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: 1977
The 007: Roger Moore
The (non-UK) location(s): Austria, Cairo/Egypt, Moscow, Sardinia
The theme song: "Nobody Does It Better" performed by Carly Simon
Following a rare (at the time) three-year break between films caused by the departure of longtime co-producer Harry Saltzman, Moore returned as Bond for a third time in 1977 in a film that uses only the title (and nothing else) of Fleming's tenth 007 novel. Instead, the original story (written by series veteran Richard Maibaum and newcomer Christopher Wood, who would return for Moonraker) finds Bond teaming up with a rival KGB agent/love interest (played by Barbara Bach) to hunt down their common enemy.
Considered an improvement over Moore's two prior Bond outings and featuring a memorable ski chase as well as nearly as many underwater sequences as Thunderball, the big-budget Spy was directed by Lewis Gilbert (who previously directed You Only Live Twice) after frequent 007 director Guy Hamilton opted out and producers balked at the demands of their next choice for director, Steven Spielberg. But the director of the recent hit Jaws influenced the film nevertheless, as Jaws was the name selected for the 7-foot-tall, steel-toothed henchman (played by Richard Kiel) in The Spy Who Loved Me—one of the franchise's most iconic villains.
“For the first time in three films, Roger Moore starts to unearth a personality for Bond.” —James Berardinelli, ReelViews
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