Every James Bond Movie, Ranked Worst to Best
With this month's arrival (finally!) of No Time to Die, there have now been 25 official films in the EON-produced James Bond film franchise based on author Ian Fleming's British spy character. In the gallery on this page, we rank every one of those films—plus two additional Bond features from outside producers—from worst to best based on their Metascores, which represent the consensus of a group of top professional film critics.
Right now, it's fairly easy to find most of the Bond films on streaming services (and if it's not on the streaming service you have, it likely will be shortly, as the films are deleted from and re-added to various services every few months). That could change in the future thanks to a recent deal by Amazon to acquire MGM, which currently holds the home video rights to most of the Bond catalog, though there are no definitive plans to make Prime Video the exclusive home of 007 ... yet.
All photos courtesy Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios except Casino Royale (1967) by Columbia Pictures and Never Say Never Again by Warner Bros.
The year: 1973
The 007: Roger Moore
The (non-UK) location(s): New Orleans, Harlem, Jamaica
The theme song: "Live and Let Die" performed by Paul McCartney & Wings
After Sean Connery's second retirement from the 007 franchise, the job went to Roger Moore, who beat out runner-up Michael Billington—after Burt Reynolds first turned down the part. Live and Let Die is an adaptation of Fleming's second 007 novel, dealing with a voodoo kingpin with links to Soviet spies, so naturally returning director Guy Hamilton (Goldfinger) turned it into ... a blaxploitation film about a Harlem drug lord (who is also a Caribbean ruler). Also starring Yaphet Kotto and Jane Seymour, Live was the worst Bond film released to that point—and poor reviews would become a staple of the Roger Moore era, with a few exceptions. At least the theme song is great.
“It has all the necessary girls, gimmicks, subterranean control rooms, uniformed goons and magic wristwatches it can hold, but it doesn't have the wit and it doesn't have the style of the best Bond movies.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
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