Shaken and stirred: the 24 Bond films to date ranked

So it’s finally here: the 25th Bond film, No Time To Die, receives its premiere tonight, at long last, having been delayed three times since its original November 2019 release date, the result of original director Danny Boyle walking away from the project, Cary Fukunaga taking over, and then COVID-19 proving to be a greater adversary than any villain 007 has faced to date. Added to the weight of expectation is that it is decidedly Daniel Craig’s fifth and final appearance as James Bond, having somewhat reinvented the character (in my opinion at least) from the outset of his tenure, as the franchise took on the grittier Jason Bourne films and Tom Cruise’s ever-more audacious Mission: Impossible series at the box office.

Conventional wisdom has it that the best screen Bond was Sean Connery, but Craig’s run has arguably come closest, running ahead of Roger Moore’s playboy Bond, Timothy Dalton’s rugged Bond, Pierce Brosnan’s stockbroker Bond, and George Lazenby’s one-off (but highly creditable) Bond. However, beyond the individual portrayals of the vodka martini-guzzling secret agent - well, as secret as you can get in a three-grand Tom Ford suit - how do the 24 ‘official’ films so far in which he appears stack up? 

Here, then, in reverse order is my ranking of each entry in the canon made by Eon Productions, the company set up in 1961 by producers Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman to turn Ian Fleming’s literary creation into a six-decade cinematic institution:

24. Die Another Day (2002)

It didn’t take long for the James Bond film series to border on self parody, but then that was half the fun of it. They have always been formulaic, but also have balanced the occasional touch of campery with sterner drama. Die Another Day, however, had neither the drama or the subtlety of the vast majority of the series, veering dangerously - and unintentionally - close to Austin Powers’ silliness, what with giant lasers and invisible cars. A shame, really, as Pierce Brosnan had been a credible 007. But once the scriptwriters jumped shark with Pierce Brosnan’s final outing, all the good work he’d built up since GoldenEye evaporated. Not even Halle Berry’s swimsuit-clad emergence from azure Cuban waters did much for it. What came next - Daniel Craig’s debut in Casino Royale - was the reset the Bodly badly needed...

23. Moonraker (1979)

The second Bond film I actually went to a cinema to see at an age when I was probably as enamoured with it as any other entry in the series I’d hitherto mostly seen on television. 40-odd years on, however, its flaws are too obvious: while the title Moonraker was, in fact, one of the earliest Ian Fleming novels to be envisaged being turned into a film (by the author himself), by the time the Bond producers put it into use as the 11th episode in the franchise, it was turned into a frankly ludicrous story that ended in a Star Wars-style space shootout. This was the result of the misshapen belief that Bond suddenly had to compete with George Lucas’s then-box office-imperious space operas. Even the ageing Moore looked bemused by it all. For various economic and union reasons, production was moved from Bond’s traditional Pinewood home to Boulogne-Billancourt in south-west Paris. When I worked there, my office overlooked the main sound stage’s distinctive shape, into which you could see how the interior of villain Hugo Drax’s Earth-threatening space station was built into it. Still the most memorable part of the film,

22. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

Speaking of zeitgeist-bating villains, Jonathan Pryce’s hammy turn as a thinly-disguised Murdoch-clone media baron was a prime example of the Bond scriptwriters attempting some topicality. But instead of making an interesting - for Bond at least - statement about media power, we ended up with something that you didn’t have to work in the media to see right through as implausible and corny, though the brief scenes of a Hamburg hotel I’ve stayed in myself were something of a saving grace. Pierce Brosnan, too, plays Bond to steely effect, and while the Bondisms are well within the traditions of the canon, Tomorrow Never Dies trades too much on a somewhat dry plot with a quasi-political message that doesn’t properly land…or needed to be said in the first place.

21. A View To A Kill (1985)

Look, I’m not bashing Roger Moore. Like ranking your favourite Doctor Who according to the one you grew up with, as a child of the 1970s (I was born in 1967) you should say that Moore was ‘my’ Bond. The problem is that by 1985, Moore was 58 and the notion of Bond being a virile thirtysomething was getting stretched to the detriment of the film. Not that it doesn’t have its moments (well, they all do), and in the always entertaining Christopher Walken and Grace Jones, AVTAK had some engaging villainy to challenge 007, not to mention the prescient application of Silicon Valley as the film’s ultimate location, before the tech industry was anywhere near the omnipresence it has now. But, still.

20. The World Is Not Enough (1999)

With the exception of a genre-honouring theme song by Sheryl Crow, Pierce Brosnan, again, was poorly served by both plot and script on his third 007 outing. Like all of them, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not bad, but the weaknesses stand out over better entries in the series, not least of which a second and fairly pointless appearance by Robbie Coltrane, and Denise Richards’ turn as Dr Christmas Jones, which took Bond girl vacuousness to a new low. Robert Carlyle does a reasonably effective job as the KGB agent-turned-terrorist Renard, while Sophie Marceau adds a classy touch as the oil heiress who proves more than a match for Bond. But, again, like its predecessor, The World Is Not Enough tries too hard to make a point, rather than deliver on expectations of a Bond film.

19. Octopussy (1983)

A 19th place for Roger Moore’s sixth Bond film might seem harsh as it’s not bad. There’s just something about it that doesn’t quite put it in the series’ upper echelons. It is a John Glen-directed film, which is usually a decent benchmark for the Bond canon, but the film is probably undermined by its weak script and Moore playing 007 a little too casually, even for his breezy application of the role. There is plenty of decent action, of course, which from a cinema point of view would have made it a good night out in 1983, but Octopussy, as the unlucky 13th entry in the series, started to make the whole franchise look tired.

18. Licence To Kill (1989)

Like George Lazenby’s single appearance as 007, Timothy Dalton’s brace of Bond films never really gave the classically-trained Welshman the chance to prove his metal in the role. Clearly he had something of a tough act to follow in replacing Roger Moore after his seven turns, but for reasons best known to the producers, Dalton’s sophomore appearance - even with that man John Glen again - took too much influence from television action series than the adverntures of Britain’s pre-eminent superspy. Aerial scenes over the Florida Keys were admittedly impressive, but the storyline of Her Majesty’s leading secret agent taking on Robert Davi’s Central Casting drug kingpin Sanchez came across more Miami Vice than vintage Bond. Even cop show character stalwarts like Anthony Zerbe in the mix gave it more of a television scale rather than big screen Bond. A 15 certificate for its earthier scenes didn’t help with box office returns, either. Dalton would leave the role there, as the series came to a jarring halt due to legal disputes.  

17. The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)

On many levels, this should be much higher in the rankings. After Moore’s stylish debut in Live And Let Die, the Bond producers gathered together a solid cast, led by Christopher Lee (a cousin of Ian Fleming) as the plummy-voiced, three-nippled titular assassin Francisco Scaramanga, Fantasy Island’s Hervé Villechaise as his impish manservant Nick Nack, and Britt Ekland at the height of her Britt Eklandness as the appallingly lightweight Miss Goodnight, but with the exception of a few genuinely impressive set-pieces (including Scaramanga’s flying AMC Hornet car, there was a tendency towards too much 1970s hipness, and even a little of the era’s psychedelia (in the showdown between Bond and Scaramanga) rather than the all-out action gags that the Bond films had established for themselves during the Sean Connery era.

16. For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Frankly, this should have been the Bond film made instead of Moonraker, so it was no surprise that 007 was restored to a more traditional outing for this first film of the 1980s, and the last made by United Artists before it was taken over by MGM. More importantly, after the sci-fi nonsense of Moonraker, Moore was given a better platform with which to portray his version of Suave Bond that, arguably, he did better than any of the other six actors in the franchise. Again with John Glen at the helm, Moore stands out amid a less starry cast, and a less trivial storyline, to the film’s benefit. It’s not at the top of the Bond game, but what it lacks in wit it makes up for in action which was finely tuned. Still, though, as with its follow-up, Octopussy, questions were already being asked about the series’ longevity, as the formula was starting to creak a little.

15. Quantum Of Solace (2008)

Frankly, I’ve wrestled with this ranking of Daniel Craig’s second Bond film. Because, as I think you’ll gather by the end of this post, I’ve been a huge fan of Craig as 007 and, equally, have loved what the three directors (in terms of films released to date) have done with him. Quantum was very much a postscript to the rebooting Casino Royale, rather than its sequel, which was a little bit of a shame. Even Craig has admitted that it "wasn’t quite what it should have been", but in mitigation, producer Barbara Broccoli has cited a Hollywood writers’ strike, and also the prospect of an actor’s walkout as a debilitation on Quantum’s development. Nevertheless, the opening sequence car chase through Italy, with Bond at the wheel of a modern Aston Martin being shot at by Quantum hitmen, was truly breathtaking, as were the rooftop scenes in Siena after Mr. White’s double-agent had shot their way out of MI6’s clutches - all skilfully arranged by director Marc Foster. Mathieu Amalric’s Dominic Greene took a new twist on the traditionally cat-stroking Bond baddie, but there was an unsatisfying dryness to the outcome of the film, not to mention a shorter length than most others in the series. Still, it’s not bad and, if I was in a more generous mood, would have placed it higher than 15th.

14. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

On artistic merit alone, Quantum Of Solace should indeed be higher than this, a film released almost 30 years beforehand. The Spy Who Loved Me, however, became the reference point for Bond films past, present and future, as well as being the one where it all fell into place for Roger Moore in his third appearance. While being somewhat reminiscent of You Only Live Twice (instead of satellites being gobbled up in space we had nuclear submarines captured at sea), veteran director Lewis Gilbert orchestrated arguably the coolest opening sequence ever committed to a Bond film - or, indeed, any film ever - with 007 chased down a ski slope by KGB agents until he flies off a cliff to be saved by a Union Flag-themed parachute opening with audacious flourish. We also dipped back into the Cold War, albeit with signs of Anglo-Soviet detente in the form of Barbara Bach, and Q Branch coming up with its best gadget since the Aston Martin DB5 - a Lotus Esprit that becomes a rocket-firing submarine. In Curt Jürgens, as the web-handed eco-villain Stromberg, you had another memorable baddie, accompanied by Richard Kiel’s van roof-chomping Jaws. Throw in some stunning Sardinian scenery and you have a Bond film - my first at the cinema - that remains memorable to this day. Better entries have been made - this is still 14th - but already we’re into the part of this ranking where it’s like choosing a favourite child in a very large brood of offspring.

13. The Living Daylights (1987)

With Timothy Dalton, 007, lost the arch camp that had increasingly accompanied Roger Moore as he grew older (and the Bond films become more like Carry On Spying), and instead introduced an intensity that returned the character to Sean Connery’s darker moments. The Living Daylights, too, applied an intelligent approach to Cold War politics without becoming too seriousness (the obligatory ski chase involving Dalton and Maryam d'Abo sliding down a mountain in a cello case is a classic), although it moved through familiar east European settings with vintage spy film style, before ending - very presciently - in Soviet invasion-era Afghanistan - and an absolutely brilliant climax involving Bond battling a baddie and a ticking bomb at the back of a Hercules over the Khyber Pass. A Bond masterclass from the Bond veteran director John Glen.

12. GoldenEye (1995)

After the lengthy legal wrangling that also saw Timothy Dalton resign his licence to kill, the Broccoli family finally got their man. Pierce Brosnan had been earmarked for Bond by Cubby Broccoli ever since they’d met on the set of For Your Eyes Only, but contractual obligations to the TV series Remington Steele had kept the smooth Irishman at arms length until the middle of cinema Bond’s fourth decade. Broccoli’s patience was richly rewarded, with Brosnan combining the eye-twinkling charm of Roger Moore with a degree of the sophistication that Sean Connery had beneath that sturdy Glaswegian exterior, two factors that, to be honest had been missing from Dalton’s colder interpretation of the character. There was much to like about GoldenEye, which is easily Brosnan’s best in the series. It felt modern, and moved the character on satisfactorily, introducing Judi Dench as the first female M, whose introduction to her star agent is to call him “a sexist, mysognist dinosaur”, giving the Bond franchise a healthy kick in the pants in the process (while also acknowledging the contemporary dismantling of the Soviet Union). Martin Campbell’s direction was crisp, with little wasted in terms of the plot or the set pieces. Welcome back, Mr. Bond.

11. Dr No (1962)

The one that started it all. The one that gave us “Bond, James Bond.” Shortly before Dr. No appeared in cinemas, Darryl F. Zanuck’s D-Day epic The Longest Day appeared, setting the trend for the next couple of decades of grandiose film-making involving as many star names as you could cram on to a billboard (John Wayne, Kenneth More, Robert Mitchum, Richard Burton, Henry Fonda, Peter Lawford, Rod Steiger, Kurt Jürgens, George Segal, Robert Wagner and Paul Anka amongst them. Indeed, such was the number of superstars in the three-hour black-and-white marathon that some made only virtual cameos. Amongst the line-up was a former milkman and amateur bodybuilder from Edinburgh, playing a lowly conscript in the Normany landings. The Longest Day would become the highest-grossing film of 1962. Two weeks after its release, Dr. No was released, heralding the start of the most enduring - and lucrative - franchise in film history. For this, alone, it deserves prominence in the 007 rankings. While it didn’t contain any of the gadgets and visual gags that would become the stock-in-trade of both Bond and its numerous parodies in the six decades to come, it established Sean Connery as, for many, the definitive 007, and in a film that, in retrospect, appears closest of all to Fleming’s literary characterisation. Of course, compared with the later Connery films, Dr. No was made on a very tentative budget, in total contrast to most of the mainstream films of 1962, but there was something decidedly expansive about the first of Terence Young’s three Bond directions, making exquisite use of Fleming’s beloved Jamaica, and turning Ursula Andress’s bikini-clad emergence from the Caribbean to the tune of Under The Mango Tree into one of cinema’s most iconic scenes. Even if the Bond films wouldn’t extend to a further 24 pictures, Dr. No stands out as an enjoyable and engaging ‘60s spy film, with colour and wit, as opposed to the tendency towards bleak Cold War themes in other examples of the genre. What it also introduced is, arguably, the most famous signature music in film history - played over the equally distinct gun barrel opening - and featuring a dark, distorted electric guitar riff (apparently written in just two minutes) at a moment in music history when rock and roll was still in its infancy, and mainstream cinema audiences were only likely to respond to orchestral scores and easy-listening music. 

10. Spectre

What we now know as Daniel Craig’s penultimate Bond film had a tough act to follow in Skyfall. By now, too, there was a story arc to continue, after the Vesper Lynd/Quantum thread, and the introduction - in concept - of Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Skyfall. Here, Blofeld is finally revealed, this time in the guise of Christoph Waltz. The trouble with Spectre is that it does have an impossible task after Skyfall - a task made harder by the fact that Sam Mendes directed both. Spectre has divided opinion amongst Bond fans, with some (including critics) branding it a disappointment. I think that’s harsh: all of the Craig films have been subtly dark and notably grittier than any in 007 history. Perhaps the ending is a little weak, with Bond encountering his arch-nemesis after yet another attempt to blow up the MI6 headquarters (one of our greatest national jokes - the Secret Intelligence Service located in one of the most prominent buildings on the London riverside, right next to Vauxhall Station…), but getting there meant plenty of terrific Bond romps, from the Day Of The Dead opening set-piece in Mexico City to the car chase in Rome, and then 007 chasing down the kidnapped Léa Seydoux in a plane eventually shorn of its wings.

9. Thunderball (1965)

We reach single figures in this ranking with Sean Connery’s fourth instalment, and another example of a hard act to follow, coming straight after the genre-defining Goldfinger. Thunderball was actually meant to be the first Fleming novel to be adapted for the big screen, but it became the centre of complex legal wrangling between Fleming and producers over claims that the book was actually based on an original screenplay. That legal dispute wasn’t resolved until as recently as 2006. That not withstanding, Thunderball booked a solid entry in the series, a ‘proper’ Bond film, with spectacular locations, sharks and underwater sequences, a clever use of an RAF Vulcan bomber as centrepiece of peak 1960s nuclear jeopardy, and Bond almost dying at a health farm. Of nothing more than a sidenote, Connery effectively remade Thunderball with the semi-serious Never Say Never Again, in which Porridge writers Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais reused one of my favourite gags from the prison sitcom - [Nurse - holding a sample jar]: “Mr. Fletcher - could you fill this for me please?” [Fletcher - sat on a hospital bed]: “What, from here?”].

8. Casino Royale (2006)

Cinema’s James Bond needed resetting. After the CGI horrors of Die Another Day, 007 faced new competition, most significantly, Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne, which tapped into the post-9/11 new world order of electronic warfare, cultural paranoia and a very different kind of paramilitary spycraft that made dinner jackets and vodka-martinis irrelevant. Perhaps sensing the acute ridicule Pierce Brosnan’s ultimate appearance had met (but with the actor still expected to play Bond again), established Bond screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade sought to return the franchise to its classic origins with Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel (indeed, his debut as a novellist) and based on his own experiences during the Second World War as a British naval intelligence officer. The Bond Fleming had invented for Casino Royale was meant to be an “extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened” adding that he saw Bond as “a blunt instrument”, attached to ”the dullest name I ever heard [James Bond]”. With Brosnan eventually ruling himself out of another Bond film for, apparently, fear of going into his 50s like Roger Moore had done, Broccoli heirs Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli found their “blunt instrument”, a relatively diminutive, blond-haired actor who’d been building his reputation as a solid character actor in film and television, leading to a standout performance as a drug dealer in Matthew Vaughan’s Layer Cake. Opinion was split when he was announced as the new Bond as he patently didn’t look like any of the Bonds before, not even Moore. Looking back, it was a masterstroke: Casino Royale took Bond back to the start of his ’00’ licence, recalling his first kill as well as the love affair for Vesper Lynd that would be part of the story arc ultimately No Time To Die will resolve, along with Craig’s tenure. New Zealander Martin Campbell, who’d helmed the BBC nuclear thriller Edge Of Darkness, as well as Brosnan’s Bond debut, GoldenEye, was tasked with turning Craig into James Bond, and refreshing the Bond machine for the 21st century. Out went the nonsense of Die Another Day and in came a Bond closer to the civil servant that Michael Caine played in the Harry Palmer films, albeit with a better wardrobe, better locations, and an Aston Martin DB9. The four-year break between Casino and its predecessor built up a dam wall of expectation, which meant that crowds swarmed to see the new incarnation of 007 with a mixture of curiosity and expectation. They weren’t disappointed, and nor were the film’s producers, coining in $606 million worldwide, the highest-grossing James Bond film to date.

7. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

Logic might dictate, or at least suggest, that the Bond film which marked its star’s only appearance in the role might have been a turkey. OHMSS was anything but, but it confounds to this day why George Lazenby made just one appearance as 007. Taken as a whole, OHMSS is a perfect Bond film (many will rank it even higher than I have done), and while Lazenby - who at 29 was the youngest actor ever to play the lead - didn’t have, perhaps, the same impact or charisma as Sean Connery, who he replaced, director Peter R. Hunt orchestrates a fantastic adventure. Telly Savalas nails it as Blofeld, while his Swiss lair’s collection of ‘Angels Of Death’ being brainwashed for the purpose of spreading a deadly virus includes a young Joanna Lumley and a pre-Magpie Jenny Hanley. Arguably, though, the standout of OHMSS is Diana Rigg as Bond’s ultimate, and ill-fated love interest, Contessa Tracy di Vicenzo, the actress at her most beautiful, playing the part as the model for Eva Green’s much later classy portrayal of Vesper Lynd. As for Lazenby, his single outing as Bond can simply be explained as his choice. He confounded everyone - including the Bond production team - by walking away from the role, at some point explaining his decision thus: “Fantasy doesn’t interest me. Reality does. Anyone who’s in touch with the kids knows what’s happening, knows the mood. Watch pop music and learn what’s going to happen. Most film-makers don’t watch and aren’t in touch.” 

6. Live And Let Die (1973)

The arrival of the the third actor to play Bond - Roger Moore - heralded something of a tonal shift for the franchise. 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever cemented Sean Connery’s status as the definitive 007, returning after Lazenby’s brief stint for one more turn with all the bells and whistles of a classic Bond film, with the 1970s budget and sideburns to boot. For Moore’s debut, writer Tom Mankiewicz and director Guy Hamilton dipped faithfully into the plot of Ian Fleming’s 1954 novel, with a storyline involving Bond in tackling a North American smuggling operation tinged with Caribbean voodoo, and dipped perilously into the blaxploitation cinematic movement, just two years after Richard Rowntree’s Shaft had made black urban themes hip. While this might sound like a convoluted association for a Bond film, Moore’s arrival - relatively fresh on the back of his 1960s exploits as TV’s The Saint (as well as, bizarrely, the US Western series Maverick) did reset the series. Moore, for a start, was not the dark-haired Bond that Connery and Lazenby had conformed to - in many people’s eyes epitomising the character Fleming had imagined. But with Live And Let Die, Moore’s slightly camp, safari suit-wearing Bond had not yet developed, the eye-winking was held back for future outings. What we got was a genuinely entertaining romp that holds its magic still, 48 years on, not least of which the speedboat race through the Louisana bayous that was a mainstay clip of TV’s children’s film quiz Screen Test with Michael Rodd. Live And Let Die was, too, possibly the first consciously hip Bond film, driven by Paul McCartney’s memorable theme tune, the voodoo and, in Yaphet Kotto as “Mr. Big”/Kananga, a welcome break from the Nehru-jacketed, cat-stroking Blofeld role.

5. Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Some fans and critics still struggle to acknowledge Diamonds as one of the great Bond films, but I’m always ready to challenge that point of view. Because when you take it as a hole, it’s a lot of fun, with at-times batshit-mad set-pieces that probably provided most of the blueprint for the Austin Powers piss-takes, but not so much that it descends into self-parody. Even accepting that Connery returned to 007 for one last time for the pay packet, he doesn’t appear as disinterested as well he might, and fits into the semi-serious plot with ease and authority. Opinion is still mixed, of course, on the presence of camp baddies Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, or indeed of Charles Grey’s equally waspish Blofeld, but the early scenes in Amsterdam will always resonate with me as a former resident of that city, and with Las Vegas - another of my haunts - providing a sun-kissed backdrop to the whole yarn’s conclusion, we have one of the more memorable films in the series, even if it as far removed from the darkness of earlier and later entries. And if nothing else, it has that Shirley Bassey theme song.

4. You Only Live Twice (1967)

As the Bond film that came out in the year of my birth, I have a particular affinity for You Only Live Twice. That fondness gets stronger at the thought of yet another classic John Barry theme tune - sung by Nancy Sinatra - (shamelessly purloined by Robbie Williams for his hit Millennium…). But as the fifth episode in the series, you got the feeling that Cubby Broccoli was hitting his stride in terms of the What Can We Do This Time? challenge. Thus, the sets were more ambitious, the locations more exotic, the stunts that much more outrageous, and designer Ken Adam’s hollowed-out volcano cleverly provided the Bond films with one of the all-time brilliant finales in cinema history. Perhaps not enough credit goes to Roald Dahl, who reapplied the kooky whimsy of his children’s writing to a contemporary spy thriller (a reversal of Ian Fleming also writing Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang), or director Lewis Gilbert’s expansive vision, injecting the same sense of big-sky drama he put into Reach For The Sky, the Douglas Bader biopic. Gilbert would seemingly reuse some of the gags in You Only Live Twice for the aforementioned Moonraker, but that shouldn’t be held against him, as this 1967 entry justifiably sits well in the Top 5 Bond Films for being, frankly, the full package.

3. Skyfall (2012)

2012 was quite the year for Brand Britain, what with the London Olympics opening with Bond himself - Daniel Craig - appearing on Her Majesty’s service with HRH herself. But with the arrival of Skyfall, directed by no less a figure as Sam Mendes, Bond took on an altogether more adventurous cinematic heft. A lot of that is down to Roger Deakins’ exquisite cinematography - the brief scene of 007 swimming in the rooftop pool of a Shanghai hotel is arguably my favourite scene in any Bond film ever, purely for its artistic quality. But in Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan’s script, Skyfall delves deeper than ever into Bond’s past, with Javier Bardem’s Double-O agent-gone bad Silva (and even a moment of homo-erotic tension between them), forcing an emotional, maternal connection between Judi Dench’s M and Craig’s 007. From start to finish, Mendes created a truly compelling Bond film, without compromising on all the gags we love the series for just to underline his theatre credentials. Skyfall also became the first Bond film in history to feature Britain, prominently, with its final third drawing a geographic line between London and Scotland, as Bond and M take the iconic Aston Martin up to the titular Skyfall, the Bond ancestral family home, for a spectacular (and surprisingly moving) final showdown with Silva.

2. Goldfinger (1964)

Watching all the early ’60s Bond films now shows up their contemporary technical deficiencies. Goldfinger’s iconic car chase, for example, with 007 driving the Aston Martin DB5 around the portly villain’s Swiss factory (actually, it was an industrial park in Wales) was as much as the age’s cinema could provide, with Sean Connery clearly sat inside a motionless Aston while a backscreen jerked around him. But that’s looking at Goldfinger through a 2021 viewer’s sophistication, where we can no longer tell the difference between real and CGI. I raise all this in my thoughts about Goldfinger merely to get them out of the way. Because in the third Bond film, Cubby Broccoli stepped up a significant gear. Director Guy Hamilton pulled off the first properly ‘classic’ Bond film, arguably setting the blueprint for every one that followed. It’s a view shared by Daniel Craig himself, who named Goldfinger his favourite of the entire series: “Just everything about it,” he told the Sunday Times. “The suits and the car and the look and the feel of it. This is Bond firing on all cylinders.” After the Caribbean setting of Dr. No, and the European landscape of From Russia With Love, Guy Hamilton took Bond into a more expansive spread of locations (a hallmark of the series ever since) - the Fontainbleu Hotel in Miami where Bond takes on Auric Goldfinger at cards, the Swiss alps where he encounters Tilly Masterson, the Kentucky stud farm where Goldfinger literally wipes out the Mafia, and then the actual Fort Knox, where Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus kicks off the audacious plot to detonate a nuclear bomb inside the US gold reserve. After the rudimentary briefcase of From Russia With Love, Q Branch also stepped up their game with Goldfinger, delivering arguably Bond’s most famous gadget, the DB5 with “modifications” that included an ejector seat for unwanted passengers, machine guns in the lighting recesses, revolving number plates, an early form of satnav, bullet-proof screen, tyre-slashing wheel hubs and an oil slick delivery system. In Gert Frobe, the German actor (well, his voice stand-in, British actor Michael Collins) we had one of the all-time great Bond/Bond villain interactions: [Bond] “Do you expect me to talk?” [Goldfinger]: “No Mr. Bond! I expect you to die!” as a laser beam edges closer to the Bond family jewels.

1. From Russia With Love (1963)

It might be counter-intuitive to position the second-oldest Bond film as its best, given that it lacks the technical brilliance of the most recent, with 21st century production values, but From Russia With Love for me combines all the things I love about Bond films with all the things I love about spy thrillers. Made just 12 months after Dr. No, director Terence Young swapped the debut’s sun-kissed Caribbean setting for the considerably greyer tones of Eastern Europe, as Bond comes up against SMERSH seeking revenge for the death of Dr. No in the first film. What it lacks in the outrageous gadgetry that would follow (Q’s greatest contribution is a nifty “standard issue attaché case” containing an Armalite rifle, a throwing knife, tear gas canisters disguised as talcum powder tins, and a string of gold sovereigns), it more than makes up for in sophistication. In Robert Shaw’s body builder Red Grant, Bond meets one of the first great adversaries, especially in their thrilling, claustrophobic encounter on a train, along with second, Lotte Lenya as SPECTRE’s knife-in-shoe-wielding ‘No.3’ Rosa Klebb. We also get a full first glimpse of Bond’s refined pedantry, when he requests a coffee from Ali Kerim Bey, head of MI6 ‘Station T-Turkey’ in Istanbul, and orders it “medium sweet”. I have never known what that actually means - one lump or three? - but its a scripting touch that adds to the overall cool of From Russia With Love that, arguably, the Bond franchise would not return to until Timothy Dalton’s first appearance, The Living Daylights, fully coming back with the Daniel Craig era that is about to come to an end.