(Spoilers ahead, but these movies have been out for a very long time, so I don’t think anyone cares if I spoil things.)
I’ve never seen these movies before now.
I’ve had no interest in seeing these movies before now.
They are now all I think about.
Growing up, like any kid, I had an interest in spies, so I was introduced to spy movies. I've seen most of the Bourne Identity movies, the Mission Impossible movies, and Spy Kids. Of these three sets of movies, only one of them was good, and it was not the two starring older white men (Spy Kids was the good one, if you don’t understand me).
I am also Welsh, and you would think, because I have some form of connection to the United Kingdom, I would have seen the Bond movies.
This is wrong.
And!!! My reason for starting to watch them wasn’t even because I wanted to watch them. I’ve been watching all of Ben Whishaw’s movies (he’s the guy who plays Paddington) because I love this actor and I go through random spells of just watching a certain actor’s movies (more recently I was obsessed with Michael Caine, hence my Batman Trilogy bender a few weeks ago—I watched three movies four times each in the span of seven days).
So, I was watching these movies just for Ben Whishaw(who doesn’t appear until the third movie when he takes over as the character “Q”), but, I’m not weak, so I assumed that the best plan was to turn on the first few movies as background noise and half pay attention until I got to the third movie.
But then, I liked it.
The first movie, for those who don’t know, is “Casino Royale,” released in 2006. It has more sexism then it does women, and 90% of the movie is spent watching a group of people play a poker game (annoyingly the game they are playing is never stated—unless I missed it, low chance considering I watched it twice—but I’m going to assume it’s Texas Hold ‘Em. I could be wrong). Another favorite actor of mine, Mads Mikkaelson plays a math genius, and the villain and looks very good in a suit, and I honestly cannot tell you how this movie went beyond the fact that Bond lost money, then got money, and then lost it again. And then he was betrayed, which I am a little confused about because I knew she was going to betray him and I’m not a super-secret-spy, so I feel like that was a little unrealistic because Bond definitely should have caught on.
Anyways, after “Casino Royale,” I watched “Quantum of Solace” (2008), and this is probably the worst Bond movie. The music was good, but the plot was a little shaky. Once again, there was more sexism than women and a villain that wasn’t particularly good at what he was doing. Then, it was “Skyfall” (2012), and I can remember this movie coming out, but I never went and saw it (for obvious reasons). The amazing Ben Whishaw shows up, they talk about one of my favorite paintings for a few minutes, and then he gets like, two more scenes, and that's it for the rest of the movie. I liked this one significantly more than the one before it.
Then the (sort of two part) “Spectre” (2015) and “No Time To Die” (2021) are next, and I genuinely loved these ones more than all the others combined. First and foremost, the music was done by Thomas Newman (composer of “Wall-E,” “Finding Nemo,” “1917,” “Tolkein”) and Hans Zimmer (composer of “Interstellar,” “Dune,” “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Prince of Egypt”) respectively. So the music was absolutely amazing, and the cast was somehow even better than the past ones, the movies featured actors like Rami Malek (who played Ahkmenrah from “Night at the Museum”), Ralph Fiennes (Voldemort) and obviously, the amazing Ben Whishaw (Paddington from “Paddington”).
Genuinely, the Bond movies exceeded my expectations for movies, and I will be watching the older movies (eventually—I’m still stuck on Daniel Craig at the moment). I’ll end with giving my final ranking on best to worst movies:
Top Spot: “Casino Royale” (2006) barring the lack of female characters, it had a great score, good villain, and a plot that hooked you in better than you expected due to the fact that the entire movie is spent playing poker. Number Two: “Spectre” (2015). Number Three: “No Time To Die” (2021). Number Four: “Skyfall” (2015). Number Five: “Quantum of Solace” (2008). and I wish I could rank this movie lower. It was horrible.
In the time that it took me to write this article, I have watched half of the first movie again—it makes for good background noise.