“Spectre”: Ranking the James Bond movies so far

A new James Bond movie is always a bit of an event, especially if you grew up on the franchise like I did, so with Spectre hitting theaters tomorrow, I wanted to do something 007 centric. What though? Well, I opted to go ahead and both discuss the latest Daniel Craig led Bond flick as well as rank all of the films in the long running series so far. A bit of an ambitious undertaking, yes, but having seen all but the newest one multiple times, I felt that I was up to the challenge. Particularly when you see what the latest one is about, it does make sense… Spectre is the 24th official Bond film (not counting Never Say Never Again), once again starring Craig as the spy. This time around, he’s trying to finish a mission set forth by the late M (Judi Dench), one that will explain all that has come before as well as bring him into contact with the ultimate villain (Christoph Waltz), one who has known 007 for a very long time. Sam Mendes again directs, the script is again by John Logan, Neal Purvis, and Robert Wade (with additional work by Jez Butterworth), which in addition to Craig and Waltz, the cast includes Dave Bautista, Monica Bellucci, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Lea Seydoux, Ben Whishaw, and more. It’s very much a direct sequel to Skyfall, for better and for worse. I found Spectre to be suitably entertaining, but a definite step below Casino Royale and Skyfall, both of which brought Bond to the fully modern age and redefined the character. Consider how I consider those two of the best 007 movies ever, that puts the franchise somewhat on the wrong track. What it is, simply put, is that the focus is on re-integrating classic elements of the character into the franchise as opposed to continuing to reinvent him. That puts the style and story sometimes at odds with each other. The film is a lot of fun, no question, but it’s both serious and silly in oddly equal measure. The mixture works, but not to the degree with which it was hoped. As you’ll see below, I found this latest installment to be middle of the road Bond. For me, there’s about a half dozen or so indisputably great outings, with another five or so that are solidly good. After that, it moves to the majority [...]