Just last week, the latest movie in the Bond franchise, SPECTRE, was released. I’ll be reviewing that later this week, but one thing that really struck me about it was how the history of the franchise colors your feelings and expectations of the film. I love the Daniel Craig Bond films to death, but having recently watched through the entire Bond franchise, from Dr. No to Spectre, I now have an even deeper appreciation for what the more recent films have set out to do.

This particular piece will set out to define what, exactly, makes a Bond movie a Bond movie by tracing the origins and evolution of the franchise.

Sean Connery (Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice)

There are still many who would insist that Sean Connery is the one and only “true” Bond. It helps to have been the one to define the cinematic version of the character in the first place, but even with that advantage, it would be dishonest to downplay Connery’s charisma. From the very first moment of Dr. No, Connery IS Bond: suave, charming, and dangerous. Connery’s Bond is your grandpa’s secret agent, a man’s man who drinks hard, fights commies, and beds beautiful women. The archetype that later movies play off of is fully formed from the start.

So, too, is the Bond formula. Dr. No is surprisingly effective as an introduction to all things Bond, beginning with fairly low-key spying and thwarted assassinations and ultimately culminating with Bond in a grand underwater evil lair, run by an eccentric (and ethnically uncomfortable) villain by the name of Dr. No. It’s one of the best structured films in the series, actually, progressing from a standard (albeit very good) 60s spy movie to a place of utter insanity. Meanwhile, it sets up the Bond Girl trope with both a spy/assassin woman (whose encounter with Bond is rather troubling, given our modern conception of what constitutes rape), and the unfortunately named Honey Ryder, who is only the first in a series of women with terrible names.

The next two Connery films are interesting in how they each double-down on a different aspect of the James Bond experience. From Russia With Love may be the film that introduces gadgets, but they’re very low-key. The movie also features a far less eccentric villain and no grand plan or fortress. Instead, it focuses primarily on Bond’s relationship with Russian agent and unwitting SPECTRE puppet Tatiana. With a phenomenal fight scene onboard a train and a sequence in which Bond is chased by an airplane, From Russia With Love borrows heavily from Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, but still ends up being one of the better films in the franchise. It also emphasizes SPECTRE even more than in Dr. No, in which the villain was also a part of that evil organization.

Goldfinger is actually the only Sean Connery film that is completely unrelated to SPECTRE, but it’s also, to many people, the quintessential Bond movie. It featured a Bond Girl named Pussy Galore, the infamous laser table, the Aston Martin, a woman painted gold (who died because the gold blocked her pores and suffocated her…somehow), and a popular villain by the name of Auric Goldfinger. The movie was a huge deal for Eon Productions, and cost as much as the first two films combined. Lots of silliness involving nerve gas and mafiosas ensues, and Bond arguably saves the day by raping Pussy Galore in a pile of hay. It’s a strange movie.

It’s also a harbinger of things to come, as Connery’s films become increasingly ridiculous with each entry. Thunderball’s opening features Bond punching a widowed woman in the face for opening her own car door (which PROVED that she was actually a man in disguise) and then escaping via hidden jetpack. Later, SPECTRE steals a nuke from outer space and then hides it underwater, leading to a drawn-out underwater fight scene. It may not be the best Connery film, but it is wildly entertaining at times.

Connery’s run was supposed to end with You Only Live Twice, perhaps the most iconic film in the franchise after Goldfinger. It features a very catchy and recognizable Nancy Sinatra theme song, the introduction of SPECTRE head Ernst Blofeld, and the infamous underground volcano lair. It also features an uncomfortable subplot in which Bond fake-marries a Japanese woman and undergoes cosmetic surgery to look Oriental. This is achieved by the makeup crew by painting Connery’s face slightly darker than usual and giving him absurdly large eyebrows, a transformation that was hilariously lampooned in Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Team America.

George Lazenby (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service)

 As Connery grew tired of the films and kept demanding more money, Eon turned to George Lazenby for the film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Lacking the effortless charm of Sean Connery, fans ate Lazenby alive, and OHMSS lived with a very poor reputation for many years.

However, looking back on it, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is one of the very best films in the series. For one, it was far and away the most cinematic entry up to that point. Most of the Connery films were merely functional in their cinematography and editing, making sure that the story was clear and that stunts were visible but doing little to visually tell the story. Here, director Peter Hunt uses far more close-ups and a more kinetic editing style, making OHMSS a much more engaging film to watch.

It’s also far better on a script-level than most of the earlier films. While it still retains some of the series’ silliness (seriously, Blofeld’s evil plot is to brainwash beautiful women into becoming assassins with a fake allergy research facility at the top of a Swiss mountain), there’s an actual interest in making Bond a recognizable human being this time around. Bond’s relationship with Tracy (played by the excellent Diana Rigg) is treated as more than a silly fling, and for the first time in the series, Bond expresses an interest to leave spying behind and have a family. He actually gets married in this film…only to have Tracy killed in a drive-by shooting. C’est la vie.

But despite its strengths and a more human version of Bond, Lazenby just didn’t have the suave, cool, hyper-masculine presence that Connery did, so Eon brought Connery back for one last ill-conceived ride.

Sean Connery’s Return (Diamonds Are Forever)

People like to point out on occasion that the things that make a good “Bond Movie” aren’t necessarily the same as the things that make a good “Movie.” Under this reasoning, some of Connery’s previous films weren’t especially good “Movies,” but they were good “Bond Movies.” Meanwhile, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is, in large part, a great “Movie,” but failed as a “Bond Movie.”

Diamonds Are Forever is the first film in the Bond franchise to miss the boat completely. It feels boring and redundant, featuring the third actor to portray Blofeld in three consecutive movies, a formless plot, and an air of desperation that was never before present. Eon desperately wanted to recreate the magic of previous movies with plenty of twists, goofy plotlines, and more Bond Girls with ridiculous names (Plenty O’Toole, this time), but the desperation seeps into the movie, and the whole thing feels soulless.

There’s also the unavoidable fact that, at this point, Sean Connery just doesn’t care. With each film, you can tell that he’s slightly less interested in the role than he was before, and with Diamonds are Forever, he’s practically sleepwalking. He still has a bit of his charm left, but there’s no urgency to anything he does. Nine years after Dr. No, he’s aged notably, an unfortunate reality that almost all James Bond actors ultimately grapple with. Diamonds Are Forever is tired, boring, and proof that Eon needed to desperately re-imagine the franchise.

Roger Moore (Live and Let Die, The Man With the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, A View To Kill)

If George Lazenby lacked Sean Connery’s charm, then Roger Moore was an attempt at creating a whole new kind of charm for James Bond. He had none of Connery’s ruggedness, and there was a jokey, lighthearted air about his performance that contrasted heavily with the previous films. Everything about him feels like an attempt by Eon to reach a new generation of moviegoers. Instead of targeting the macho post-war demographic from the 40s and 50s, Moore (ironically the oldest actor to portray James Bond) was chosen to appeal to the Baby Boomer generation, which rejected many of the traditional standards of masculinity.

For my money, Moore is the weakest James Bond. He never comes off as particularly dangerous or threatening, and many of his films lack stakes because of his performance. However, he starred in more “official” Bond productions than any other actor, and is representative of a very strange period in the franchise’s history. Eon never quite figured out a formula for Moore’s films, so they frequently oscillate in form and tone.

His debut picture, Live and Let Die, is hard to fit into a group with any of Moore’s other films because of how completely it tried to capture a different audience. In short, LaLD is what happens when a bunch of white British men try to figure out how to make James Bond into a blacksploitation film. It is utterly bonkers, bringing together blacksploitation tropes like black gangs and drug trades with Bond tropes like henchmen with prosthetic arms. They also shoved in lots of voodoo, and a psychic woman who draws her power from her virginity. It is a horrible misstep that was misguided at the time and is thoroughly offensive, and simultaneously hilarious, today.

Moore’s other films can be classified as relatively real-world or completely off-the-wall insane. The Man With the Golden Gun is fairly traditional for most of its run-time, with Bond tracing a three-nippled man who is renowned for his ability to kill people with a Golden Gun. Despite a somewhat psychedelic evil lair at the end, not much stands out. The same can be said about For Your Eyes Only, one of the most forgettable entries in the series. The most notable thing that happens in that particular entry is that Bond turns down a girl for being too young. Then there’s A View To Kill, which tries to ground itself in the economic boom of Silicon Valley and should work solely because of the presence of Christopher Walken. But instead it’s a failure of epic proportions, including brief mentions of Nazi super-strength experiments that are never especially relevant and evil plots that feel far too low-stakes for a Bond production.

However, of these more grounded films, one stands out as especially strong. The Spy Who Loved Me is a great adventure yarn, once again focusing on Bond and a young woman he falls in love with. However, unlike many Bond films, his love interest Anya Amasova is plenty competent in her own right, a KGB agent who rivals Bond himself. This is perfectly set up in an opening scene which features both Bond and Amasova, who have yet to meet, sleeping with people to get information for their mission. It’s a sequence that ends with the famous shot of Bond skiing off of a cliff and opening his Union Jack parachute. Later, the film introduces Jaws, perhaps the most famous Bond-movie henchman, and it ends in a terrific-looking sea-base.

The other two films in Roger Moore’s oeuvre are far more absurd and feel more suited to Moore’s persona. The first of these, Moonraker, is one of the most cartoonish and ridiculous movies in the franchise, even before Bond literally goes to space and witnesses a giant space-laser fight. Jaws returns and falls in love at first sight with a beautiful blonde who also loves him, Bond pilots a motor-gondola on land and in the water, there’s a stereotypical Asian sidekick, an outer-space Aryan eugenics program, and a near-assassination of Bond via g-force simulator. Then, in Octopussy (which, yes, features a woman named Octopussy), James Bond dresses up like a clown while defusing a nuclear bomb. The movie ends with a legion of circus-performers assaulting an evil base. It is completely nuts.

Like I mentioned before, being a good “Bond Movie” and a good “Movie” aren’t the same thing. Of the Moore films, I’d say that you have one good “Movie” and a couple of great “Bond Movies.” The rest are generally forgettable entries in the franchise. However, from a purely stylistic standpoint, Moore’s time on the series is an interesting one to chronicle. As popular cinema changed quite a lot over these 12 years, the movies became increasingly cinematic and “modern” in their sensibilities. Few would argue that Moore’s run was as iconic as Connery’s, but they absolutely had an impact on the series going forward.

Timothy Dalton (The Living Daylights, License to Kill)

After Roger Moore left the franchise, Timothy Dalton took over as James Bond. As an actor, Dalton was one of the best to portray the character. He was capable of injecting actual emotion into the character without contradicting the masculine charm inherent in Connery’s portrayal. However, he could never quite work as a romantic lead, was incapable of  fully dropping his “angry” side, and he starred in two fairly divisive films.

The first, The Living Daylights, is a relatively traditional Bond affair, but with swifter pacing than usual. The plot is characteristically convoluted, but it features some incredible stuntwork and some of the best editing/cinematography since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. It also has a plotline involving Bond teaming with the Taliban against the Soviets that feels awkward today, but was probably fine when the film released in 1987. In short, it’s not the best entry in the series, but it’s solid.

License to Kill, on the other hand, is beloved by some and hated by others. It’s much more devoted to the “dark, vengeful” take on the character, and opens with a groom and bride being killed by a drug lord after their wedding. As they were friends of Bond, and Bond remembers the death of his own wife (continuity is a strange thing in this series), their death spurs Bond to go rogue and pursue the killers without the assistance of MI6. In a way, the personal nature of the conflict and the darker tone helped set the board for Daniel Craig’s later run as Bond, but the tone never fully meshes with the more traditional Bond look, feel, and structure that License to Kill employs. It’s a dark, gritty revenge drama that happens to have ninjas and Polaroid cameras with lasers in them.

After two movies that failed to connect with audiences, Eon took a six year break and returned with Pierce Brosnan.

Pierce Brosnan (Goldeneye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day)

When it comes to Pierce Brosnan’s Bond movies, there are two simple categories: Goldeneye, and Everything Else.

Goldeneye is interesting in that it is a commentary on the Bond formula and how poorly it fits with the 90s, politically correct, post-Cold-War world. The decision to cast Judi Dench as M is a very significant and intentional one, highlighting a world in which women are not simply sexual toys but capable of being very powerful and capable. The film doesn’t exactly shy away from this viewpoint, either; M flat-out says it. “I think you’re a sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War, whose boyish charms are wasted on me but obviously appealed to that young woman I sent out to evaluate you,” she tells Bond, referring to his driving evaluater (who he had sex with, of course). Bond’s relationship is similarly updated with Moneypenny, who sort-of flirts with Bond, but also calls him out for his frequent sexual harassment.

This doesn’t mean that Goldeneye eschewed all of the fun of the previous movies. The main henchwoman literally fucks her enemies to death, after all. But there’s still an attempt by the writers to let the audience know that they’re aware of the series’ somewhat-troubling past, which they simultaneously embrace and condemn. It shouldn’t work, but it does. Goldeneye is also directed by Martin Campbell, one of the best directors the series has had, who will return to resurrect the franchise once again with Casino Royale.

Brosnan’s other films, however, lack the recognition and wit of Goldeneye. Instead, they settle to be slightly cleaned-up versions of the films that have come before. In return, they’re either relatively boring entries or so completely apeshit that they don’t really work. On the bland end of the spectrum are Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough. Tomorrow Never Dies is best known as “that one with Michelle Yeoh on a motorcycle and a remote controlled car,” and TWINE is “that one with Denise Richards as the least convincing nuclear scientist of all time.” They’re generally functional, but completely unremarkable films.

Then there’s Die Another Day, a perfect example of everything wrong with early 21st century film. For one, it’s full of unconvincing CGI and very bad slow-motion effects, but more damningly, the producers were trying incredibly hard to make Halle Berry’s Jinx character popular enough to spin-off. What results is a Poochie-like creation, spouting off terrible forced one-liners that make Bond look like the wittiest man on the planet. The film itself, with its ice palaces, space lasers, and facial reconstruction surgery, is almost as ridiculous as Moonraker and Octopussy. Unfortunately, DAD lacks any of the earnest charm that came with those pictures. Instead, it comes off as a series of homages to earlier films, created by people who have no understanding of why those initial pictures worked.

It’s unfortunate that Pierce Brosnan was saddled with three lackluster films after Goldeneye, as he’s one of the most balanced actors to portray Bond. He has the hardness of Dalton and Connery, but also the ability to be lighter, jokier, or more romantic when the situation called for it. He’s suave and debonair, but also somebody who could be effective in a fight. But alas, an actor’s quality as a James Bond is secondary to the films themselves, so drastic measures were taken to revive the dying Bond franchise.

Daniel Craig (Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, SPECTRE)

After Die Another Day crashed and burned, Eon once again went back to the drawing board, calling on Goldeneye director Martin Campbell to work his magic yet again. They hired Daniel Craig to portray Bond, and fans erupted with anger about the decision. Craig was too blond, they decided, and not nearly hard enough to portray Bond. Websites were created with the sole purpose of rallying against Eon and making them recast.

Then Casino Royale was released, and most of those voices fell silent. Not only was Daniel Craig a superb Bond, wholly unique from those who came before him, but Casino Royale was the best, most thoughtful film in the entire franchise. By delivering an origin story, one that viewed Bond as a troubled human being rather than an icon, the writers, director, and producers were able to rebuild their central character without sacrificing the elements that defined him.

On its own, Casino Royale is a terrific film, with great pacing, exciting action sequences (including a parkour chase which is considered one of the best scenes in the franchise), and two flawed but captivating characters in James Bond and Vesper Lynd. The film takes significant risks, too, setting most of its second act around a high stakes game of Texas Hold’em. There are fight scenes and tense near-death experiences worked in, as well, but much of the drama lingers over a card tournament. It is to the credit of Craig, as well as Mads Mikkelsen’s Le Chifre, that these scenes work at all.

But Casino Royale’s master stroke is in its re-contextualization of the Bond character. By the end of the film, and in the next three films, Bond is essentially the same character he was in the classic movies: he’s masculine, dangerous, witty, sexual, casually misogynistic, and an alcoholic. However, instead of glorifying these traits in the way that previous films did, we instead see that Bond is a collection of coping mechanisms. The reason that he forms no real attachment to any women in future films (with the possible exception of SPECTRE) is because he can’t bring himself to become attached. We see him flippantly joking about the death of a woman he was involved in in Skyfall, but the scene can be read as Bond putting up a shell, acting stronger about a loss than he actually feels inside.

The same can be said about his drinking habit. As the films continue on, Bond drinks more and more frequently, and it is never glamorized. We see him on a bender towards the start of Skyfall, and downing alcohol in a house in Morocco in SPECTRE, but he doesn’t look like a badass ladies man while doing it. Instead, he’s sweaty, gross, and an all-around mess. The way that characters refer to Bond is different, as well. In SPECTRE, he is almost exclusively called an “assassin,” not a spy. Previous Bonds killed people frequently, but the film itself was always on his side. Here, his actions are more questionable, and his very reasoning for being a killer is a major recurring topic.

With the exception of Quantum of Solace, a chase film which is a functional but unnecessary continuation of Casino Royale’s plot, each Daniel Craig film centers around Bond’s actual nature while still doing justice to the classic “formula” of the series. In Skyfall, my favorite film in the franchise, the conflict becomes as much about Bond’s relationship with M (still played by the wonderful Judi Dench) as it is about set pieces, exotic locations, and beautiful women. Since the villain’s quarrel with M is about the same type of relationship that she has with Bond, in which he is ultimately expendable, it brings their dynamic into a new light.

Meanwhile, director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins cover the “set pieces, exotic locations, and beautiful women” part of the movie more deftly than any filmmakers before. Skyfall is absolutely gorgeous, the work of true visual artists in a pulp franchise. Their work here elevates the material, ensuring that audiences will actually take its larger themes and ideas into consideration, rather than dismissing them as nonsense in a trashy movie.

A similar level of craft was lent to this year’s SPECTRE, again directed by Sam Mendes but shot by Hoyte Van Hoytema. While Hoytema may not be as legendary as Deakins, he has a very strong filmography (including Let the Right One In, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Her, and Interstellar), and does absolutely phenomenal work here. SPECTRE may be the most beautiful movie in the series, which helps offset some weaknesses and logical issues in its screenplay. Even with those weaknesses, however, SPECTRE is the beneficiary of a Bond who has now been thoroughly defined. It’s the franchise’s way of re-embracing the tropes that made it popular in the first place while informing them with a more complex vision of its central character.

In Conclusion

The Bond franchise is a strange one, having come out of the gates relatively well-formed. Most of its most famous elements are present in the very first film, and all of the others developed over the next two movies. However, after Connery’s initial run, the series was always most successful when it tried to embrace its characters on a relatively human level rather than simply re-creating the original films beat-for-beat. There’s a certain magic to those early movies, a feeling that what you’re watching is extraordinarily imperfect and at times outright bad, but charming in its silly earnestness. It’s impossible to recreate that exact feeling with the knowledge that it existed.

In my eyes, the Daniel Craig series has been the most successful at creating its own concept of the character while still retaining what made the series work in the first place. Skyfall and SPECTRE, in particular, have a real sense of history, both in regard to the original films and the character history established since Casino Royale. This awareness, along with a strong understanding of the Craig-Bond character and the craft of the filmmakers, have made for unforgettable cinematic experiences. The Bond franchise has never been stronger.

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BONUS: What to Watch

Having watched through every single one of these movies, I know that some can be a slog, or a flat-out waste of time. The following are the films I would recommend, either because they’re great, they’re ridiculous, or they’re so astoundingly bad as to be entertaining anyway.

Dr. No
From Russia With Love
Goldfinger
Thunderball
You Only Live Twice
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Live and Let Die
The Spy Who Loved Me
Moonraker
Octopussy
Goldeneye
Casino Royale
Skyfall
SPECTRE