Ranking the 6 James Bonds, Starting With Pierce Brosnan, Who Sucks

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Total Bond films: 4

His strongest: Goldeneye (1995)

His worst: Die Another Day (2002)

Goldeneye: a brilliant start to a gradually catastrophic legacy. Brosnan was rarely more than a passable actor, and Brosnan's Bond was a luxurious mannequin, a pretty boy who ducked bullets on foreign soil for love of country and posh fashion branding. Until Daniel Craig catapulted into the role via Casino Royale, Pierce Brosnan had the strongest Bond debut, with Goldeneye ranking high in most critics' esteem of the franchise. If you're graphing the quality of these films, however, Brosnan shows nothing but decline, with ever-exhausted punch lines and plots that devolve into Spy Kids material set to a PG-13 rating and a billion-dollar production budget. His final Bond tally: Pierce Brosnan starred in one great film (Goldeneye), one fine film (Tomorrow Never Dies), and then two of franchise's very worst (The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day). Brosnan's tenure pitted a few of the Bond series' most pathetic villains against a vapid nymphomaniac who winks. Oh, give it a rest, 007.

Total Bond films: 2

His strongest: The Living Daylights (1987)

His worst: License to Kill (1989)

The Bush/Major-Clinton/Blair axis was unkind to this franchise, which lost the plot for a while after the Cold War came to conclusion. As history urged the Bond series to draw new tensions along new frontiers, Ian Fleming's source material had started to mold over. The Living Daylights, Dalton's debut as the new James Bond in 1987, is based on a MI-6 vs. KGB short story that Fleming's estate had published 21 years prior. Alternatively Dalton's second Bond film, License to Kill, is a free-floating mash-up of Lethal Weapon and Rambo. Dalton’s brief, inconsequential tenure was a failure of the series' imagination more so than a fault of Dalton, who (like Brosnan) is a fine actor who's done his best work elsewhere. By far the least charismatic of his lineage, Dalton's Bond was violent and myopic, and in retrospect, he represents a relic of stale conflict, a wayward agent without purpose. The '80s took its toll.

His only Bond film: On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

Like Dalton's tenure, George Lazenby's brief turn at the role of James Bond is somewhat discordant with the vibe and signatures of the series overall. Whereas the preceding Connery era was very much so driven by Connery's charm and bold definitions of the Bond role, Lazenby's performance is the least remarkable force of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, a film that preserves by the power of its strong writing and brilliant action sequences. On Her Majesty's Secret Service is a decent film that I've watched twice, enjoyed twice, and never desired to see again.

Total Bond films: 7

His strongest: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

His worst: Moonraker (1979)

Much snobbery is made of Roger Moore's comedic effect. Bond turned goofy during the late Connery years, a demeanor that continued through Roger Moore’s tenure, but look: it's not like Eon Productions was out to compete with Michael Caine and Get Carter. For the most part, these early Bond films were mining the Cold War for intrigue, sex scenes, combat, and the occasional laugh.

Moore stars in the greatest share of polarizing Bond flicks—Live and Let Die, Moonraker, and A View to a Kill especially—so it’s understandable that he earned the loudest calls for his head.​ Moore's Bond was always doing the most, the very most, and the upshot is that Moore's 12-year tenure is the most varied and complex of the series' history. There's something for everyone, especially if you're into grotesque innuendo, blaxploitation tropes, and jazzy villains.

Total Bond films (as of Feb. 2015): 3

His strongest: Skyfall (2012)

His worst: Quantum of Solace (2008)

The Bond that bleeds a pint per scene. For the first time since Connery, an actor managed to make the world of these films feel lived in, and the role of James Bond look like muscle memory. Not just Bond himself, but these movies on the whole are athletic, tense, riveting, and played effectively straight despite the traditionally convoluted plots (and plot holes). With his Bond debut in Casino Royale, which rebooted the whole franchise in 2006, Daniel Craig restored the series' prestige after the impossible buffoonery (and subsequent lull) of Brosnan's last two films. 

Craig gets a bum rap from some corners for essentially aping the Bourne franchise's late reinvention of espionage-action flicks. Watching Daniel Craig as James Bond is rather like watching a Pacquiao jab landing at your face, and really that's the proper effect. Like it or not, that sort of shaky, kinetic, bruising pace is what suits the genre's fashions in the new century, the alternative being Austin Powers or, worse, fantastically expensive madness of Brosnan's Die Another Day. Even Craig's outlier clunker Quantum of Solace outdoes Brosnan at his worst, and anyway Solace is a failure so dull and harmless as to have been immediately forgotten. Meanwhile Connery's Diamonds Are Forever, is forever.

Importantly, Craig's two strongest showings, Casino Royale and Skyfall, stack formidably against/alongside Connery's two best Bond films, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger. And Craig is only three films deep.

Total Bond films: 6*

His strongest: From Russia With Love (1963)

His worst: Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Younger fans like myself tend to idealize Connery's original Bond as a celebrity assassin and walking HR violation, which is true. Connery's take on espionage is smart without being wonky, worldly but not geopolitical to the point of procedural boredom. In a decade haunted by world wars past, only to be presently threatened with nuclear obliteration, Sean Connery's Bond was a global tour guide of the exotic and deadly. In the half-century before every American and her cat had access to WiFi and Lonely Planet, this was a big, spectacular deal.

Whether off-roading in pursuit of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. or panty-raiding hotel suites, Connery's Bond glides invincibly between Daniel Craig's athleticism and cold nerve on the one hand, and Roger Moore's wit and cad excesses at the opposing extreme. Revisit Goldfinger, for instance, and consider: a film in which James Bond is stalked by a mute henchman and nearly castrated by a laser is unironically engrossing, not cringe-worthy like you might guess. Through all the drama and comedy, Connery's Bond was bulletproof, unflappable, and as fine as the Caribbean sand at his heels. This frequently ridiculous franchise is nonsense without Sir Connery at its helm and spiritual core. No one's done it better.