Just logged in to my Netflex account as it has been awhile. Found "From Russia With Love" on it but I have yet to have seen "Dr. No." Should I watch the former if I haven't watched the latter? Thanks in advance!

Nope. The only Bond movie that's a direct sequel to a previous film is Quantum of Solace.

I don't think you need to watch any of the 007 films in a particular order (except, as noted, the D.Craig Casino Royale before its sequel in order to avoid spoilers). And Moonraker has a returning villain from an earlier film, as do several of the other early ones (although a certain criminal mastermind is played by a host of different actors who have no physical resemblance to each other...sort of like evil Doctor Who's). And Never Say Never Again, an independent production starring Connery, is a loose remake of Thunderball.

Having said that, it might be interesting to see them in original production order since the entire styles changed a lot during each era. For instance, a lot of things which later became iconic staples (the great theme songs, strong John Barry scores, captivating opening credit sequences, etc.) weren't present in Dr. No. Probably many of us (like me) saw them in jumbled order, and it kind of influences the way you view the more "primitive" early efforts vs. even Goldfinger, Thunderball, etc. (3rd & 4th, respectively). Or seeing Roger Moore's 007 take before seeing Connery, etc.

Any way you watch them will give you a lot of laughs (like Connery's line about the only way the Beatles are listenable is through earmuffs...this back in the "She Loves You" days). Or seeing Moore's leisure suits & flared pants, the ever-changing (and growing) hair length & sideburns, the vehicles used, etc. If I were just starting with Bond, I'd want to get the complete set (thus far) and watch from the beginning.

Btw...However you watch them, look for the wide variety of ways Bond's CIA buddy Felix Leiter is portrayed: middle-aged, dashing, Caucasian, black, etc. Either Lieter is the consummate master of disguise, or every CIA agent attached to Bond is given the same cover name. Here are a few examples shown in one image:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...lixLeiters.jpg

The chart doesn't show another black version of Leiter, actor Bernie Casey in Never Say Never Again.

Just finished watching all the Bond films in order. It's funny how my impression of the films was so much higher than the reality of their quality. Dr. No is almost perfect and From Russia With Love is up there - mainly thanks to Robert Shaw - but then there's this major drop-off. Anyway, it's an interesting exercise.

Major dropoff AFTER "From Russia With Love"? Meaning Goldfinger?! No, I don't think so.

You know where MY major dropoff happens? When Pierce Brosnan shows up. Roger Moore's camp holds up, but god, those Brosnan movies are horrible. Thankfully, Craig has returned the franchise to fine form.

Goldfinger is a major dropoff from FRWL. It's a really good Bond flick, but FRWL is perfection. Of course, an even bigger drop-off occurs at YOLT...

I think the only Brosnan film that really holds up is The World Is Not Enough and (to a lesser extent) Tomorrow Never Dies. Goldeneye is only average and Die Another Day... well...

I actually find that the Roger Moore movies are my favorites of the "classic Bonds" as I get older. I like a lot of the Sean Connery movies but they have their dull patches ("Thunderball" features about 99 minutes of underwater wrestling). I watched "A View To A Kill" lately for the first time in years and was surprised by how much fun I had with one of the "weaker" Bond movies - Christopher Walken, Eiffel Tower, Grace Jones, Golden Gate Bridge - sure, it's campier than some of the movies but way better than the Brosnan years (which I'll agree with others get worse in retrospect all the time). Maybe it's because Moore was the first Bond I was introduced to but I actually quite like his movies, as much as I do Daniel Craig's which are completely different in tone.

I got the Bond 50 set last year when it was on sale, and binged all of the movies in order.

Interesting experience. One thing I noticed is that the movies were all too long. They would be much better with a half an hour trimmed out and given a running time of 90 minutes into leaner, more efficient machines.

Maybe a hip-hop soundtrack too. And sassy Latina sidekicks?

What, did you not notice Talisa Soto in LICENCE TO KILL?



@ the OP: you do not need to see DR. NO first. The two plots are unrelated. The only continuity is that Bond is having a picnic with Sylvia Trench at the beginning, the first woman he sleeps with in DR. NO.

Keep your voice down. 007 producers may be listening.

Also, View to a Kill has a great musical score by John Barry. One of the better Bond scores IMO.

From Russia with Love after Dr. No can work as it only makes a passing reference to the previous movie . However, it does enhance your enjoyment.

Tomorrow Never Dies and The World is Not Enough are my two favorite Brosnan Bond films too. I don't really care much for Goldeneye even though a lot of people proclaim it as Brosnan's best and one of the best Bond films.

I still say my favorite Bond is Dalton. He's by far the most underrated at playing the character and I wish he was able to have done more than two films.

GoldenEye is more than a Bond film, IMO. It's just really well done. I like all of the Brosnan ones, to be honest, but GE blows all of them out of the water.

I watched the Roger Moore ones when I was younger because I remember TBS used to have marathons in the early 90s and most of them were his movies, but I didn't get "into" 007 myself until after I got GoldenEye for the Nintendo 64.

I'll agree that Dalton is underrated though after finally seeing Licence to Kill and The Living Daylights for the first time recently. I would've liked to see what else he brought to the role.

Goldeneye in my opinion has aged terribly. I think it was one of those things where my nostalgia made it better for me until I watched it not long ago on Blu-ray and it just didn't do much for me.

Agreed. Which is why I think QoS has a chance of aging better than most Bonds because of the running time.

LtK could be one of the best Bonds if it had about 30 minutes cut.

Having never seen a Brosnan Bond film, I was actually surprised that they weren't awful. Didn't even mind the invisible car.

The Dalton films were kind of a mess, though. The Living Daylights was trying too hard to be a Rambo-style actioner, while License to Kill was pretty much James Bomd wandering into an episode of Miami Vice. Too bad we didn't get Dalton in an actual James Bond movie.

The movie came out a full year before the Afghanistan-themed RAMBO III, so if anything, RAMBO copied it.

Not so much the Afghanistan setting; it just felt like they were trying to ape the 80s action movies like Rambo: First Blood Part II and Commando.

Though it is fucking hilarious to see Rambo and Bond fighting with the Taliban.

It's a completely independent narrative, there's only a passing reference to the first film, and it has a beginning, middle, and end. You'll be fine. It's a fan favorite among the Bond flicks. It doesn't have the bombastic fireworks that they do now and it's a bit dated, but Young is a little more in the Hitchcock mold and the film feels very classy and sleek, more like an espionage thriller than an action picture.

Bond films very, very rarely age well. If anything, they're mostly timepieces of their eras. Nearly all of them absorb whatever filmmaking trends are in vogue at the time and have a short shelf life until the next gets there, and deal with then-topical plots. They're almost always helmed by bland directors who work with the actors while the second unit directs the action scenes, and EON doesn't let anyone mess with the formula. Ever. The films exist from set piece to set piece, almost never moving forward in any meaningful way. That's part of the fun mind, it's sort of like seeing how many different ways you can play variations on themes. Some people say Bond is a disposable commodity who's a collection of tics without much concrete character development or backstory. Which isn't necessarily wrong, but hey, so is Sherlock Holmes, and he's last 120+ years.

GoldenEye is arguably the first "modern" Bond film. It's very post-Die Hard, post-Terminator 2 where the fireworks are really jacked up to explosive proportions, special effects money shots are huge, and what little laws of physics were obeyed are completely dropped. Though I like it. Campbell give it a more playful, knowingly winking tone.

I've seen every Connery Bond film a million times (except for NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN, which I've only seen once). In which film did Bond make a comment about the Beatles?

Goldfinger, when he tells Jill Masterson, "My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, such as drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That's just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!"

Then Odd Job knocks him out.

Glad to see these sentiments. Tomorrow Never Dies is my favorite Brosnan Bond. I'll admit that a lot of that is due to the presence of Michelle Yeoh, and the fight scenes that were clearly influenced by 80s/90s Hong Kong cinema. But I also really liked the concept of a media mogul as the villain. I find it strange when a lot of people cite Jonathan Pryce as a "poor" Bond villain, but I think he's one of the more realistic and credible villains of the entire series.

The World is Not Enough is an interesting entry in the series, as it's the final Bond film before 9/11. From that point on, terrorism in film took on an entirely new direction.

I never liked Goldeneye. Not when I saw it in the theater (and I believe I rolled my eyes and said "Oh please" out loud to the entire theater when James flew into the crashing plane. Yes, he flew using his arms.). It always seemed to go out of its way to "modernize" Bond into the 90s with references to safe sex and him having a female boss. Which brings me to this:

Invariably, when someone praises Goldeneye, it's not long before they mention the N64 game. Now, I never played it myself, but I've heard it was an all-time classic. And that's what makes me think that the love for Goldeneye (the movie) may really be an association with the video game.

Liking something by association happens a lot, and I give two big examples of movies and music (hope I'm not going off on too much of a tangent here). One example is when people praise Echo and the Bunnymen's version of "People are Strange" as being one of the best cover songs of all time. It really doesn't add or alter anything in the Doors' version. But if you press someone who loves the cover version, you'll usually find they're a big fan of The Lost Boys.
The second example is from when I was in high school, and carried around a boom box with collection of cassettes (yep, I'm that old). One cassette in my collection was the first record by The Cars, and when my friends saw I had that, they'd always ask me to play Moving in Stereo. I could never figure out why, as I thought (and still do) that it's one of the weakest songs on the album. But later I realized it was the association with Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and THAT scene. C'mon, y'all know what I'm talking about.

Thunderball is a drop-off? It has one of the most thrilling underwater battles in cinema history and holds up well even today. Great villains too. I say the drop-off occurs when Bond goes to Japan which is just so goofy and the one where he goes to Las Vegas is awful.

I agree (although Thunderball has a few longer stretches that could have benefited with tightening, there's still lots of 007 goodness to behold.

YOLT has good moments, too, but it's almost undermined with that, as you aptly call it, "goofy" segment in which very tall, Caucasian Connery goes "undercover" (sticking out like a sore thumb) with the dubious disguise of a haircut with bands & eyelids pulled back by tape. And Diamonds is an uneven flick in which Connery seems to have aged immensely since his previous outing (the sideburns don't help) and appears to be acting with a gun at his head (or being incredibly bored). According to the doc "Everything or Nothing" (the motto of EON productions), Connery couldn't even go to the loo in Japan without having his picture taken (literally) and was exhausted by the constant hounding by the press & publicity pressure & wanted out; with Diamonds (apt title), he just came back for the money (and it shows).

Speaking of Goldeneye, the main thing it did for me was make me wish they had cast Sean Bean as 007 instead of Brosnan.