It’s #8: It’s eternally frustrating that Blofeld doesn’t seem to recognize James Bond when he arrives at his Swiss compound, even though they’d met face-to-face just one film earlier in You Only Live Twice.

(As the legend goes, an early draft of the OHMSS screenplay included a scene where Bond gets plastic surgery to trick his enemies — and explain the change of actors from Sean Connery to George Lazenby — but later drafts removed that plot point without revising the later details.) If you can get past that none-too-tiny nitpick, this is a very solid picture, one with far more soul than the average 007 outing. (Note the motif of time slipping away, present in the opening titles, the lovely Louis Armstrong-sung theme song, and the repeated images of ticking clocks.) Director Peter R. Hunt served as the editor on all the previous Bond movies, and the fight scenes and chases in this one are particularly crisp. Some Bond fanatics overvalue its love story (which bookends the main plot, where Bond beds several gorgeous women at Blofeld’s clinic), but not by much. 7. GoldenEye Writers: Michael France, Jeffrey Caine, and Bruce Feirstein James Bond Is Played By: Pierce Brosnan (First time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Bungee jumper; tank driver.

The Villain Is: Alec Trevelyan/Janus (Sean Bean), a deranged former MI6 agent turned criminal mastermind who plans to rob the Bank of England with the help of an advanced space laser in order to destroy Britain’s economy as revenge for his parents’ deaths. Best Sequence: From the Wikipedia description of Famke Janssen’s Xena Onatopp: “A Georgian lust murderer and Trevelyan’s henchwoman. A sadist, she enjoys torturing her enemies by crushing them between her thighs.” In other words, she’s the perfect Bond character. Here, she sex-fights James Bond in a sauna. Why It’s #7: Everyone loves the first Bond movie they saw as a kid, and this one is mine; my dad took me to see it when I was 14 years old and it made me an instant Bond fan (a month later for my birthday I received several Bond movies on VHS, which sealed the deal).

But GoldenEye has more than nostalgia going for it; it’s a really fun movie from (ona)top(p) to bottom, with a great opening sequence that includes two cool stunts (a bungee jump from the top of a bridge and a leap off a clip into a falling plane), a sultry Tina Turner theme song, a worthy adversary for 007 in the form of Sean Bean, a spectacular tank chase, and Famke Jannsen’s star-making turn as a henchwoman with thighs of steel. Brosnan may not have been much of an innovator as James Bond, but when I was 14 and he said “No more foreplay” to Xena Onatopp, I thought he was the coolest human being who ever walked the face of the earth. 6. Dr. No Writers: Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, and Berkely Mather James Bond Is Played By: Sean Connery (First time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Hat tosser. The Villain Is: Doctor No (Joseph Wiseman), a deranged nuclear scientist disrupting American rocket launches, partly for the terrorist organization SPECTRE, but mostly for s—s and giggles.

Best Sequence: Connery’s very first scene as James Bond, at a London club’s baccarat table. Still probably the greatest character introduction in movie history: Why It’s #6: There were still a few kinks to work out — no cold open, a poorly edited mix of songs in the opening titles, no Q or gadgets— but it’s kind of remarkable just how much of the James Bond formula was already in place in the very first film, from the character’s classic introduction, his penchant for dry martinis, and even his habit of winding up at a fancy dinner table with his evil nemesis (In this movie, though, that actually makes sense, because Dr. No is trying to recruit him into the ranks of SPECTRE). That’s a credit to the strength of Ian Fleming’s source material (there were already nine Bond novels in print by 1962) and to the vision of producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli and director Terence Young, who helmed three of the first four Connery movies. And while Bond would quickly transform into a superhero, this guy is still recognizable as a secret agent who spies on people and investigates cases, and Dr.

No pays more attention to tradecraft than any of the 23 movies that followed. Bond movies got much bigger than this, but they were rarely much better. 5. The Living Daylights Writers: Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson James Bond Is Played By: Timothy Dalton (First time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Cello-case tobogganer. The Villain Is: General Koskov (Joe Don Baker), a deranged arms dealer who partners with a Russian general on an elaborate arms for opium deal. Best Sequence: The Living Daylights’ big action climax boasts maybe the most spectacular stunt in the 50 year history of the franchise: With Bond and an evil secret agent named Necros (!!!) clinging to a cargo net full of opium that’s dangling off the back of a plane. This scene is not for the acrophobic. Why It’s #5: Twenty years before Daniel Craig, here’s the unheralded prototype for his angsty, lovelorn Bond. For Connery and Moore, sex was a weapon; for Dalton’s Bond, it’s his Achilles’ heel.

Assigned to protect a Russian defector (Jeroen Krabbé) he finds himself incapable of killing a rival assassin because it’s … a beautiful woman (Maryam d’Abo). Sent to Tangiers to retrieve the defector after the KGB retrieves him, he instead travels to Bratislava to hunt down the assassin, for whom he’s quickly developed a deep obsession. The plot involving the defector and a crazy black market arms dealer is hilariously convoluted, but it’s still fairly easy to follow at each step of the way. Dalton himself is an underrated Bond, who combined the smoldering intensity of Craig with the preening arrogance of Connery. It’s just a shame he only got one more (flawed) film before he was retired; with better material, Dalton could have been fans’ favorite Bond. Instead, he became the forgotten one. 4. Casino Royale Writers: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Paul Haggis James Bond Is Played By: Daniel Craig (First time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Freerunner; Texas Hold ’Em player.

The Villain Is: Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), a math genius, poker lover, and banker who’s gotten rich shorting the stocks of targets of a ring of international terrorists. Best Sequence: Two words: Parkour chase. (Watch the scene on YouTube here .) Why It’s #4: The first Daniel Craig Bond might have been overrated on its initial release because its ample strengths (and ample seriousness) seemed even greater in comparison to the final Pierce Brosnan Bond, the abysmal (and cartoonish) Die Another Day. But nearly a decade later, it’s clear this is a first-rate 007 film, and easily one of the great reboots in movie history. Director Martin Campbell (returning for his second Bond picture) stages one magnificent action scene after another (including the opening parkour romp through Madagascar, maybe the single best chase in all 24 Bond films), but even more impressively, he restores James Bond to a recognizable, flesh and blood human being. It’s hard to think of a single scene in any of the 20 previous Bond film where James Bond was physically hurt, but Craig’s Bond is repeatedly beaten nearly to death.

His face gets mangled and bloodied, he nearly dies after being poisoned, and his nemesis Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen, radiating calm menace) tortures him by mashing his testicles into pulp with a bullrope. Le Chiffre and Bond’s Texas Hold ‘Em games are mostly a bust (even in reboot mode, the franchise couldn’t resist glomming onto “cool” cultural trends) but Bond’s relationship with Vesper Lynd (Eva Green, simply radiant) builds to an ending that’s genuinely heartbreaking. ASSOCIATED PRESS Writers: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and John Logan James Bond Is Played By: Daniel Craig (Third time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Backhoe driver. The Villain Is: Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), a deranged former spy orchestrating a series of attacks against England and MI6. Best Sequence: There’s a couple of legitimate contenders here, but it’s tough to top the fight choreography and stunning imagery in this battle between Bond and an assassin in an empty skyscraper high above Shanghai.

Why It’s #3: Casino Royale rebooted Bond, but it never considered whether that was a good or idea or not; it simply took the character’s continuing relevance as a given. It took two more films until the series re-evaluate what Bond meant in the 21st century — and even reckoned with the possibility that he might not mean anything to modern audiences. The bad guy’s plan — and particularly its impeccable, impossible timing — might not make a lick of sense, but casting a former spy (Javier Bardem) on a quest for revenge on his old boss M (Judi Dench, for the seventh and final time) allows Skyfall to dig deeper into what Bond represents than any movie that had come before. Its repeated references to death and aging would have worked better with an older lead actor (Daniel Craig was 43 at the time of shooting; Roger Moore didn’t make his first Bond film until he was 45), but it’s unquestionably the most thoughtful Bond and, thanks to the immaculate cinematography of Roger Deakins, the most beautiful. 2.

From Russia with Love Year: 1963 James Bond Is Played By: Sean Connery (Second time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Yachtsman. The Villain Is: Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya), a deranged agent of SPECTRE sent by deranged terrorist Ernst Stavro Blofeld to steal and then ransom a Lektor device that can decode secret messages. Best Sequence: It’s got to be the fight between Bond and SPECTRE assassin Red Grant (Robert Shaw) in the train compartment. Attentive viewers will notice an homage to this scene in Spectre. (Watch the video on YouTube here .) Why It’s #2: It finished laying the foundation started by Dr. No. It’s got the first cold open, the first opening titles adorned with scantily-clad women, the first appearance of Desmond Llewelyn as quartermaster Q, and the first appearance of Bond’s arch-nemesis, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Beyond its importance to the overall franchise, From Russia with Love is an atmospheric and suave spy film, full of 1960s Cold War intrigue and sensuality.

Even as it introduces Bond’s full compliment of gadgets and thrusts him deep into a SPECTRE plot for the first time it still maintains a semblance of reality, and Connery is at his swaggering best. It all adds up to a Bond movie that’s hard not to love. 1. Goldfinger Writers: Richard Maibaum, Paul Dehn James Bond Is Played By: Sean Connery (Third time) James Bond Is a Surprisingly Skilled: Golfer. The Villain Is: Auric Goldfinger (Gerte Frobe), a deranged metallurgist and gold dealer planning an elaborate heist of Fort Knox. Best Sequence: Goldfinger captures Bond and, rather than simply killing him with a bullet to the head, straps 007 to a table made of solid gold below a high-powered laser aimed squarely at his crotch. “Do you expect me to talk?” Bond asks. “No Mr. Bond,” Goldfinger replies, “I expect you to die!” (Spoiler Alert: He doesn’t.) Why It’s #1: Because Goldfinger is the ultimate Bond; the source from which springs not just every Bond film that followed, but many action movies of all shapes and sizes.

It’s one of the most influential movies of the 20th century. Anytime a dapper hero peels off a scuba suit to reveal a freshly-pressed tuxedo, or fells his opponents with a gadget-heavy sportscar, Goldfinger’s impact lingers on. In spite of literally hundreds of imitators, the movie still holds up as a superb and surprisingly fresh entertainment. At just 110 minutes, it’s one of the shortest Bond movies, and one of the leanest; almost every scene has a moment or character or line that’s passed into cinematic legend: Judo-throwing Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman); Oddjob (Harold Sakata) and his deadly bowler hat; the silver Aston Martin DB5 and its ejector seat; and Bond’s wry quips after each kill. (Note that he electrocutes two different people and delivers two totally different one-liners — “Shocking.

Positively shocking.” and “He blew a fuse.”) Bond’s casual sexism gets excessive at times, and if you want to get nitpick-y, it probably would have made more sense for Goldfinger to murder Bond than to play golf with him (and then fly him to Kentucky on a mini-vacation [and then to convince his private pilot to seduce him]). But the good in Goldfinger so far outweighs the bad that it hardly matters. In almost every category that Bond fans rate — love interest, villain, gadgets, car, title sequence, Sean Connery’s toupee — Goldfinger comes out as the clear number one choice. Thrilling, funny, and surprising, the whole movie hits you like a laser to the crotch (but, like, the good kind of laser to the crotch). More Worst to First Franchise Rankings: Spectre is the worst James Bond movie in years - Vox Spectre is the worst James Bond movie in years James Bond (Daniel Craig) is on the case again in Spectre. Sony Pictures Spectre opens with an extended take that cranes down over a massive parade of people dressed in skeleton costumes to single out a masked James Bond in the crowd.

The camera follows him into a hotel, an elevator, and then a bedroom; he flings a woman onto a bed, changes swiftly into a perfectly tailored suit, and climbs out the window to walk along the roof of a separate building, gun in hand, and perform an assassination while the ghoulish parade continues below. Rating 2 The jaw-dropping single shot is an incredible technical accomplishment. It makes for a gorgeous, foreboding, and incredibly tense sequence, staged and paced with Hitchcockian wit and precision — and that’s before stuff starts blowing up. Set during Mexico City’s Day of the Dead festival , the sequence introduces a longer pre-credits action set piece, complete with crashing buildings and a vertiginous hand-to-hand encounter in an out-of-control helicopter. It's a scene that pulls double duty as a high-octane opener and a backdoor fundraiser for this $300 million spy extravaganza: It was reportedly reworked in order to qualify for as much as $20 million in tax credits from the Mexican government, which wanted Spectre’s producers to feature the city in a positive light. I’m not entirely sure that city officials got what they paid for.

The film's brief glimpses of Mexico City suggest a dusky, haunted urban landscape full of mystery and death. But the investment certainly paid off for moviegoers. It’s the single greatest shot in Bond film history, and it sets incredibly high expectations for the duration of the two-hour, 30-minute runtime. It’s a perfect Bond sequence: sexy, thrilling, stylish, extravagantly elaborate, and marvelously over the top. It’s everything you want from a modern 007 film. It's just too bad the rest of Spectre is such a disappointment — relative not just to its opening scene, but to other recent Bond films, which scrambled the Bond formula in ways that produced two of the series’ best entries: the taut, brutal Casino Royale (2006) and the breathtakingly beautiful Skyfall (2012). Indeed, while the stunning opening sequence offers a succinct demonstration of all the ways a Bond movie can go right, what follows mostly serves to illustrate all the ways Bond movies can — and do — go wrong. Spectre handles familiar elements in all the wrong ways There's even a shadowy criminal cabal. Spooky!

(Sony Pictures) Spectre is the 24th film in the James Bond series, and the fourth to feature Daniel Craig as 007. Directed by Sam Mendes (who also helmed Skyfall), it features all of the franchise’s familiar elements and characters. The problem is that it handles most of them the wrong way. Let's start with the credit sequence. Bond movies have long been known for their innovative, avant-garde opening titles, dating back to the mod design work of Dr. No and the gilded, surrealist innuendos of Goldfinger. But Spectre’s credits are just weird. The sequence is built around octopus imagery, with goopy tentacles weaving and waving their way through scenes from the forthcoming movie. It's set to Sam Smith’s overwrought chamber pop ballad "Writing’s on the Wall," an unfortunate song that doesn’t work with the visuals. With its slithering sea arms and an overlay of kaleidoscopic coloring, it ultimately feels like an Apple ad for tentacle porn. The whole thing comes across as unintentionally ridiculous — and a far cry from the jazzy, energetic swagger of the opening titles for Craig’s first outing as Bond, Casino Royale.

Then there are the stalwart Bond characters of Q, Bond’s gadget maker; M, Bond’s superior; and Moneypenny, the spy agency’s longtime secretary. In Skyfall, Moneypenny was given an elevated role as a field agent (though she ultimately got benched). In Spectre, she’s relegated back to what is essentially an assistant role — a researcher rather than a rival. When Ben Whishaw debuted as the new, young Q in Skyfall, his arrival marked a welcome change for a character who had grown stale and silly. Whishaw’s nebbishy, sly Q was not only younger, but quieter and less overtly comic than his predecessors. In Spectre, however, he’s confined to a more traditional role as the comically awkward tech geek, forced to utter lame laugh lines about living alone with his cats. At the end of Skyfall, Dame Judi Dench, the actress who had played M since 1995’s Goldeneye — back when Pierce Brosnan was Bond — was replaced with a new M portrayed by Ralph Fiennes.

Dench’s M survived for so long because she was always one of the best parts of the series, regardless of the actor playing 007. Not only did she perform the traditional role of Bond’s boss, sending him on his mission and setting the story in motion, but she also served as a voice of moral authority — a conscience who didn’t just tell Bond what to do, but let him know when he was wrong. Spectre doesn’t just lose Dench’s powerful persona, it makes M a preachy dud, saddling Fiennes, who seems bored by the role, with a lot of dull sermonizing about the dangerous nature of government surveillance. That’s because the villain’s plan involves secretly partnering with world governments and taking over a massive global surveillance network in order to … well, it’s never quite clear, actually. The movie’s baddie is played by Christoph Waltz, a devilish Austrian performer with a knack for switching seamlessly between subtle innuendos and maniacally over-the-top melodrama. It’s hard to imagine any actor better suited to play a Bond villain, and yet the movie totally wastes him in the role.

The character, the head of a powerful global crime syndicate who turns out to have a rather personal history with Bond, is just a dud, all shallow menace and vague, pointless monologuing . You can’t even say his ultimate plan makes no sense, because his actual plan is barely described at all. The film is peppered with pointless references to the franchise's past Sony Pictures Christoph Waltz and Léa Seydoux deserve better from Spectre. (Sony Pictures) SPECTRE , the criminal organization Waltz's character heads up, is a nod to Bond films past. But the movie’s reliance on references to franchise history often makes it feels like it’s run out of new ideas. That’s certainly the case with Hinx, a beefy, brutal, mostly wordless villain played by former pro wrestler Dave Bautista who harks back to the old days of silly sidekick henchmen, like Oddjob and Jaws. Bond’s latest love interest feels decidedly retro, too — and not in a good way.

In contrast to Casino Royale, which paired Bond with Eva Green’s marvelously self-composed Vesper Lynd, another government agent and an equal with an agenda all her own, Spectre pulls mostly from the old Bond playbook. Léa Seydoux plans Madeleine Swann, the daughter of an old enemy, and when she and Bond first spend time together, the fatherly quality of his relationship to her is made explicit. At first, she even insists that she won’t sleep with him in order to work out some repressed daddy issues. It’s a moment of strength for the character and a nice counter to the long history of Bond films featuring exactly those sorts of clichéd older man/younger woman relationships. But just a few minutes later, the movie ruins it, sending Swann tumbling implausibly into Bond’s bed after the two off a bad guy on a moving train. Sure, the scene is a winking reference to similar train-car fights in From Russia With Love and The Spy Who Loved Me , but it totally undercuts the most interesting thing about her character. Spectre is bad in very typical ways for the franchise But what production design!

(Sony Pictures) The most disappointing aspect of Spectre is that it feels like a step backward for the Bond franchise. It’s bad in all the ways that bad Bond films are always bad. Sure, the movie is darker and moodier than its predecessors, with shadowy photography and tougher action sequences. But with a different director at the helm, a less operatic score, and a slightly brighter color palette, it’s all too easy to imagine this same script and story turning out exactly like the cheesy, glib Bond films from the 1970s, when Roger Moore played the part. Even the visuals are a disappointment relative to what Mendes pulled off in Skyfall. That film featured cinematography by the legendary Roger Deakins, perhaps the greatest cinematographer working today, whose stark, liquid compositions made for one of the most gorgeous blockbusters I’ve ever seen. Up until now, Craig’s Bond films have been all about fighting the franchise’s worst impulses.

Some of this has been winkingly obvious: When asked in Casino Royale how he’d like his martini, he shot back , "Do I look like I give a damn?" But a lot of these changes are what make Royale and Skyfall work so well: Downplaying Bond’s reliance on silly sci-fi gadgets , undercutting the series’ penchant for casual misogyny (at least a little), and making the action scenes not only more violent, but more painful for Bond. Casino Royale even allowed him to have real feelings for Vesper Lynd. Craig was the Bond who bled, and even felt real emotional pain. But in Spectre, when he orders a martini, it’s back to, "Shaken, not stirred." Every Bond film somehow reflects the time in which it's made If this is the end of the road for Craig as Bond, well, it's been fun.

(Sony Pictures) Every Bond film is in some sense a reflection of its time, from the Mad Men cool of the Sean Connery era to the Star Wars–inflected dorky disco vibe of the Roger Moore pictures to Timothy Dalton’s chilly Cold War spy thrillers to the generic, big-budget action blockbusters starring Pierce Brosnan in the late '90s. Watching a Bond film provides a sense of a given time period’s fashion sensibilities, its ideas about masculinity and power, and even its political concerns. If you wanted a sociocultural history of the United States since 1964, you could do a lot worse than watching the Bond films back to back. With its government surveillance storyline and comic-book-like attempts to give the films more connection and continuity, Spectre is no exception. On the surface, at least, it is a thoroughly modern blockbuster, and very much a product of the 2010s. But the best Bond films are also timeless in their own ways — pop masterworks that transcend the moment. The forgettable, frustrating Spectre not only fails to transcend its moment, it doesn’t live up to its own recent legacy. Was this article helpful?

Question: In which 'Bond' film does the character 'Q' appear for the first time?
Answer: 'FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE'