@Jacinto Cupboard said:

Not sure whether I mentioned it in this thread but I wrote the OP either after or during a binge watch of the entire franchise.

I gave Die Another Day the lowest rating and Casino Royale the highest. Most of the others hovered around 5 stars. I don't think any of them are 'great movies'. They are what they are. When you watch them in a block it is striking how they are mostly rewrites of the same 3 or 4 stories. I think by the time they got to Die Another Day they were struggling for ways to make it look interesting again and they thought the gadgets and special effects would do the trick. It was the 13th ranked box office film of 02. Signs and Scooby Doo had better box office.

All I was saying originally was something about where this movie stood in relation to other Bond movies. I wasn't comparing it to Citizen Kane.

No, Die Another Day had better box office than Scooby Doo.

@Jacinto Cupboard said:

Not sure whether I mentioned it in this thread but I wrote the OP either after or during a binge watch of the entire franchise.

I gave Die Another Day the lowest rating and Casino Royale the highest. Most of the others hovered around 5 stars. I don't think any of them are 'great movies'. They are what they are. When you watch them in a block it is striking how they are mostly rewrites of the same 3 or 4 stories. I think by the time they got to Die Another Day they were struggling for ways to make it look interesting again and they thought the gadgets and special effects would do the trick. It was the 13th ranked box office film of 02. Signs and Scooby Doo had better box office.

All I was saying originally was something about where this movie stood in relation to other Bond movies. I wasn't comparing it to Citizen Kane.

Die Another Day was more successful than Signs.

I'm sure I mentioned this earlier in thread but the weird thing is that DAD was the biggest grossing Bond film (non inflation) ever at the time of its release. Casino Royale only made very marginally more (albeit on a slightly cheaper budget - probably down to cheap Craig salary compared with Brosnan) despite it having the hype of a new Bond and the "groundbreaking" grittier take on Bond.

So the retconned viewpoint that people were tired of Brosnan and more fantastical / glamorous / whatever Bond films simply doesn't stand up.

For a few years OHMSS was the best performed Bond movie, inflation adjusted; a point Lazenby used to make, probably because it doesn't make many people's list of favourite Bond movies and he was shitcanned for it for decades.

Buying a ticket to a movie doesn't mean people walked away from it fully satisfied either. I remember taking my then GF to see Never Say Never Again. It was a date movie. It just happened to be a better option than whatever else was showing at the time. Similarly, lots of people complained about The Rise of Skywalker. One assumes they had bought tickets. So buying a ticket isn't like a vote for the movie.

The Craig movies certainly looked like they had more money spent on production. Pretty much all the earlier Bond movies looked cheap even if the sets were vast. DAD made a fortune on product placement, but the SFX and sets still look cheap. Beats me how you can spend that much money on a movie and have it coming out looking that bad.

Fwiw, CR made 200 million more than DAD.

Weird, apologies, not quite $200m but it was significantly more. Think I must have looked here:-https://www.boxofficemojo.com/franchise/fr2605158149/?ref_=bo_frs_table_10

When I had that in mind. Must be US domestic...

Funnily enough OHMSS is one of my all time favourite Bonds, even although it's pretty muted in terms of the humour / gadgets and possibly the closest to Craig's tone asides from the awful Dalton efforts.

@Jacinto Cupboard said:

Not sure whether I mentioned it in this thread but I wrote the OP either after or during a binge watch of the entire franchise.

I gave Die Another Day the lowest rating and Casino Royale the highest. Most of the others hovered around 5 stars.

Jesus, dude. How come you kept watching all those films if you obviously weren't enjoying them very much?

@mechajutaro said:

@Adammm said:

@mechajutaro said:

I guess like in every Bond film since the beginning of time he'll just have to use the invisible car or invisible care when he's in danger at a villain's isolated location like any other gadget he has previously used?? Not when driving to the supermarket?

Machine guns and missiles built into a BMW are clearly useful if one's being pursued by trained killers, even if the existence of such things is far fetched. Turning your ride invisible during a chase is moronic in the extreme, given that another drive is just going to crash into you, thus undercutting your attempt to escape your pursuers

Having a secret agent taking out terrorists all over the world while we now have drones to do that instead is equally moronic, if logic and realism is what you've come to see in a Bond film then you're in the wrong business. Villains usually chase from behind not in front a invisible car should have no problem.

Drone strikes have been known to either not get their targets or/and leave more civilians dead than they do terrorists. In real life, JSOC, The CIA's Special Activities Division, and Mi6's The Increment really do assassinate fanatics all over the globe. No one expects impeccable logic and realism in fiction; there does come a point though when fantasy descends into absurdity, and that invisible car was one such instance

Civilians in populous towns most of the villain's lairs aren't under the New York subway have you ever watched a single Bond film? You not knowing where the Bond villains plot their plans is more ridiculous than a fleet of invisible cars.

@JustinJackFlash said:

@Jacinto Cupboard said:

Not sure whether I mentioned it in this thread but I wrote the OP either after or during a binge watch of the entire franchise.

I gave Die Another Day the lowest rating and Casino Royale the highest. Most of the others hovered around 5 stars.

Jesus, dude. How come you kept watching all those films if you obviously weren't enjoying them very much?

5 stars is a pass mark for me. It means if someone asked, I would say it was worth a look. I don't usually comment on movies that I rate less than a 5, and more often than not I will not see that movie to the end unless there is a reason. Two reasons would be:

1. The movie is part of a body of work, either a franchise or a director's portfolio, and I am interested in how those things developed.
2. There are aspects to the film making, such as writing or cinematography, from which one can learn things. It is possible to learn from the mistakes of others.

@Jacinto Cupboard said:

5 stars is a pass mark for me. It means if someone asked, I would say it was worth a look. I don't usually comment on movies that I rate less than a 5, and more often than not I will not see that movie to the end unless there is a reason. Two reasons would be:

1. The movie is part of a body of work, either a franchise or a director's portfolio, and I am interested in how those things developed.
2. There are aspects to the film making, such as writing or cinematography, from which one can learn things. It is possible to learn from the mistakes of others.

I see. I tend to give 5s to films I saw as ok meself. Seen as the number is slap bang in the middle. And yeah, I have watched bad films for similar reasons.