From Goldfinger to Skyfall

Thought "what the hell" and decided to make this poll like the previous threads:
https://bondandbeyond.forumotion.com/t1529-from-crab-key-to-casino-royale
https://bondandbeyond.forumotion.com/t1530-from-russia-to-quantum

Eventually I'll reset the poll with Skyfall added, question is when. Maybe after a whole month has passed and everyone has their thoughts cleared about it. Maybe sooner if everyone feels confident about where they stand. For now its these three titles:

My ranking:

Goldfinger
The Spy Who Loved Me
*chasm*
The World is Not Enough

Two of them became very popular and for many define the eras of an actor's tenure. One isn't really that popular at all and is relatively not considered the defining film of a certain actor's tenure. How will Skyfall turn out? That'll be interesting. Going by the word of mouth at this moment, it seems to be the former, but then we do have Lazenby. to remind us that it may just be the hype and that it's really TWINE 2.0.

No contest for me. Goldfinger is the strongest of the three by far.

Erica Ambler wrote:

No contest for me. Goldfinger is the strongest of the three by far.

Yep.

Thirded, fourthed even.

Connery, Barry, Lee, etc etc etc

The World Is Not Enough.

Goldfinger has an incredibly strong first half, but it does dwindle after Bond meets Pussy. And The Spy Who Loved Me is overrated.

So:

TWINE
GF
TSWLM.

SPY is insanely overrated, and events unfold with all the evenness of a graph depicting a massive Richter event.

TWINE is ... TWINE.

GF by a landslide (probably triggered by Max Zorin.)

Goldfinger 99.96%

This is beginning to look like an Iraqi election c.1995.

GF by several parsecs.

Fingering Gold for me. No contest, even though I'm not a massive fan of the film.

Spy is entertaining enough though. TWINE... yeah.

Easily Goldfinger.


GF
TSWLM
TWINE


Although I always felt TSWLM was a pretty bland/meh kind of film. It's good, but not as great as people make it out to be. With that said, coming on the heels of LALD and TMWTGG, it is definitely better constructed and seems to be the point in the Moore era where they finally got their shit together and figured out how they wanted to do it. The past two films seemed a bit indecisive.

TWINE... well, yeah..... kind of a mess of a film.

Despite being a big literary Bond fan I'm opting for TSWLM, I know GF is the preferred choice of the Bond connoisseur but to be honest I just find it rather boring. The original book GF had wonderful descriptive passages making the first two thirds a delight to read, but was flawed by weak plotting and a rushed ending, although the film for the most part corrects these faults it's still plot wise a terribly dull picture from the moment Bond gets captured. For me it's probably the hardest film to watch on repeated viewings.

TWINE is full of good intentions but dosen't seem to come together, the villains are dull and Electra is particularly irritating, the locations are not exotic, the action scenes are for the most part over the top and unrealistic, the plot is generally a tick the box exercise and the only interesting strand (M's kidnap) is completley wasted, the dialogue is at best corny despite trying very hard to be 'serious', the supporting cast unmemorable and worst of all Christmas Jones white t-shirt dosen't go see through when wet. Having said that I do think the PTS boat chase is great.

So to my choice the TSWLM. Okay, Fleming would be turning in his grave over this entry, but it was one of the first Bond films that I ever saw and I really like it, it's basically a greatest hits package of the previous 9 films with it's car,ski and underwater chases, big primary colored boiler suited end battles, train fights etc...
Roger Moore looks great in this film and for the first time really plays 'Jimmy' Bond as he wants to play him, as a result the whole film dosen't try and take itself too seriously and the humour and spectacle really work because of it. The gadget laden submersible Lotus is the only real contender to come close to the iconic status of the DB5, and for me Jaws is a better and more imposing henchman than Oddjob. The locations for this film are just superb and the plot seems to flow really well (better than when they used it in YOLT).
I do concede that it is not all great (I've consciously not mentioned Barbara Bach's performance) but it's still a highly enjoyable couple of hours that can be appreciated time and time again.

Poll is now reset with Skyfall added.

My rankings might be:

Skyfall
Goldfinger
The Spy Who Loved Me
*chasm*
The World is Not Enough

1. The World is not Enough
2. SkyFall
3. The Spy Who Loved Me
4. Goldfinger

01. The Spy Who Loved Me • Roger Moore finally enjoying himself is simply infectious here.
02. Skyfall • Arguably the first Bond film that's actually about something. A new trick for a very old dog.
...
03. Goldfinger • Captive Connery should, by all rights, captivate. He doesn't.
...
04. The World is Not Enough • My thoughts on most of TWINE are detailed elsewhere, but what struck me on my last marathon was unintentionally surreal the film can be in parts, dropping sets and actors under the strange glow of oddly placed computer screens. There's an interesting "fear of technology" thread running through it all, I think. Screens could come at you from anywhere (behind the wall! under the floor!), the render of Robert Carlyle is more unsettling than the genuine article, and even the interface of Bond's beamer is downright alien. Q, the man who normally guides us through such technological jungles, takes his leave, and his successor doesn't exactly seem up to the task (also, there's that quip about the millenium bug).

The World Is Not Enough
Goldfinger
Skyfall
The Spy Who Loved Me

For the moment, anyway :)

Skyfall > Goldfinger > Spy > TWINE

Score 1 for Daniel Craig. I'm as shocked as anyone.

I voted SKYFALL.

I've never liked GOLDFINGER. I consider it largely over-rated, mostly because we see Bond as his dumbest; he spends most of the film - particularly the second half - as a prisoner. The film is filled with subplots that come from nowhere and end before they can be resolved (namely Tilly Masterson) to any degree of satisfaction. All they do is slow the film down and pad out the running time.

I've also found THE SPY WHO LOVED ME to be ludicrous, a weak re-tread of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. Karl Stromberg is one of the series' most un-memorable villains, and the plot of starting civilisation under the sea is the height of silliness; I've often felt that MOONRAKER was simply remaking TSWLM to make up for its flaws. Anya is one of the most inconsistent characters in the franchise (one minute she's stealing the secrets of the Espirit; the next, she's surprised at what the car can do), and the whole thing comes across as the producers simply going through the motions of making a Bond film.

I'm known to be a lover of THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, mostly because it was my first real experience of a Bond film, but even I acknowledge its flaws. The film cannot decide on its primary villain, Christmas Jones is terrible, the script has clearly been mangled by several writers, Christmas Jones is terrible, production decisions (like the over-long PTS) undeniably hurt the film, and Christmas Jones is terrible.

So SKYFALL it is.

Skyfall. My fondness for TSWLM and to a point Goldfinger has tapered off of late and TWINE was never that much in my rankings.

This is easy.

1 GOLDFINGER
2 SKYFALL
3 THE SPY WHO LOVED ME
4 THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH

1. SF
2. GF
3. Spy
4. TWINE

Spy in #3 and TWINE is #4 is easy, but can't pick between GF and SF for #1.

I feel like I wanna give SF the edge as a film in its own right... but it just feels sacrilegious.