Every James Bond Movie, Ranked Worst to Best

The year: 2019 2020 2021

The 007: Daniel Craig

The (non-UK) location(s): Italy, Cuba, Jamaica, Norway, unnamed Russian/Japanese island

The theme song: "No Time to die" performed by Billie Eilish

Thanks to multiple release date delays stretching across years, Daniel Craig officially became the longest-tenured actor to inhabit James Bond—by time (15 years), not by number of films (Roger Moore played Bond seven times, as did Sean Connery if you count the unofficial Never Say Never Again)—with this fifth and final film during his run. And it seems to be a big improvement over the previous film, Spectre, even if it returns two of that film's newcomers, Christoph Waltz (as SPECTRE head Blofeld) and Lèa Seydoux (as Bond girl Madeleine Swann). Here, however, the main villain is a new character played by Rami Malek, while Lashana Lynch plays the British agent who inherited the 007 number after Bond retired. (Much of the action here takes place five years after the events of Spectre.) Also new to the series are director Cary Joji Fukunaga (True Detective, Beasts of No Nation) and co-screenwriter Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The latter—best known for her TV shows Fleabag and Killing Eve—is just the second female writer in the history of the James Bond franchise (following Johanna Harwood, who co-wrote the first and third 007 films).

If you are sad that Craig is turning in his license to kill, you may be reassured that it is definitely a long goodbye: No Time to Die clocks in at 2 hours and 43 minutes, surpassing previous franchise record-holder Spectre by 15 minutes. Who will replace Craig? Not only has a successor not been named, but the search won't even begin until 2022.

“If not necessarily the Craig era’s resounding victory lap some might wish, it’s still an exceptional time in a cinema, begging for the largest screen possible. More importantly, a bold, exciting gesture of good faith in 007’s path forward.” —Dan Mecca, The Film Stage