What's going on with the 2014 Bondathon

Yup, I blew it yesterday.

So here's the deal. I went through the entire list of James Bond films and ranked them from best to worst to assign them all grades for my 2014 James Bondathon series. I figured at least this way I could keep the grades appropriately balanced.

And then, as always starts happening, I second-guessed myself.

"Is The Spy Who Loved Me really the best James Bond film ever? Isn't Goldfinger really overrated? Aren't you judging, say, Thunderball and Casino Royale by completely different standards?"

And so on. 

The answer to those questions, by the way, are yes for a certain definition of "James Bond film," absolutely, and frickin' duh but only because they're so completely different I can barely believe they're part of the same franchise.


Really, there are two different types of Bond Films. There are what I will call the "spy films," films like From Russia With Love, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, For Your Eyes Only, The Living Daylights, Licence to Kill and Casino Royale (which happen to be the best six "spy films"). They have a more realistic tone and fewer gadgets, and unless Sean Connery is playing Bond, he's going to have some character depth (Connery's Bond is hella flat; if I were him, I'd be super pissed that they made OHMSS without me and then threw me in the godawful Diamonds Are Forever when I agreed to come back). 

Then there's the other type of Bond film, the "superagent films."  Bond isn't a character so much as a force of nature. He will be able to wade through a sea of machine-gun fire and kill the villain - who is invariably a megalomaniac with an absurdly implausible plan - with something more sophisticated than a booby-trapped briefcase, a shoelace, or a cigarette lighter. He will be able to sex women into switching sides and explode bases that could only have been constructed if the local tax authorities were paying no attention whatsoever. These films are exemplified by Goldfinger, Thunderball, The Spy Who Loved Me and GoldenEye, which are, um, the only good examples.

So what do I do? Construct a rubric that invariably favors one set over the other, or attempt to judge each film based on its own merits? Should I take into account the circumstances under which the film was made (and thereby, for example, award The Spy Who Loved Me the top spot in part because it literally saved the franchise)?  Was the Brosnan era an odd postscript to the original series, the last gasp of a dying franchise that needed a swift kick in the butt, or a post-misguided-Dalton-experiment return to form that was cut short too soon because of one major clunker? (I'm inclined to go with option #1 on that last question.)

One thing I have decided, and it's controversial, and it's going to require me to re-visit at least one, probably two already-published reviews: Goldfinger is overrated. It seems like somebody wrote themselves into a corner and just had Bond bang Pussy Galore as a means of getting out. That... well, that really doesn't work for me. Sorry if I'm a cynical old loveless brat.

So, originally, you weren't getting the Thunderball review because I was busy reading the novel. Now you're not getting the Thunderball review because I'm re-evaluating my entire list, and I don't want to publish anything else until I've reached a point where I'm not second-guessing myself as much.