Which is the best Roger Moore/James Bond 007 film?

[spider-neil]

I think Dalton is a poor Bond but his two movies are great and this is coming from someone who just watched them (bought the 50th blu ray box set).

 

[Duke]

The best Bond film from Roger Moore for me, was The Spy Who Loved Me, followed closely by For Your Eyes Only.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

I hate the way they killed off Macnee like that. Like an intelligence operative can't notice that a 6-foot-tall drag queen ninja is hiding in his back seat.

Yeah. And the movie died with him which made it worse. James Bond and John Steed teaming up for the whole movie could have actually been interesting. Much better than what we got, which is the movie driving off a cliff once it gets to San Francisco. The first half wasn't a great Bond film, but I found it entertaining enough compared to the second half.

 

[The Joker]

I hate the way they killed off Macnee like that. Like an intelligence operative can't notice that a 6-foot-tall drag queen ninja is hiding in his back seat.

LOL

 

[Mrs. Sawyer]

Indeed. I know Dalton has experienced a renaissance of fan love in recent years, but he never had enough charm or wit for me. Even an over-the-hill Moore was still able to bring joy to an otherwise bland movie. I am glad though that the tone changed after Moore retired from the role.

I have said this several times before that despite how bad Moonraker, Octopussy, and A View to a Kill are, Moore's performances weren't the reason for those movies being bad and I felt that his performances here were still much better than in Live and Let Die and especially The Man With The Golden Gun, where he looks bored most of the movie.

 

[Octoberist]

For Your Eyes Only..I admire it but its so dull too.

 

[Thundarr]

It was campy but the Asian locations were gorgeous and Scaramanga was one of the greatest Bond villains, with a masterful performance from Christopher Lee and the final duel between the two was fantastic.

This It's also the Bond film that came out the year I was born. While Octopussy was cheesy and campy as Hell, it has a fond place in my heart because it's the first Bond film I ever saw in theatres.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

Octopussy isn't really any more cheesy than an Indiana Jones flick.

 

[DACrowe]

It's about execution. Indiana Jones made people sit on the edge of their seats and cheer. Octopussy induces more eye rolls and chuckles. I think TSWLM is a better comparison. Still not nearly as well executed, but a solid adventure that people could enjoy without laughing at it.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

I agree that the Indiana Jones films are better films, but it isn't due to the lack of cheese and camp. Some of the gags (such as the Tarzan scene and the gross Indian dinner scene) were even later used in the Indiana Jones series. My point is that a lot of people today complain when something isn't dark and dreary (see the current love for Dalton) and view camp as being automatically bad. Octopussy may not be as good as the Indiana Jones films because of other issues and as you say execution, but there isn't really anything there that would be out of place in any of the Indy films. It isn't Moonraker we are talking about here, which does go completely overboard. Octopussy can still be taken seriously.

 

[The Joker]

Octopussy has Bond make a Tarzan yell when he's swinging in the Indian jungle lol.

 

[Mrs. Sawyer]

It's about execution. Indiana Jones made people sit on the edge of their seats and cheer. Octopussy induces more eye rolls and chuckles. I think TSWLM is a better comparison. Still not nearly as well executed, but a solid adventure that people could enjoy without laughing at it.

Octopussy tried so hard to be like Indiana Jones, which is one of the reasons I find myself annoyed by the movie. They had a good start of bringing Bond back into the Spy genre with For Your Eyes Only, but like Moonraker, some dumb EON exec thought it was a good idea to profit on trends, in which Octopussy became alive.

And with The Spy Who Loved Me, that's because they not only embraced the overexaggerative tropes of the Bond series, but reveled in it and incorporated a lot of the over-the-top elements into the script and went for broke.

It was not like the series could go any lower after the terrible disaster that was The Man With The Golden Gun.

 

[Mrs. Sawyer]

Golden Gun was terrible.

It was campy as hell.

Not only that, because all of Moore's movies are campy, but to me Golden Gun pulls off the worst crime of the Bond series in being boring. It's still the only Bond movie I was ever truly bored by throughout the movie. Sure, some Bond movies gets slow at times, but there were huge amounts of times in the movie that just bored me more so than other Bond movie. Roger Moore to me looks as bored in the movie as Connery was in his later movies at times. No one (except Christopher Lee) in the cast or crew brought their A, B, C, or D game to this movie. Christopher Lee, to me, the only thing in this movie that at least decent. Nothing else in the movie is good. Not Moore, not Mary Goodnight, not Nic Nac (screw that midget), not Guy Hamilton, not the Bond theme, and hell, even the pre-title sequence which I usually like isn't that good. TMWTGG is the biggest waste of a bond movie there is, and I am so glad that Moore made up for it with The Spy Who Loved Me, which is a complete 180.

"The Spy Who Loved Me" of course.
But no love for "Live and Let Die" in this thread? A young Roger Moore at the top of his game (mixing the right amount of humor and toughness and adding his own take on the Bond persona), a great villain, Yaphet Kotto, cool gadgets, one of the best if not the best Bond soundtrack ...
I might have a special nostalgic attachment to it because it's the 1st Bond I saw, but I still think it holds up and even though its Blaxploitation vibe dates it quite a bit, it's one of the good Bond films .
There are also a few good moments in Octopussy. Other than that, all the other Moore films are not that great imo.

Yeah, Live and Let Die hasn't been brought up much in this thread. What do you guys think? I think that while Moore's performance was iffy at times (especially in the first half), I think the second half of the movie does a great job at showing the potential Moore had in the role at his best and Mr. Big to me is one of the most underrated bond villains. It's pretty much a Blaxploitation without a black main character but I like it.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

Octopussy has Bond make a Tarzan yell when he's swinging in the Indian jungle lol.

Indiana Jones had Mutt swinging like Tarzan with monkeys in the Peruvian jungle.

Not that it wasn't stupid, but it was a few seconds in a two hour movie.

 

[Octoberist]

That damn 'monkey swing' in Indy 4 represents the tonal problem in that film, while in Octopussy, I was okay with it. I swear, Indy 4 is the 'Diamonds are Forever/A View to a Kill/Die Another Day' of the Indiana Jones films.

 

[Gianakin_]

Octopussy was puss. I can never compare Indy and Bond, two completely different characters made for 2 completely kinds of films.

 

[Gianakin_]

Yeah, Live and Let Die hasn't been brought up much in this thread. What do you guys think? I think that while Moore's performance was iffy at times (especially in the first half), I think the second half of the movie does a great job at showing the potential Moore had in the role at his best and Mr. Big to me is one of the most underrated bond villains. It's pretty much a Blaxploitation without a black main character but I like it.

I rather like it. Baron Samedi annoys the hell out of me, but other than that I'm very entertained by this flick. More than decent start for Moore.

 

[Homer J. Fong]

There are things I really like about Live and Let Die - I dig the voodoo stuff, I love Geoffrey Holder as Baron Samedi (he's not an Oddjob- or Red Grant-level henchman, but all he has to be is immediately memorable and fun, and boy, is he!), the theme song is one of the best, I like Yaphet Kotto as Kananga/Mr. Big - but I don't much like the movie. As the campier Bonds go, it's the best one, but I don't like the campier Bonds. I also don't like seeing Bond as follower of movie trends; of course, a series that prides itself on adapting to the times is going to take cues from other movies in its wheelhouse - but Live and Let Die is one of the movies where I'm thinking way too often about the thought process of, "Well, this genre is popular right now, we have a book that we can sort of fit to it, let's jump on this bandwagon!" I'm also not interested or amused by any of the "fish out of water" moments with James Bond in Harlem, the plot's too small in scale and dull for my liking, and Roger Moore's Bond doesn't make the strongest first impression. I've never seen The Saint, I don't know if he really is just playing that character again here, but I don't enjoy his Bond until The Spy Who Loved Me. There aren't any action sequences or set pieces that I really like in it, either - the boat chase is alright, but we keep cutting away from it for the wacky bigotry of Sheriff J.W. Pepper. I'm going to say something controversial here: Pepper is handled better in The Man with the Golden Gun than he is in Live and Let Die - he's more annoying in TMWTGG, and it's a drag to see him again, but at least he's paired up with Bond and we're not being pulled out of ascene we actually want to see for him.

I don't like Live and Let Die, but unlike with Diamonds Are Forever or The Man with the Golden Gun, I'm not baffled when someone says they do.

 

[Silvermoth]

When are we getting the Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan versions of this poll?

Obviously wait for Daniel's so that people can see Skyfall before voting.

 

[Homer J. Fong]

I assumed there weren't Connery or Brosnan versions because there'd be so little question. For Connery, From Russia with Love and Goldfinger would be about even; for Brosnan, everybody would say GoldenEye - you know, except for the weirdos.